Calories on workout days vs rest days ?

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clafairy1984
clafairy1984 Posts: 253 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
On my workout days, based on fitbit stats, I burn up-to 900 calories from exercise. This means my calories intake from day to day can be very varied ie 1900 on a workout day compared to 1500 on a rest day. Should I be using my calories these days to compensate, or should I stick to a similar amount each day?

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  • rosebette
    rosebette Posts: 1,659 Member
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    You should eat the calories you get on workout days, since you need them to fuel or recover from your workout. Some people "save" the extra calories for a day when they want a "cheat" meal, so if you don't fee especially hungry after working out, I guess you can do that.
  • rileysowner
    rileysowner Posts: 8,120 Member
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    If your calorie goal is set by MyFitnessPal it does not include exercise calories or activity calories beyond the activity level you set yourself at. That means your 1500 calories already has the calorie deficit built it to meet your weight loss goal. If you don't eat your exercise calories it makes your deficit bigger, which while it may seem like a good thing, in many cases it is not. The key to losing fat is a moderate calorie deficit. What counts as a moderate calorie deficit changes as you lose fat. The less fat you have to lose, the smaller your goal should be. This is where the issue with not eating your exercise calories and having too big a deficit comes in. If you don't eat them that moderate deficit becomes a large deficit resulting not in primarily fat loss, but a great deal more lean tissue loss. That is not a good thing

    If you are logging your calories in carefully (weighing solids including those that are ground/grated, and using liquid measure for liquids) then eating those exercise calories is a good thing, required even for healthy fat loss. The other option is to average it all out and eat the same amount every day. Both work, but the idea is that your overall cumulative weekly deficit comes out to about the same.
  • mdrichardsons
    mdrichardsons Posts: 83 Member
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    Personal preference I save my workout calories for weekends because that's when we usually go out of town or eat out more. Works for me because I feel like I can enjoy myself and not feel deprived while everyone is eating more than I am. During the week it's seems easier to keep my calories in check because I have a routine I guess. Every once in a while I get really hungry on days I workout so I'll let myself eat a little extra. But for the most part I can stay consistent with it. It doesn't change my weight loss at all unless I go way over board on the weekend or something. I wish mfp would give a weekly allotment to see where we are standing at the end of the week.
  • ald783
    ald783 Posts: 690 Member
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    mdrichardsons wrote: »
    Personal preference I save my workout calories for weekends because that's when we usually go out of town or eat out more. Works for me because I feel like I can enjoy myself and not feel deprived while everyone is eating more than I am. During the week it's seems easier to keep my calories in check because I have a routine I guess.

    I do the same. When I work out in the evenings (80-90% of the time) I tend to be less hungry afterward and it's easier to stick to my base daily calories and planned meals. I know I will use more calories on the weekends, regardless of whether I've worked out, so I figure it mostly evens out.

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