Eating back calories and PCOS

I have PCOS and borderline low thyroid. I do eat back all of my exercise calories as per fitbit calculations, but I needed to do some experimentation for a few months tweaking stride length, BMR..etc. Basically I just like to play with numbers but you won't need to go into any of that. For a person who just wants to know if they should eat back or not, simply do this: eat back 50% as a base, and if you are hungry on any given day dip into the remaining 50%.

Although what @momo_t90 said is one way to do it, because women with PCOS tend to have a lower than average BMR and you may be eating more than your body actually needs by default, I would caution against not eating your exercise calories if you exercise a lot. PCOS tends to get better the better your muscles are at utilizing glucose, which can be achieved by exercising and by maintaining a decent muscle size. You want to make as little muscle sacrifice as possible. Going into a steep deficit would cause more muscle loss than the "slow and steady" route.

As a rule of thumb, just eat back some of your exercise (or don't) for a few weeks and see how your weight loss goes. If you find yourself losing too fast, eat more of your exercise calories back to reel it in and just tweak as you go.

Fellow cyster here. What I have found, that is becoming the driving force in how, when and what I eat is by listening to my body. I started out eating back all my exercise calories, I have tried eating none of them back, 50% etc. Basically you will need to do a little experimenting to find what works for you. I have found my sweet spot seems to be about 30% of my exercise calories are what I eat back. For someone else though, it may be better at 75%. Others may eat none of them back.

Most important is to listen to your body. Sure, you can get great ideas, tips, etc. from fellow PCOS sufferers, but ultimately you will need to find what works for your individual needs. One benefit I am finding with PCOS is that I am learning more about my body every day and starting to find that special formula of food choices and exercise to get my PCOS under control.

amusedmonkey wrote: »

Although what @momo_t90 said is one way to do it, because women with PCOS tend to have a lower than average BMR and you may be eating more than your body actually needs by default, I would caution against not eating your exercise calories if you exercise a lot. PCOS tends to get better the better your muscles are at utilizing glucose, which can be achieved by exercising and by maintaining a decent muscle size. You want to make as little muscle sacrifice as possible. Going into a steep deficit would cause more muscle loss than the "slow and steady" route.

As a rule of thumb, just eat back some of your exercise (or don't) for a few weeks and see how your weight loss goes. If you find yourself losing too fast, eat more of your exercise calories back to reel it in and just tweak as you go.

I completely agree with this. I am very firmly on Team Eat As Much As You Can While Losing Weight and not Team Eat Very Little To Speed Up Weigh Loss.

When I use the MFP goal, I eat all of my exercise calories. Otherwise, I eat at least TDEE - 500 calories, which means that I am still eating to fuel my exercise. If you are afraid to eat your exercise calories, do as suggested by @amusedmonkey and eat them for a few weeks and then look at the results and adjust your intake from there.

amusedmonkey wrote: »

Although what @momo_t90 said is one way to do it, because women with PCOS tend to have a lower than average BMR and you may be eating more than your body actually needs by default, I would caution against not eating your exercise calories if you exercise a lot. PCOS tends to get better the better your muscles are at utilizing glucose, which can be achieved by exercising and by maintaining a decent muscle size. You want to make as little muscle sacrifice as possible. Going into a steep deficit would cause more muscle loss than the "slow and steady" route.

As a rule of thumb, just eat back some of your exercise (or don't) for a few weeks and see how your weight loss goes. If you find yourself losing too fast, eat more of your exercise calories back to reel it in and just tweak as you go.

I didn't think about it muscle-wise. I guess whatever works for you is good and that's all that matters.

momo_t90 wrote: »

First off, PCOS is a syndrome. There is no clear cause for the symptoms.

Secondly, the symptoms get better when you lose weight.

Thirdly, I'm positive any stressed caused by dieting is negligible compared to the stress caused by PCOS.

Fourthly, why would one assume that that we are choosing the wrong deficit and lying about our exercise? Nowhere does the OP even ask about either of these two things.

Just so you and others know where I'm coming from.

PCOS is indeed a great stress on the body, a disease, syndrome more accurately - but still a stress compared to someone without it.

Since it is already a stress on the body - I said why add to it with the added stress of a big deficit.

And creating a bigger deficit than desired/needed is the point about being honest with activity level and exercise.

As a new poster and MFP user, I was not saying she was lying about exercise - but the way people estimate until they learn better is easily seen, same with picking an activity level that is lower than true - creates extra deficit.

Considering the majority of people on here start out choosing the biggest deficit because it's available - and then you read even more miss that eating goal to create more deficit, and don't log exercise or eat back the calories to create even more deficit - huh yes, it's a point worth making.

Even people with healthy bodies outside being overweight stress their bodies out enough doing all those things.
Doing it with an unhealthy body to start with - just asking for a bad fight on your hands to reach goal and maintain well.

Never said exercise was a stress.

It obviously could be if you really do it all wrong - like always pushing as hard as you can with little to no recovery, or along with extreme deficit so body fails to make repairs.
Ya - that's a stress from exercise, but the body will find a way to stop that - injury or slow you down so it becomes a mediocre workout.

But never said exercise was a a stress in this discussion.

I said a diet is a stress to some degree - just prior to the bolded part.

And yes, metabolic issues can lower BMR - and some people cause their own lowering of base metabolism.
But in those cases - first thing body does is lower your over all daily burn to conserve more calories for the base metabolic functions, but keep undereating enough and not much else to do but lower BMR.
Again - back to deficit being reasonable for state your body is in.

But never said anything about calculating BMR or TDEE either, yes it may be lower, but same advice applies to lose weight - must eat less than you burn, even if that is lower than someone else.

Merely warning that reasonable deficit for someone with PCOS, Hashimoto's, diabetes, ect is almost always going to be less of a deficit that would be reasonable for someone without those additional stresses on the body.
Shoot, same thing applies to someone with terrible nutritional eating and sleeping habits.