Do you eat your fitness calories?

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  • misnomer1
    misnomer1 Posts: 646 Member
    edited August 2017
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    Yes, else ill starve and become weak.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,420 Member
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    I eat mine nearly completely. However, I've tracked numbers for long enough to know pretty well how much calories which activity burns. And it ain't nowhere near what MFP gives me. Based on that I'm happy to eat my workout cals. Hey, I ate 700kcal over my goal yesterday, and I'm sure weightloss will not be slowed down by that. If I ate the 1100kcal MFP and fitbit gave me for this workout though, and regularly then I would not have a deficit anymore.
  • CattOfTheGarage
    CattOfTheGarage Posts: 2,750 Member
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    I eat them all. But I'm conservative in my estimates. I'm using myfitnesspal default calorie goals, so if I don't eat back exercise calories, I'm undereating, and undereating is bad for you.

    A lot of people worry about exercise calories being an overestimate, but I find I lose weight as expected if I eat them all. BUT I'm being brutally honest about how intense the exercise was and not crediting myself with eg a full half hour's walk when I spent 10 min window shopping or taking photos of the view.

    It's easy to be too generous to yourself in counting exercise. Don't. And if your weight loss stalls, consider that you may have overestimated your exercise. But that should not stop you eating exercise calories. Just watch the results.
  • sczoo26
    sczoo26 Posts: 102 Member
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    Yes I do - not all of them might I add say for instance I earn 500 cals for exercise I would eat between 300-350 of them so leaving a surplus of around 150 cals, I think by not eating them you are running pretty much on empty which isn't to good :smiley:
  • WanderingRivers
    WanderingRivers Posts: 612 Member
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    I try not to.
  • estherdragonbat
    estherdragonbat Posts: 5,283 Member
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    I eat half, but I may need to up it. I've got my calories set to lose 1lb/week sedentary. Usually with exercise, some weeks, I lose 0.6, some weeks 1.8 or 2, but on average, I'm at a 'safe for my current distance from goal 1.5'. These last two weeks, I've lost more than 2 pounds/per and I'm 48 lbs from goal. I think I might try 60% this week and see what happens.

  • Javagal2778
    Javagal2778 Posts: 74 Member
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    I don't eat them all back that day because I also try to eat based on my hunger level. Most days, I am satiated with eating half of them back. I also find this gives me more wiggle room on the weekends to enjoy a drink or meal out with friends.
  • perkymommy
    perkymommy Posts: 1,642 Member
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    Depends on my day. Sometimes I eat some back and sometimes I don't. Depends on how I've eaten that day towards my 1200. I don't think I've ever eaten all of them anyway, maybe half of them at most.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    BootyEvolve wrote: »
    Do you eat your fitness/workout calories? I'm set at 1200 calories but on a good workout I can burn 500. I'm not sure if eating those calories can inhibit my weightloss.

    So this would be the same thing as just eating 700 calories...that doesn't sound too healthy to me. 1200 calories is an aggressive weight loss target that assumes a sedentary lifestyle. If you're working out and burning 500 calories, you aren't sedentary. Common sense would dictate that you should account for that activity somewhere...either upfront in your activity level or after the fact when you log exercise and get additional calories to account for that activity.
  • CattOfTheGarage
    CattOfTheGarage Posts: 2,750 Member
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    Javagal2778 wrote: »
    I don't eat them all back that day because I also try to eat based on my hunger level. Most days, I am satiated with eating half of them back. I also find this gives me more wiggle room on the weekends to enjoy a drink or meal out with friends.

    Same here, if I do heavy exercise I usually end up catching up over the next few days.
  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
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    perkymommy wrote: »
    Depends on my day. Sometimes I eat some back and sometimes I don't. Depends on how I've eaten that day towards my 1200. I don't think I've ever eaten all of them anyway, maybe half of them at most.

    Actually, it is true, unless you're using the TDEE method.

    Granted, sometimes it's best to eat only a portion since exercise calories burned is a guessing game at best, but MFP is designed in a way that your calorie allowance doesn't account for calories burned though purposeful exercise and if you want to fuel your activity, you need to eat to do that.
  • jaci66
    jaci66 Posts: 139 Member
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    I do sometimes, but not all of them. If I am hungry, I will eat something. One day last week, I was over... but only by 123 calories. That was a rare thing for me these days. Basically, you have to experiment with your own system and body. But, as a rule, I try to stay out of those 'earned' calories.
  • ttparks11
    ttparks11 Posts: 15 Member
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    I eat some of them, yes.
  • AmyOutOfControl
    AmyOutOfControl Posts: 1,425 Member
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    Yes, I have lost 45 pounds so far.
  • SneakyHorseNinja
    SneakyHorseNinja Posts: 1 Member
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    It totally depends on the day for me. If I'm not hungry then I don't eat the extra calories. Some days I feel like eating my left arm so I have to eat them.

    Part of the reason I don't always eat them is that so many of the foods I eat don't have nutritional values with them so I am trying to match something here as an estimate, but the nutritionals can vary quite a bit....so really it's a guess.
  • MrsLannister
    MrsLannister Posts: 347 Member
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    I generally eat 1/2 or more, depending on how I feel. If I feel particularly tired or run down I eat most of them back.

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