Eating "earned" calories?

Personally I would eat the 1760. With only 30 lbs to lose, 2 lbs per week loss goal may be rather aggressive.

Naturally those are calories you need to eat. You'd then eat 1760.

Think of it on the extreme. If you went for say a 30 mile run that burned 4000kcal, you certainly wouldn't just eat 1360 kcal that day. MFP sets you up based on your activity level setting for how many calories you will need to eat that day to have goal deficit, in your case 1360 kcal. If you burn an extra 400 kcal that means if you ate 1360 kcal for the day you would now have a 1400 kcal deficit.

The one exception might be if you have MFP set for some very high activity level to compensate for your running, but if you're logging your exercise from other sites MFP should be set to sedentary or lightly active provided you don't have some manual labor job that is physically demanding day in and day out.

thorsmom01 wrote: »

Personally I would eat the 1760. With only 30 lbs to lose, 2 lbs per week loss goal may be rather aggressive.

+1

I would recommend starting closer to the 1360 # & track your weight loss progress & compare your actual progress to your weekly weight loss goal. Only eat more calories if you are meeting or exceeding your anticipated or expected rate of weight loss. Macro's will also come into play as you will need carbs to fuel your daily run.

i eat almost all my logged exercise calories BUT i also dont log all my exercise so in reality, im probably eating half them

thorsmom01 wrote: »

Personally I would eat the 1760. With only 30 lbs to lose, 2 lbs per week loss goal may be rather aggressive.

This^

Too fast weight loss makes it harder for your body to support existing lean muscle. If you had a more moderate goal (1 pound a week)....then you would eat part of your exercise calories. But that too is going closer to 1760 calories.

Notice something. The vast majority of those saying eat the calories have lots of experience based on their post counts. Eat the calories.

To lose 2 lbs/week you're already at a daily 1000 calorie deficit. If you don't eat the exercise calories, your deficit will be 1400. I agree with the above posts to consider losing at a slower rate and definitely eating the exercise calories back.

Eat it back, really. Losing weight to fast is damaging over a period of time and I presume you want to be lean and healthy not just skinny :-)

I am with all those that say eat your calories back.
I did while losing, and do while maintaining( 6yr) and I am tiny so only had a 1200 base to work from. If I hadn't eaten the extra 200 a day I had expended through exercise to fuel the exercise I would have burnt out, got ill, & lost muscle very quickly.

MFP is set up for you to eat them. Sometimes you have to play with them a little to be getting the loss you entered into MFP, but tightening up calorie counting methods, weighing and measuring everything that goes in your mouth, should be done before dropping cals.

Not eating them back can cause physical and mental problems, fatigue is generally the first. Great work out, ate your MFP cals but not exercise cals, haven't got the energy to cook dinner and vacuum the house = you are under nourishing your body.

Also, a 2 lb loss with 30lb to lose is a bit drastic. Try 1.5 then 1.
As you lose the weight your calorie requirements drop. If you are not eating back your exercise calories, as you get closer to your goal you will have little or no room to adjust your calories down so you can reach your desired weight.

Long story short- eat your exercise calories, monitor your loss ( over 3-4 weeks) and adjust accordingly.

Cheers, h.

I'm not eating back my exercise calories. I'm not feeling fatigued or hungry, and I'm clearly getting stronger, so why eat more? On the other hand, my exercise is fairly moderate and consistent. I might do something very different if I were alternating rest days with really brutal workouts, especially if I felt I was running on empty. Also, I started at 245 lbs. It may be quite different when you're closer to your ideal weight.--A lot of people here report that exercise databases and readouts tend to overestimate calorie burn, and the books I read claim the same thing (one said, for instance, that almost no exercise is really going to give you more than 7 cal./min.). So if you do eat back your calories, be very conservative at first and see how fast the weight is dropping. I see posts here all the time from people who are perplexed by why they're not losing weight, although they believe they're accurately logging all their food and eating back only what they've burned. Unless you're awfully accurate and exercising like Lance Armstrong, eating back too many exercise calories is a good way to reverse your calorie deficit inadvertently.

After a few weeks of consistent logging one can extrapolate ones exercise calorie burn.

MFP was giving me 175-185 for most 60min routines ( I'm tiny) and a good few hundred for Zumba.
I actually average out at 200, 350 for Zumba.
Eating 200 extra 7 days a week for 5 days exercise, including lifting, kept me losing at my goal, and maintaining at my goal.

Each of us are very different, and it is worth taking the time to make sure your calories are supporting your goal.

Cheers, h.

Eat them back. 1200 is a really aggressive goal especially for a runner.

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thorsmom01 wrote: »

Personally I would eat the 1760. With only 30 lbs to lose, 2 lbs per week loss goal may be rather aggressive.

This^

Too fast weight loss makes it harder for your body to support existing lean muscle. If you had a more moderate goal (1 pound a week)....then you would eat part of your exercise calories. But that too is going closer to 1760 calories.[/quote]

I agree at least eat some of it back. You don't want your body to overreact to not being Fed.