Do you eat the calories you are burning from exercise?

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Replies

  • lkpducky
    lkpducky Posts: 16,636 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    TeaBea 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.

    You're probably young, but I gotta say for others' consideration: For us middle-aged & older women, this can be a quicker ticket to assisted living. Don't wanna go there.

    That's a big reason why I eat some exercise calories back: because with too big a deficit, I lose muscle. That happened to me last summer: I had lost 5.5 pounds over 6 weeks, but according to before-and-after DEXA scans, 3 of those pounds were muscle. Yikes! My net calories had been going as low as 1000 per day and could not do lower body lifting due to injuries.
    1) Why lose weight through diet alone if I go from being a big dumpling to a small dumpling?
    2) No way do I want to rely on a walker when I'm in my 70's (I'm 50).
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    edited March 2016
    hko718 wrote: »
    Eating back cals is just over-complicating things. Find TDEE and subtract 500 to lose weight. Das it mane. Like I said most people are getting bad info back from eating calories back because MFP caloric expenditure numbers are WRONG

    Which is why you will frequently see the advice to eat back a *portion* of these calories to account for over-estimates, but not to scrap the entire concept of eating to fuel your activity.

    If you find your TDEE, you still have to estimate your calorie burn. Either way, you're dealing with estimating calorie burn.
  • hko718
    hko718 Posts: 85 Member
    edited March 2016
    I just think MFP is inferior. Sorry m8z. We will never agree.
  • tincanonastring
    tincanonastring Posts: 3,944 Member
    edited March 2016
    hko718 wrote: »
    Eating back cals is just over-complicating things. Find TDEE and subtract 500 to lose weight. Das it mane. Like I said most people are getting bad info back from eating calories back because MFP caloric expenditure numbers are WRONG

    You're assuming that people are eating back 100% of their calories. You're assuming that people are using the MFP calorie burns instead of those from more reliable resources. You're assuming no one here has used TDEE in the past. People are correcting you and everyone, simply everyone, has shown you how both models end up at the same place when used appropriately. What more are you looking for?
  • glassyo
    glassyo Posts: 7,572 Member
    hko718 wrote: »
    Eating back cals is just over-complicating things. Find TDEE and subtract 500 to lose weight. Das it mane. Like I said most people are getting bad info back from eating calories back because MFP caloric expenditure numbers are WRONG

    But what if your exercise isn't consistent? And you have other ways of estimating calorie burn? You use estimates for both TDEE and eating exercise calories back and then adjust depending on your results. For both methods.

    (I can't believe I let myself get sucked into this.)
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    hko718 wrote: »
    I just think MFP is inferior. Sorry m8z. We will never agree.

    A subjective preference that you have vowed never to reconsider (despite what new information or arguments you may encounter) isn't really helpful to anyone else.
  • glassyo
    glassyo Posts: 7,572 Member
    hko718 wrote: »
    I just think MFP is inferior. Sorry m8z. We will never agree.

    If you think mfp is inferior, why are you even here? Bored?

    At times I think you're a troll and at other times I think you're just too much like the meatheads at the gym I hear about. :)
  • TeaBea
    TeaBea Posts: 14,517 Member
    lkpducky wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    TeaBea 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.

    You're probably young, but I gotta say for others' consideration: For us middle-aged & older women, this can be a quicker ticket to assisted living. Don't wanna go there.

    That's a big reason why I eat some exercise calories back: because with too big a deficit, I lose muscle. That happened to me last summer: I had lost 5.5 pounds over 6 weeks, but according to before-and-after DEXA scans, 3 of those pounds were muscle. Yikes! My net calories had been going as low as 1000 per day and could not do lower body lifting due to injuries.
    1) Why lose weight through diet alone if I go from being a big dumpling to a small dumpling?
    2) No way do I want to rely on a walker when I'm in my 70's (I'm 50).

    Big dumpling to small dumpling.....that's perfect, I love it!

  • tincanonastring
    tincanonastring Posts: 3,944 Member
    glassyo wrote: »
    hko718 wrote: »
    I just think MFP is inferior. Sorry m8z. We will never agree.

    If you think mfp is inferior, why are you even here? Bored?

    At times I think you're a troll and at other times I think you're just too much like the meatheads at the gym I hear about. :)

    I'm pretty sure one can be both.
  • hko718
    hko718 Posts: 85 Member
    hko718 wrote: »
    Eating back cals is just over-complicating things. Find TDEE and subtract 500 to lose weight. Das it mane. Like I said most people are getting bad info back from eating calories back because MFP caloric expenditure numbers are WRONG

    You're assuming that people are eating back 100% of their calories. You're assuming that people are using the MFP calorie burns instead of those from more reliable resources. People are correcting you and everyone, simply everyone, has shown you how both models end up at the same place when used appropriately. What more are you looking for?

