Is it possible to lose weight in the long run while increasing exercise and eating back the calories
chooklady
Posts: 47 Member
I'd like to hear from anyone who has increased their exercise at the same time as watching mfp calories, eating back most of their exercise calories. I am pleased with my healthier lifestyle and diet but the scale is not my friend, yet.
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Replies
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Don't eat back as many calories. Most people suggest about 50%.0
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i eat back most of mine and have lost 73 pounds.
BUT it all depends on your deficit, and how accurate you are with logging (both food and exercise)
if the scale is not you friend yet, you need to reevaluate your food logging and how many calories you are eating back.0 -
I eat to my calorie macro, and only add approx. 100 calories for every hour over 1 hour I exercise. (If I bike for 3 hours, I will add 300 calories). If I run for 1 1/2 hour I will add 200 calories. But my calorie macro is pretty high for someone my age (between 1500 and 1600 hundred calories per day_ . I lift weights/do HIIT 3 days per week, but it is 1 hour or less, so I don't add calories those days, but do make sure to get plenty of protein. On this plan I lose 1/2 to 1 pound per week, on average, and I am over 60, so have a slower burn than when I was 30 or 40.0
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Yes, I have increased my exercise quite a bit, eat back about 75% of the extra calories and have had success.0
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You can eat back all the calories you burn. The hard part is figuring out how many calories you burn.0
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I have increased my exercise as a part of the whole process here, but as others have mentioned, I rarely eat all my exercise calories back ... usually somewhere between 50% and 75%.
I also estimate my calories burned on the low side. If I ride my bicycle on the trainer, I log it as the lightest stationary bike option available even if I spend my time doing rather intense commercial intervals. If I ride outside, I select the 16-19 km/h speed no matter what speed I really do. I round my times down so that if I walk for 39 minutes, I'll round down to 35.
And I've lost 26 kg that way.0 -
Thanks!0
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I eat back every single one of mine
I track in rolling 6 - 8 week timeframes that my weight is in line with my expectations, so ensuring that I am not overestimating my exercise calories (monitored through a fitbit on step-based and HRM for steady-state and estimate for gym workouts) and am accurate with my food intake
I have lost 55lbs and maintained for 11 monthsI'd like to hear from anyone who has increased their exercise at the same time as watching mfp calories, eating back most of their exercise calories. I am pleased with my healthier lifestyle and diet but the scale is not my friend, yet.0 -
Don't eat them back if you really want to burn fat.0
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I started a quite active job last year in April which increased my activity level by quite a lot. I also started doing cardio + weight training at the gym in August about 2-3 times a week. I still go to the gym now.
In all the time since I changed my activity levels, I haven't really changed what I was eating. I did lose some of my appetite and lost some of my desire to eat as much as more weight dropped off. But that's probably because the amount of calories my body needed became lower as I lost more weight.
But since the 1st April 2015, I've lost about 46 lbs. I haven't lost anything since the start of December because I've been indulging a little too much and stopped logging for a few weeks.
Yes, it can be done. If you REALLY like food so much that you can't give it up, becoming more active will help. Even if it doesn't help you lose weight, you'll become fitter as time goes on which is a nice bonus.
Your diet is the biggest contributor to your weight. A 30-minute run burning like 400-700 calories (I can't be precise there) can so easily be eaten back. Personally, I like eating. And I know that I'll need to control some of the things I eat from this point if I want to keep losing more weight. But I'm a lot fitter now even if I am still over 230 lbs.I'd like to hear from anyone who has increased their exercise at the same time as watching mfp calories, eating back most of their exercise calories. I am pleased with my healthier lifestyle and diet but the scale is not my friend, yet.0 -
Yes I lost weight with loads of exercise and ate back all my exercise calories. Ditto once I reached goal weight.
If you aren't getting the expected results then I suggest you first look at your food logging accuracy and then your exercise logging accuracy.
