Eating back exercise calories- will the exercise burn still count?
jax_006
Posts: 87 Member
Say you do a cardio workout and burn 500 calories in an hour (according to your heart rate monitor you wear around your chest). If you eat back said 500 calories burned, do you still get that deficit in your daily/weekly calories out? Or do you waste it by eating those calories back as long as you are not eating over the 500 cals burned?
I use a polar heart rate monitor to determine my burn, not MFP recommendation (probably not 100% accurate but it's better than using a generic calculator on the internet). Sorry if this sounds like a dumb/silly question, just a bit confused on the whole concept of eating some or all the cals back from workouts.
I am 5'3 135 lbs and still looking to lose some weight through exercise since its much more difficult for me to cut back on my daily food calories as I get closer to my goal weight.
Will eating back my exercise calories hinder my weight loss efforts when I am still 15-10 lbs away from my goal? Looking to lose 1/lb a week still. I will probably cut to .5/week when I get below the 10 or 7 lb mark.
Any insight is much appreciated.
Thank you all
I use a polar heart rate monitor to determine my burn, not MFP recommendation (probably not 100% accurate but it's better than using a generic calculator on the internet). Sorry if this sounds like a dumb/silly question, just a bit confused on the whole concept of eating some or all the cals back from workouts.
I am 5'3 135 lbs and still looking to lose some weight through exercise since its much more difficult for me to cut back on my daily food calories as I get closer to my goal weight.
Will eating back my exercise calories hinder my weight loss efforts when I am still 15-10 lbs away from my goal? Looking to lose 1/lb a week still. I will probably cut to .5/week when I get below the 10 or 7 lb mark.
Any insight is much appreciated.
Thank you all
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Replies
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Well -500 from the exercise +500 from the calories eaten would be zero so assuming measurments are accurate there would be no deficit. I wouldn't call it "wasted" though, exercise is to improve your fitness and strength.
"eating back" your exercise calories will decrease your deficit because it is additional intake. But if you exercise on top of an existing calorie deficit you risk making that deficit too large for health and too large to support the exercise for improved fitness so you SHOULD eat those calories back.11 -
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If you're using MFP as designed, your exercise isn't accounted for in your activity level...so you get your target based on you doing no exercise. I would make sense that you should account for that activity somewhere when you do it...with MFP you account for it after the fact.
It's pretty ez math...if MFP gives me a calorie target of 1900 calories per day to lose 1 Lb per week (with no exercise) then it is estimating my non exercise maintenance calories to be 2400....if I exercise and burn 500 calories I could then eat 2,400 calories and still lose that same 1 Lb per week because my maintenance number would have also moved from 2,400 calories to 2,900 calories and 2,900 - 2,400 = 500 calorie deficit still.
You have to get out of the mindset that exercise is for burning calories...expending more energy is a bi-product of your exercise and fitness but not the purpose...when you start to understand fitness for the sake of fitness then you understand that your fitness needs to be fueled...underfeeding your fitness will limit your fitness gains and inhibit recovery.14 -
What in the world? Sorry for the multiple posts. Weird.1
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maybe a little off topic...It seems to me that adding a resistance program will benefit you more than cardio, you get to eat more cause the muscles are using more calories, and you look more fit and toned.....4
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Exercise is for fitness and requires fuel, calorie deficits are for weightloss and require eating less than you expend. Exercise isn't for weightloss and if you make it for weightloss then you are marrying two things that are trying to go in opposite directions (increased fuel for increased activity and decreased fuel for inspiring your body to tap into its reserves). You can exercise while you are losing weight, but you should plan your deficit for the weight loss and then do your exercise on top of that while eating back the exercise calories so as to not affect your deficit.11
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what????
exercise is not for losing weight??? Ive never heard of that....ever1 -
Fiftyls2looz wrote: »what????
exercise is not for losing weight??? Ive never heard of that....ever
I've tried it, doesn't work. Started calorie counting, got into a deficit and finally lost weight.5 -
Fiftyls2looz wrote: »what????
exercise is not for losing weight??? Ive never heard of that....ever
Exercise is for health & fitness.
Have you ever heard the statistic 90% diet - 10% exercise? Exercise can contribute (somewhat) to weight loss. But calories burns aren't what most people expect.