    Because these people don't even know how many cals are in a gram of protein. How would they know that the mfp exercise cals are off. The thing is that they're off by a lot in most cases.
  • tincanonastring
    tincanonastring Posts: 3,944 Member
    edited March 2016
    hko718 wrote: »
    hko718 wrote: »
    Eating back cals is just over-complicating things. Find TDEE and subtract 500 to lose weight. Das it mane. Like I said most people are getting bad info back from eating calories back because MFP caloric expenditure numbers are WRONG

    You're assuming that people are eating back 100% of their calories. You're assuming that people are using the MFP calorie burns instead of those from more reliable resources. People are correcting you and everyone, simply everyone, has shown you how both models end up at the same place when used appropriately. What more are you looking for?

    Because these people don't even know how many cals are in a gram of protein. How would they know that the mfp exercise cals are off. The thing is that they're off by a lot in most cases.

    Spend a little more time in the forums (and actually read some posts, bruh) and you'll see that this is a widely known fact amongst the user population. I don't even use the MFP calculations at this point, preferring my HRM burns for steady-state cardio. I don't eat back lifting calories. Like I said, you're not the herald of new information here.
  • Bibia2418
    Bibia2418 Posts: 80 Member
    Really kind of depends on the situation. For example, if I know I am going to a party or out to dinner and I want to have a favorite food with no guilt, then I do. If it's just a normal day/week, then no.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,907 Member
    hko718 wrote: »
    I just think MFP is inferior. Sorry m8z. We will never agree.

    Well there are plenty of other sites. The Mifflin-St Joer calculation is good. The exercise calories and food calories have to be verified by each user as they use them. There is no such thing as a perfect food or exercise database.

    You're free to go. Why try to reinvent the wheel? This site has flourished without your input for a lot of years. :shrug:



  • GBrady43068
    GBrady43068 Posts: 1,256 Member
    Well, do you? :)

    Because MFP tends to be overly generous with calories, I don't eat ALL of them back. I typically eat 2/3 of the exercise calories back. I do want to eat some of them back though because along with losing weight, my goal is also to tone up and I need those calories to fuel my runs and strength training.
  • hko718
    hko718 Posts: 85 Member
    Not reinventing anything. TDEE is just superior compared to eating back calories, on all levels.
  • GBrady43068
    GBrady43068 Posts: 1,256 Member
    I totally eat my excersize calories. I call it "buying calories"

    +1. Exactly :)
  • ElizabethOakes2
    ElizabethOakes2 Posts: 1,038 Member
    synacious wrote: »
    I bank calories, too. Of course, sometimes, like tonight, things happen, like, you know, opening my oven and finding a rat

    NOOOOO. Oh my God. I live in NYC and I'm deathly afraid of them. How did you deal with that? It would take me a long time to use my oven again.

    I'd like to say that I calmly caught the rat, threw it over the back fence, and went about my evening. The reality is that I screamed like a sissy-child and threw the broiler pan at it, along with the perfectly seasoned steak that I was preparing for dinner. The rat, apparently afraid of seasoned steaks and screaming women, ran up the back of the stove, across the cabinet and down the back of the fridge. I then texted my husband and told him we were going out for dinner, and, despite considering myself a reasonable, sensible, and self-reliant woman, vacated the premises. It's probably still in my kitchen somewhere, since the traps my husband set last night are still set.
  • zyxst
    zyxst Posts: 9,134 Member
    glassyo wrote: »
    hko718 wrote: »
    I just think MFP is inferior. Sorry m8z. We will never agree.

    If you think mfp is inferior, why are you even here? Bored?

    At times I think you're a troll and at other times I think you're just too much like the meatheads at the gym I hear about. :)

    One of his first posts was about it being slow over at BB.com.

    I don't use MFP exercise numbers. I have another calculator that I use that removes my estimated BMR and gives me what I did burn doing the workout. It's still guesswork, but the best guesswork I've used since I haven't gained my weight back.
  • tincanonastring
    tincanonastring Posts: 3,944 Member
    hko718 wrote: »
    Not reinventing anything. TDEE is just superior compared to eating back calories, on all levels.

    Holy obtuseness, Batman. Talk about not understanding something. I'll say it louder. TDEE IS EATING BACK CALORIES!!!!
  • hko718
    hko718 Posts: 85 Member
    I came here to add peeps who need help and poach them duh