Do you eat the calories you are burning from exercise?

No, I don't. I set my own maintenance calories and I try to eat to get to that number (not always possible). I use exercise calories as a buffer to compensate for additional food when I eat out or if I am hungry. I am small and older so I don't burn that many calories exercising and I don't need that many calories to survive either.

I exercise because I like it and because it is good for me, not to give me a reason to eat more.

biggsterjackster wrote: »

No, cause I want to lose weight fast.

There's one big trade-off with fast weight loss.........

Do you want fat loss....or just a number on the scale? Moderate paced weight loss supports existing lean muscle mass. This is WHY MFP gives you back exercise calories. Google skinny-fat, only the scale looks good.

Here's another good video on the topic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmEJGR1_sZc

MFP isn't where I would gather my deficit from in the first place.

Generally, yes. (Main exception: If I'm banking calories for later use, or doing extra workouts to balance an unplanned over day.)

But I estimate exercise calories carefully & conservatively in the first place - I use heart rate monitor data when appropriate, estimate highly-variable things on the low side, and will check multiple different sites' exercise calculators (that use different inputs, perhaps) when I do something new.

I've been eating back my exercise calories all the way to my current weight (down 63 pounds), which is actually just a tad below goal weight, so I'm still working on finding the right maintenance calories. I never use the calories from machines without checking/adjusting them in some other way, nor do I ever (ever) use the marketing-oriented calorie estimates found in advertisements for devices or videos. This approach has worked well for me.

You want to fuel your workouts, stay strong, and stay healthy, right?

Yea absolutely all of them. Lost 80lbs eating all exercise calories (at least those fracked via Fitbit, lifting isn't enough calories for me to bother counting.) Now maintaining and if I didn't eat them I'd lose more weight, which I don't want to do.

Does anyone save exercise cals up for the weekend? I was thinking about saving them M-F and then allowing a slightly higher cal intake sat and Sun. Anyone had experience with this?

I bank calories, too. Of course, sometimes, like tonight, things happen, like, you know, opening my oven and finding a rat, that requires eating out, and now my calorie bank is overdrawn.

hko17- You're complicating the matter with facts not valid to the MFP calculator. If your method is working for you, great, but for those using the MFP calculations, it's not useful, and is, in fact, harmful because you're telling people not to fuel bodies that are working harder.

KateD0707 wrote: »

Does anyone save exercise cals up for the weekend? I was thinking about saving them M-F and then allowing a slightly higher cal intake sat and Sun. Anyone had experience with this?

I combine a few tools to allow myself a more rich weekend.

I spend every cal earned from exercising sometime during the week.

MFP recommends a daily cal intake at 1630 for a 1kg/2lbs weekly loss, which happens to be 3 cal higher than TDEE for the ideal weight for my body. So I am basically practicing how I should eating the next decade to maintain ideal weight until age really becomes an issue.

Wednesday and Thursday I set to 1395 instead snce I am alone most of the day, catching up on the average on Sunday with 2100 cal and company all day. What I weigh more on Monday, is usually gone again Tuesday.

If I stick to this, I should be hitting maintainance in 75 weeks. Knowing myself, it will take longer. I tend to stumble, and I have a couple of issues with exercising, moodswings and a hormnal cyclus from hell that needs ironing out.

usmcmp wrote: »

That's fine, but you aren't the average user on here with little to no knowledge on nutrition and fitness. MFP's method is simple and easy to use for the average person. Trying to get people to follow a method based off TDEE is attempting to reinvent the wheel here. MFP's method is effective for most people. I personally use TDEE, but I'm not the average user.

I agree with you.

AND as someone that has followed MFP, TDEE and knows the math forwards and backwards I'd say that one can have a very high level of nutritional knowledge and fitness and still consider that "eating back calories" can be a useful tool.

