Eating your workout calories

FitForSam13 · October 2017

Hello folks. I’ve decided to add fitness to dieting to shift weight. Just wondering if folk on the same boat are eating the calories that are added to the diary after workouts?

cwolfman13 · October 2017

It is the way the tool is designed as exercise activity isn't included in your activity level. Obviously, the more active you are, the more fuel you would need...like a car that drives further is going to need more gas than a car that is just going down the street to get groceries.

Look at it this way...if your maintenance calories are 2500 without exercise, you would lose about 1 Lb per week eating 2,000 calories without exercise. If I started exercising and burned 300 calories per day, I could then eat 2,300 calories per day and still lose 1 Lb per week because my maintenance calories would have increased to 2,800 calories with the regular exercise.

The trick is accurately locking in your exercise expenditure.

FitForSam13 · October 2017

Many thanks. Very helpful indeed

alteredsteve175 · October 2017

I am a noob at logging and balancing calorie expenditures and food intake. I have been reading a lot of info and posts on this forum. Several users recommend that you do not eat back all of the exercise calories, because those numbers are estimates and they vary widely. As cwolfman13 noted, the trick is determining an accurate expenditure number.

I am currently eating back 40-50% on workout days when I am hungry. Still losing weight slowly. Just track it all and you will figure out what works for you.

NorthCascades · October 2017

The reason people suggest eating half of your exercise calories is that some things overestimate. This advice is offered as protection against wild overestimates.

If you're doing something like walking, where you can be reasonably sure of what you're burning, you should eat all your calories. If you're confident in your calorie estimates, you should eat all of them.

It's not the case that every estimate in the world is exactly 2x reality.

Fitnessmom82 · October 2017

I do not eat back my exercise calories. I figure my estimates are probably not accurate anyways. I eat within my allowed calories, pre-workout and ignore the exercise calories all together. If I do have a day where I go slightly over my daily allowance I don't feel so bad, because I know the exercise calories are there. I'm steadily losing weight, not hungry and feeling good, so I'm sticking with that!

spiriteagle99 · October 2017

It can depend on what kind of exercise you are doing and how much. If your exercise consists of 20 minutes on the elliptical or 15 minutes of yoga you won't burn all that many calories. If you are going for a 20 mile bike ride or a 10 mile run, then yes, you will definitely want to eat more to fuel that exercise. I run about 40 mpw and I eat all my exercise calories. I lost the weight I wanted to lose and have been maintaining for the past 6 months. It works.

sijomial · October 2017

I did some maths for fun yesterday in a different thread and worked out that my cycling this year has burned approximately 123,000 calories so far.
That extra food was delicious!

Plus of course I really enjoy cycling. Win/win.

The method works fine if you use some care and common sense in your estimates and make adjustments to your calorie balance based on long term results.
Inaccuracy in your food logging is for most people likely to be more significant to their calorie balance but for some reason there's a lot of insecurity around exercise calories.

middlehaitch · October 2017

I'm all for eating back exercise calories. I need the energy they provide.

I did it while losing weight and still do after over 7 years maintaining my weight.
This means when I go on vacation, or when I decide to just have a break I can without worrying if I will gain any weight.

I spent some time working with the data I had accumulated in MFP (using MFP's exercise calorie burn at 100%) to work out my own calorie burn per 1hr class, and per lifting session, and just used those numbers.

Cheers, h.

Eating your workout calories

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