Let's say I eat a Snickers bar - 250 calories. This takes me no time whatsoever to eat. However, I have to do at least 30 minutes of cardio to burn that off.10 -
Fiftyls2looz wrote: »what????
exercise is not for losing weight??? Ive never heard of that....ever
I've been maintaining for over 3.5 years...I train like crazy...I'm not losing weight, nor am I trying to...exercise is for fitness and has a nice added bi-product of increasing your energy expenditure...but no...exercise isn't for weight loss...if it was then nobody who was just fit and lean and healthy wouldn't exercise...because they wouldn't be trying to lose weight.2 -
this thing doesn't work! 0 -
Anyways OP just to be safe try to eat half of your burned cals and see how it works...1
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Aaron_K123 wrote: »Exercise is for fitness and requires fuel, calorie deficits are for weightloss and require eating less than you expend. Exercise isn't for weightloss and if you make it for weightloss then you are marrying two things that are trying to go in opposite directions (increased fuel for increased activity and decreased fuel for inspiring your body to tap into its reserves). You can exercise while you are losing weight, but you should plan your deficit for the weight loss and then do your exercise on top of that while eating back the exercise calories so as to not affect your deficit.
Thank you for the insight. This helps me understand the concepts better 0 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Exercise is for fitness and requires fuel, calorie deficits are for weightloss and require eating less than you expend. Exercise isn't for weightloss and if you make it for weightloss then you are marrying two things that are trying to go in opposite directions (increased fuel for increased activity and decreased fuel for inspiring your body to tap into its reserves). You can exercise while you are losing weight, but you should plan your deficit for the weight loss and then do your exercise on top of that while eating back the exercise calories so as to not affect your deficit.
Thank you for the insight. This helps me understand the concepts better
The trick is that quite often estimates for how much you burn while exercising are inflated. IE that eliptical might claim you burned 600 calories when in fact you burned more like 300. As a result a lot of people try to hedge their bets and just eat like 50-60% of the calories they think they burned from exercise back. That might make sense. Really only time will tell...if you eat all your exercise calories back and cease to lose any weight after that then you might want to eat fewer of them back.
What you want to avoid though is just not eating any of them back. The reason is that it will disuade you from exercising more or harder to actually progress your fitness. The harder you exercise the more food you'll need and if you don't eat that back the more and more tired you will feel and the harder it will be to exercise and therefore you won't push as hard and you won't improve your fitness. Fuel the exercise, monitor your deficit.5 -
Fiftyls2looz wrote: »what????
exercise is not for losing weight??? Ive never heard of that....ever
Well...happy to introduce you to that then. I guess prior to that you thought that the only reason anyone would possibly want to go for a run or lift weights was to lose weight?0 -
With only 10-15 pounds to lose, you should drop to a weight loss goal of 0.5 pounds per week now.1
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Will eating back my exercise calories hinder my weight loss efforts when I am still 15-10 lbs away from my goal? Looking to lose 1/lb a week still. I will probably cut to .5/week when I get below the 10 or 7 lb mark.
Does eating back my exercise calories hinder me from maintaining my weight for three years?
The trend of your recent weight loss tells you if you have your calorie balance about right or not.2 -
I mean I imagine you know the answer to this right. The reasoning is that a lot of the exercise burn estimates are inflated and so rather than trust them and eat back exactly what they say you eat back half to avoid erasing part of your deficit. You err on the side of having a slightly larger deficit than you intended rather than a smaller deficit than you intended. Given that a lot of calorie burn estimates do seem to be a bit inflated I can see the logic there. That said the best thing to do would be to learn from consistant exercise and logging what exactly you are burning in your exercise personally and eat that amount back. That just takes a lot of time and in the meantime might want to eat back most but not all your estimated burn. Makes sense to me to be honest but willing to hear out why thats a bad approach.
That said, personally, in most situations I eat them all back. I tend not to though if they are excessively high. Like a day where my TDEE is 6000 I don't eat 5500 calories to maintain my 500 calorie deficit, I eat more like 4000 calories because for one, hard to believe that TDEE estimate, and two hard to eat 5500 calories. But a day where my TDEE is 3000 because I burned like an estimated 500 calories frome exercise then yeah I eat that all back.2 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »
I mean I imagine you know the answer to this right. The reasoning is that a lot of the exercise burn estimates are inflated and so rather than trust them and eat back exactly what they say you eat back half to avoid erasing part of your deficit. You err on the side of having a slightly larger deficit than you intended rather than a smaller deficit than you intended. Given that a lot of calorie burn estimates do seem to be a bit inflated I can see the logic there. That said the best thing to do would be to learn from consistant exercise and logging what exactly you are burning in your exercise personally and eat that amount back. That just takes a lot of time and in the meantime might want to eat back most but not all your estimated burn. Makes sense to me to be honest but willing to hear out why thats a bad approach.
