Logging exercise

rock1566
rock1566 Posts: 2 Member
in Goal: Maintaining Weight
Should you or should you not log your daily calories that you have burned? I have read from others not to log it into your fitness pal as it shows you false calculations.

Replies

  • rileysowner
    rileysowner Posts: 8,313 Member
    You should log it. Some of the categories seem to come out high for some people, but I have seen a number of people who have logged and eaten all the exercise calories they logged and lost weight just fine. Since this is in the maintaining weight section, I am assuming you are looking to maintain your weight. If that is the case, log your exercise and eat half of those extra calories. If you lose weight over 3 weeks or so, eat say 75%. If you still lose weight over 3 weeks or so, then eat all of them.
  • rock1566
    rock1566 Posts: 2 Member
    I'm actually trying to lose 5 pounds. I just don't want to assume I have all these leftover calories if I really don't.
    Thanks so much for the feedback
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    Even for someone like me that exercises a lot inaccuracy in your food logging is far more significant factor.
    There's a strange guilt feeling from many people about eating exercise calories - it's simply a calorie need of your body and should be accounted for one way or another, no guilt or emotion required!

    What is your exercise? That may determine the best way to estimate your calories.

    Worth a read....
    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf/p1
  • markrgeary1
    markrgeary1 Posts: 853 Member
    Lots of folks only eat back a half of their exercise. Many calculators over estimate the calorie burn of exercise.
  • BikeTourer
    BikeTourer Posts: 191 Member
    sijomial wrote: »
    Even for someone like me that exercises a lot inaccuracy in your food logging is far more significant factor.
    There's a strange guilt feeling from many people about eating exercise calories - it's simply a calorie need of your body and should be accounted for one way or another, no guilt or emotion required!

    What is your exercise? That may determine the best way to estimate your calories.

    Worth a read....
    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf/p1

    I don't get it either. If you have your activity level set correctly (I suspect many people who hold exercise calories back have the wrong activity level), you need to eat them back in maintenance or you will continue to lose. Even when I was losing I didn't eat under 1200 unless I was sick. If I only ate half back, the weight back, weight would fall off of me. For a time when I started maintenance I held some back and lost, then I tried being a close as possible to zero without going over and just lost slower.

    Obviously I still use food scales and found an activity tracker that works well for me. The more accurate you can be the less fudge factor you need.

Categories