Or even more simply change your calorie goal, your body is the best calculator of all.0 -
I have personally played around with this question myself. At first I didn't eat back none of my burned cals from exercise. Then, I found myself extremely hungry and tempted to binge. Then I opted for adding back in only 50% of my exercise burned cals and I still found myself struggling. So, I ultimately just eat back all my burned cals from exercise now and it has worked for me. In fact, I stepped on the scale this morning and I had lost another pound since 3 days ago! So, with that said..IF you are really good at entering the cals from food accurately, then yet-by all means...eat back your burned cals from exercise and you will still lose weight. If, however; you don't log your food and or exercise properly then you may find you have trouble. ME-I'm really anal about my cals so I always over estimate my food cals and underestimate my exercise cals. So, if I eat a apple and it says 80 cals for a medium apple. I always enter the large apple on MFP and over estimate it! If my app says I burned 500 cals doing a 75 minute walk, then I usually enter about 450 cals. It's just a safety net for me. You will find what works best for YOU. Hope this helps! Add me if you like!0
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Yes, I have always ate back my calories earned through exercise.
That is the way MFP is set up. They do over estimate the burn so eat back 50-75%, monitoring and adjusting so you are losing at your goal.
Once you have a few weeks of logging and exercise entered you can extrapolate your actual burn from the data in MFP.
I like my body and mind to be healthy, so eating to my goal and not below is important. I hate being groughy and sick
Cheers, h.0 -
If I am hungry I will eat back my exercise calories. If i'm not hungry then I don't eat them back.
Listen to your body, If it needs fuel then eat.0 -
This thread from Sidesteel has some good answers regarding whether or not to eat back your calories, bit of a closet Sidesteel fan to be fair when it comes to getting decent info about fat loss. Not sure if you need to be a member of the group to see it or not though.
The general consensus seems to be to eat back a portion of your burned calories from exercise if you have MFP set your calorie goals for you. If you're not seeing much movement in scale weight and you've done as suggested above and made sure you are logging both food and exercise accurately it may be worth measuring yourself when you weigh as well, if the scale isn't going down but you've lost half an inch off your waist you can see it's working.0 -
I sort of eat back my exercise calories. My activity is built into my daily goal, but on days where I have schedules a longer/more intense workout, I increase my daily goal by a couple hundred calories. I got to this point through a lot of experimenting and seeing how I felt. This works best for me.
However, in the past I have also achieved losses by following MFP guidelines for calorie intake and then eating back all of my exercise calories.
Seriously, do whatever works for you.0 -
I ate back 90% (used a hrm to calculate) and lost 46 lbs in about 8 months. The only reason. I regained was 2 pregnancies.0
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I use TDEE so I eat the same amount every day regardless of exercise, and my eating back is built in. I went from C25k, to 10k, to half marathon, and added strength training. I didn't change my calorie intake, so I left my activity calculation at moderate. There were days when I was going to die if I didn't eat more, like after 11 mile runs, so I would eat maintenance or a little more on that particular day.
I lost 60lbs this way.0 -
I started my weight loss on June 22, and have lost over 40 pounds while drastically increasing my activity and eating back my exercise calories. I had been pretty much sedentary for the last decade or so, and now I run about 10 miles a week. At first I just logged exercise in MFP, but now I have a fitbit and I usually eat most if not all of the adjustment. When I don't, it's because I just wasn't hungry.
I've heard many times about the overestimation of exercise calories by MFP and fitbit, but for me it's been pretty darn accurate, if not a little underestimated, based on my results. I have MFP set for 1lb/week loss, but my Libra app tells me over the last 6 months I have averaged 1.39lb/week. This even includes my Thanksgiving binge that bled into the next weekend and set me back about two weeks on the scale. I'm pretty sure I'm not overlogging food, so I suspect that my fitbit adjustment is conservative based on what I actually burn (probably from non-step based activity that the fitbit doesn't pick up).0
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