That said, personally, in most situations I eat them all back. I tend not to though if they are excessively high. Like a day where my TDEE is 6000 I don't eat 5500 calories to maintain my 500 calorie deficit, I eat more like 4000 calories because for one, hard to believe that TDEE estimate, and two hard to eat 5500 calories. But a day where my TDEE is 3000 because I burned like an estimated 500 calories frome exercise then yeah I eat that all back.
Halving an exercise estimate is just a group-think on here. ("A lie told often enough becomes the truth" - Lenin.)
Actually makes very little sense, why not 33% or 65%?
If someone doesn't get the weight loss expected over an extended period then their food logging or base calorie goal is far more likely to be the issue. There seems a strange, almost Puritan view, that exercise calories are somehow special or different. They aren't, they are just one of many calorie needs of your body. They are also just one of many estimates to get to a desired calorie balance.
OP is using a HRM for cardio - unlikely to be accurate, but highly unlikely to be double.
"Safe" is not a good description of the practice on erring on a bigger calorie deficit by default.
Totally agree your point about consistency. When I used a basic HRM (Polar FT7) for cardio it was out by about 10 - 20%. But consistency in estimates and adjusting my calorie balance based on actual weight loss results gave me the desired (and safe!) rate of loss.
My current way of estimating my cycling energy expenditure underestimates significantly, would be silly to cut those estimates in half.1 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »
I mean I imagine you know the answer to this right. The reasoning is that a lot of the exercise burn estimates are inflated and so rather than trust them and eat back exactly what they say you eat back half to avoid erasing part of your deficit. You err on the side of having a slightly larger deficit than you intended rather than a smaller deficit than you intended. Given that a lot of calorie burn estimates do seem to be a bit inflated I can see the logic there. That said the best thing to do would be to learn from consistant exercise and logging what exactly you are burning in your exercise personally and eat that amount back. That just takes a lot of time and in the meantime might want to eat back most but not all your estimated burn. Makes sense to me to be honest but willing to hear out why thats a bad approach.
That said, personally, in most situations I eat them all back. I tend not to though if they are excessively high. Like a day where my TDEE is 6000 I don't eat 5500 calories to maintain my 500 calorie deficit, I eat more like 4000 calories because for one, hard to believe that TDEE estimate, and two hard to eat 5500 calories. But a day where my TDEE is 3000 because I burned like an estimated 500 calories frome exercise then yeah I eat that all back.
Halving an exercise estimate is just a group-think on here. ("A lie told often enough becomes the truth" - Lenin.)
Actually makes very little sense, why not 33% or 65%?
If someone doesn't get the weight loss expected over an extended period then their food logging or base calorie goal is far more likely to be the issue. There seems a strange, almost Puritan view, that exercise calories are somehow special or different. They aren't, they are just one of many calorie needs of your body. They are also just one of many estimates to get to a desired calorie balance.
OP is using a HRM for cardio - unlikely to be accurate, but highly unlikely to be double.
"Safe" is not a good description of the practice on erring on a bigger calorie deficit by default.
Totally agree your point about consistency. When I used a basic HRM (Polar FT7) for cardio it was out by about 10 - 20%. But consistency in estimates and adjusting my calorie balance based on actual weight loss results gave me the desired (and safe!) rate of loss.
My current way of estimating my cycling energy expenditure underestimates significantly, would be silly to cut those estimates in half.
Yeah fair enough. Like I said I don't cut mine in half, but I understand the logic there. I get 50% is arbitrary and driven on a fear of calorie surplus mixed with a secret desire to have an even larger deficit. That said I can see people eating 100% of their wrongly estimated exercise calories back, reducing their deficit and becoming frustrated to the point where they stop eating back exercise calories entirely. Eating back half then adjusting upwards if need be makes some sense to me.
My diary is open. My "goal" in terms of net is 1650 but I average more like 2400 because of exercise. If I didn't eat those calories back I would be netting something like 900 calories a day which would be insane.5 -
MFP calorie burn numbers are wildly wrong. I use my Garmin and MFP for running and then Garmin and Map My Ride for bike rides. I cross check with runners world
MFP will give 2700 calories for a run, Garmin around 1300, and runners world about 1000
I would gain weight eating back the exaggerated calorie burn numbers from MFP.