Consider someone (me) that has high variability built into their training because their week to week burns vary significantly due to lifestyle. I'm weight training and marathon training (current primary goal - resistance training is a functional focus) and could use a ramping TDEE as my mileage goes up (about 200 cals every 2 weeks). But because I do some activities with my kids, that live far away, I may lose out on a workout due to travel or I may add 3-4+ hrs of cycling or rock climbing in any week. So to that pseudo-TDEE method I use, I tend to eat back (some) calories form my "extra-curricular" exercise beyond my training base (or if I was pure MFP it might be setting my cals to active and only counting the additional workouts).

This week I intend to ride with my oldest daughter for 4-6 hours - we are pulling off the cobwebs from the road gear. She's talking about doing a country to country ride this summer. You bet I'll need to fuel up after that. Hammerzeit!

Whatever mental gymnastic method one wants to use (MFP, TDEE, mixed, IF, etc...) the end result is that total calories consumed should be aligned to the reasonable deficit/surplus or maintenance of goals.

When I was losing 1 kg/week ... I ate half my exercise calories back.

When I decided to slow the loss to 0.5 kg/week ... I ate about 3/4 of my exercise calories back.

These days my weight is staying the same (and has done for 4.5 months now) ... and I'm eating just about all my exercise calories back.

TeaBea wrote: »

biggsterjackster wrote: »

No, cause I want to lose weight fast.

There's one big trade-off with fast weight loss.........

Do you want fat loss....or just a number on the scale? Moderate paced weight loss supports existing lean muscle mass. This is WHY MFP gives you back exercise calories. Google skinny-fat, only the scale looks good.

I just go for the number on the scale. Working to build muscle back later.

biggsterjackster wrote: »

TeaBea wrote: »

biggsterjackster wrote: »

No, cause I want to lose weight fast.

There's one big trade-off with fast weight loss.........

Do you want fat loss....or just a number on the scale? Moderate paced weight loss supports existing lean muscle mass. This is WHY MFP gives you back exercise calories. Google skinny-fat, only the scale looks good.

I just go for the number on the scale. Working to build muscle back later.

It sounds like your decision is already made, but I think the average person will find it much easier (and more visually pleasing) to retain as much muscle as possible when losing weight instead of losing muscle mass and then working to rebuild it.

hko718 wrote: »

If you're attempting to lose weight then NO. Why would you eat back calories when you're trying to be in a deficit. Use cardio as a tool. If you're eating 1500 calories and losing weight without cardio then you don't really need to be on the cardio grind.

OP, please ignore this....this is the 2nd or 3rd thread that this poster has shown they don't understand how MFP works.

MFP give you a calorie goal based on the information that you enter in (personal stats, daily activity, etc), and assumes you do no exercise. Let's take a hypothetical person who enters their stats with a goal to lose 1lb per week and gets a goal of 1500 cals (so maint of 2000).

2000 maint cals - 500 cals = 1500 cals per day to lose 1lb per week.

Now let's say that hypothetical person adds in a run every other day that burns 300 cals. Now that person has a new maintenance.

2000 original maint. + 300 exercise cals = A new maintenance of 2300 cals.

2300 new maint cals - 500 cals = 1800 cals per day to lose 1lb per week.

Now, with that said...It's all an estimate. Most of us recommend eating back about 50% of your exercise cals, and after a few weeks adjusting from there. That will normally help counter any estimation inaccuracies.

When you first start out, and the more weight you have to lose, exercise cals can be less important. The closer you get to goal, the more important your exercise cals are going to be, and that estimation will need to be on point.

What I've found is that I cut best at about 1lb per week at ~75-80% of my exercise cals.

Yes, but I don't blindly use the exercise calories MFP gives me.

Through trial and error I found what seems to work for me. Several days a week I do 20 minutes of cardio and 30 minutes of circuit training...on those days I use what MFP says for the cardio (rowing or stair machine) but put in nothing for the circuit training.

Several days a week I do only cardio. I found a formula online based on weight and speed that gave me an estimate of 117 calories per mile for running and that seems to be about right for me...MFP always says much higher. On long rows MFP's estimate seems fairly reasonable (and much lower than what my Concept 2 estimates).