Do I have to eat all the extra calories I burn doing exercise?

sweetpea1076 · February 2016

According to my weight, age and lifestyle my calorie goal has been set to 1200 calories per day. I do 500 calories of exercise 6 days a week but stick to eating just under 1200 calories each day in order to lose weight a little faster. I NEVER go under 1000 calories, so my body doesn't go into starvation mode. The thing that bothers me though is that according to my daily summary on my home page my net calories are 700 or a little less. Does this mean that I really should be eating 1700 calories on the 6 days that I exercise? Because if this is so then I might as well give up exercising, but surely it is better to do exercise than not to exercise at all? Please advise!

maidengirl_ · February 2016

What is your current weight? Height? And goal weight?

1200 calories a day with 500 cals burned through fitness seems too aggressive.

Do you know how accurate the amount of calories you are burning? Are you using a heart rate monitor?

How long have you been doing this?

If you are increasing activity, you need to increase your calorie intake.

firef1y72 · February 2016

I certainly hope you don'y have to eat all the exercise calories, yesterday I ate over 2000 calories and still had almost 1000 left (very active day with calories set by fitbit). There's no way on earth I could manage 3000 Calories, so I just eat until I'm full as long as it's under my goal calories for the day, some days I have around 500 left over and the most was around 1500 (after a day out at the zoo).

drmarmareka · February 2016

maidengirl_ wrote: »

What is your current weight? Height? And goal weight?

1200 calories a day with 500 cals burned through fitness seems too aggressive.

Do you know how accurate the amount of calories you are burning? Are you using a heart rate monitor?

How long have you been doing this?

If you are increasing activity, you need to increase your calorie intake.

if I did eat my exercise calories then i will never loose weight?

sweetpea1076 · February 2016

Thanks guys. I'm 55 years old, 5'2 and weigh 170lb. I was only doing 200 calories a day but have recently upped that to 500. My calories are burned doing my Zumba fitness DVD and going on my exercise bike. I'm not wearing a heart monitor, but am going by the exercise list on MFP. I've been back on MFP for 3 weeks and upped the exercise about 2 weeks ago.

yarwell · February 2016

drmarmareka wrote: »

if I did eat my exercise calories then i will never loose weight?

no, if your exercise calories were estimated accurately and you ate them then you should lose weight at the same rate as if you didn't do the exercise or eat the extra food.

It's a mechanism to maintain the same loss rate regardless of exercise - presumably appeals to robotic bodybuilders or something.

pineygirl · February 2016

If you are using the exercise list on MFP you don't need to eat all of them back as MFP's caloies estimates are wildly inflated....
so eat some of them back. Try eating 50 to 75% of them.

I use a Fitbit Charge HR and it says I burn over 400 caloies using an elliptical for 45 minutes. Fitbit says 250 for low intensity (HR 130-140) and slightly over 300 for high intensity (HR 150-160). No where near the 400+ I'd get from MFP....and no where close to the 500 to 600 the elliptical tells me.

You will lose weight faster by not eating them back. But you will lose more muscle tissue in the process. Which means when you stop dieting and go back to maintenence your caloire requirement to maintain your weight will be lower.

Eating 1200 per day and burning 500 isn't really sustainable long term.

Yi5hedr3 · February 2016

change nothing.

Do I have to eat all the extra calories I burn doing exercise?

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