I do eat back a reasonable amount as not to over do the calorie deficit. I can consistently eat back about 1/3 of my MFP calorie burn numbers and have been maintaining weight for a year.1 -
Hey I think the scale should be the judge, "when you are trying to lose weight" eating back 50 % is just an idea, if you lose more than 2 lbs (which I doubt it, when there is not much to lose) then eat a 100% or whatever...get my point???0
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Also when you are a guy and burn thousands of cals just for being you is NOT the same as being a girl and burning around 2,000 a day, so is NOT that easy to create and maintain a deficit needed to lose just 1 lb
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.Say you do a cardio workout and burn 500 calories in an hour (according to your heart rate monitor you wear around your chest). If you eat back said 500 calories burned, do you still get that deficit in your daily/weekly calories out? Or do you waste it by eating those calories back as long as you are not eating over the 500 cals burned?
I use a polar heart rate monitor to determine my burn, not MFP recommendation (probably not 100% accurate but it's better than using a generic calculator on the internet). Sorry if this sounds like a dumb/silly question, just a bit confused on the whole concept of eating some or all the cals back from workouts.
I am 5'3 135 lbs and still looking to lose some weight through exercise since its much more difficult for me to cut back on my daily food calories as I get closer to my goal weight.
Will eating back my exercise calories hinder my weight loss efforts when I am still 15-10 lbs away from my goal? Looking to lose 1/lb a week still. I will probably cut to .5/week when I get below the 10 or 7 lb mark.
Any insight is much appreciated.
Thank you all
I'm going to jump in here because OP's stats and mine are fairly similar and because of the bolded sentence above. I completely agree that a deficit is the only way to lose weight; however, if someone is already at half-pound per week and already has a low calorie goal, exercise calories may be the only way to get into a deficit.
Me: I'm 47, 5'4", 130 pounds, desk job, trying to lose just a few more pounds but already squarely in a healthy BMI and now it's just vanity pounds. My calorie goal from MFP is 1,260 at half-pound per week loss. There's absolutely no way I can do 1,260 and stay sane. So, I create my deficit by exercising. Even 200-300 extra calories a day in this case is the difference between being able to do this and just giving up.
If the OP had a lot of weight to lose, I wouldn't comment. But in this instance, exercise may not JUST be for fitness.8 -
Also when you are a guy and burn thousands of cals just for being you is NOT the same as being a girl and burning around 2,000 a day, so is NOT that easy to create and maintain a deficit needed to lose just 1 lb
The average guy burns around 1800 calories existing vs around 1400 for a female...the average guy isn't burning thousands upon thousands of calories...the average guy who does little in the way of exercise is going to burn around 2300 - 2500 calories per day...the average female is going to burn around 1800 - 2000....so don't know where you're coming up with these thousands of calories difference between men and women.2 -
Fiftyls2looz wrote: »what????
exercise is not for losing weight??? Ive never heard of that....ever
You can create your deficit either through exercise or through diet, preferably both...don't listen to anyone who tells you because it didn't work for them it won't work for anyone...we are all different.1 -
Fiftyls2looz wrote: »what????
exercise is not for losing weight??? Ive never heard of that....ever
You can create your deficit either through exercise or through diet, preferably both...don't listen to anyone who tells you because it didn't work for them it won't work for anyone...we are all different.
Nobody is saying that...like at all...
Expending more energy is a bi-product of regular exercise...not the purpose of exercise. If the purpose behind exercise was losing weight then why would so many healthy, lean, and fit people who don't need or want to lose weight be exercising regularly?5 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »Fiftyls2looz wrote: »what????
exercise is not for losing weight??? Ive never heard of that....ever
You can create your deficit either through exercise or through diet, preferably both...don't listen to anyone who tells you because it didn't work for them it won't work for anyone...we are all different.
Nobody is saying that...like at all...
Expending more energy is a bi-product of regular exercise...not the purpose of exercise. If the purpose behind exercise was losing weight then why would so many healthy, lean, and fit people who don't need or want to lose weight be exercising regularly?
Right...but it sounds a whole lot like you can't use exercise to create a deficit...which of course you can.
I agree that you can't outrun a bad diet, but it would be unfair to say you can't use exercise to earn a donut 5
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