% of exercise calories to eat back with large calorie burns?

jmgj27
jmgj27 Posts: 531 Member
edited April 2016 in Fitness and Exercise
Hi guys

I am currently in training to walk a marathon in July. As a result I frequently hike between 3 and 6 hours a day (on uneven terrain with hills etc) carrying 70lbs of weight (my twin toddlers). My Garmin HR monitor records my active calories burnt as anywhere from 1200-3000+ for these days. On 'normal' days with a sub-1000 calorie burn I generally ignore the exercise burn completely unless I'm starving, when I might eat back a small percentage. My question though- what do I do when I have such a large calorie burn? I've sometimes ended up in negative net calories at the end of the day despite eating 2000+ cals and feeling full. What do you do?

Replies

  • hill8570
    hill8570 Posts: 1,466 Member
    Generally I'll first knock off my RMR, so for a 6 hour burn I'd knock off 600 calories (my resting rate is about 100 cals/hr), then eat back half the remainder. This works for me on, for example, ski days where I'll be actively skiing for three or four hours. If you're not trying to lose weight, then definitely eat back more than that.

    For a six-hour burn, I'd be tempted to split the re-feed over a couple of days, and certainly try to eat a reasonable amount of calories during the exercise period itself.

    Listen to your body and adjust as necessary. I tweaked around with my re-feeds for a few times until I could come up with something that kept me from feeling wiped out for a couple of days after skiing.
  • jmgj27
    jmgj27 Posts: 531 Member
    Thank you- that's massively helpful! I am trying to lose 2lbs a week so I'll have a think about what you've said and tweak accordingly. It's definitely the day after a big burn that I feel most hungry rather than the day of, which is a little annoying!
  • blues4miles
    blues4miles Posts: 1,481 Member
    How long have you been eating at a deficit and doing this hiking? Are you losing weight at a pace that is in line with your goals?
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    I'm mostly a cyclist, also a hiker. I can rack up some giant burns on weekends especially. Normally the exercise itself tends to suppress my hunger while I'm exercising and then it comes back aftewards. Even into the next day. So as a general rule I try not to eat all my kCals back that evening, I want to save some for tomorrow, which is usually a lightly active day unless it's Sunday.

    Beyond that, I'll decide what to do by how hungry I am. Luckily I wind up skipping meals when I do this stuff, and my appetite shrinks as a result. So this past Saturday I probably burned 1,600 to 1,800 kCal on a bike ride, breakfast was a latte and breakfast sandwich, lunch was half a bag of peanut M&Ms with plenty of water, and dinner was yummy Indian food, which left me stuffed. Dinner was probably 1,200 to 1,500 kCal, almost as much as I burned on the bike, but that left a big deficit for the day. Sunday I woke up hungry and saw to it.

    You'll have to experiment and see what works for you.
  • wilsoncl6
    wilsoncl6 Posts: 1,280 Member
    Eating back your calories is really a personal choice but doing so will allow for a harder workout the next day and less the likelihood of lost muscle mass due to a serious caloric deficit.
  • hill8570
    hill8570 Posts: 1,466 Member
    jmgj27 wrote: »
    Thank you- that's massively helpful! I am trying to lose 2lbs a week so I'll have a think about what you've said and tweak accordingly. It's definitely the day after a big burn that I feel most hungry rather than the day of, which is a little annoying!

    It's all about the average, so there's utterly nothing wrong with eating back over a couple day period on a big burn.
  • jmgj27
    jmgj27 Posts: 531 Member
    blues4miles wrote: »
    How long have you been eating at a deficit and doing this hiking? Are you losing weight at a pace that is in line with your goals?

    I've been hiking since the weather got better (in the UK so probably about a month ago) so not that long. Prior to that I was doing a lot of pram pushing in bad weather and treadmill interval training so still getting good burns but nowhere near what I am now. My hikes have gradually got longer over the past couple of weeks but for now I'm still losing 2lbs a week but am definitely struggling more with not going over my calorie goals (1500) than I was before so have finally realised I need to eat something back!

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