Eating Back Step Calories

nelja · November 2017

Good morning

I have set my activity level to be Sedentary with no exercises. Then I walk 10 000 steps per day. Do I eat back some of the calories or not? If I do, what percentage do I eat back? On this moment sometimes I eat back maximum about 50 of the calories earned. Is it too much or too little?

Thanks in advance

heybales · November 2017

So you aren't truly sedentary then.

Don't start building from an inaccurate foundation hoping to have a good structure.

You have steps - does that mean you have an activity tracker?

Because steps is not the calories - it's the distance of those steps with time - because pace and weight are pretty accurate calorie calculations.

So if you have an activity tracker - sync it up and eat back the whole adjustment.

Confirm distance sometime of walking stride length for your average daily pace that is probably the vast majority of your daily calories.

You make no mention of your goal - maintain weight, lose, gain?
Transform body from other good workouts?

In any case - try for accuracy without going nuts.

Weigh your foods, measure your liquids, log accurately.

Other side of the equation - the obviously wrong answer is you are sedentary, and diet should be based on diet goal - that is at least 100% wrong.

So 0 calories is the wrong value of course.

But if distance and time is correct - that is very accurate calories in the scheme of things - do it.

clin7802 · November 2017

Recently read via community blog. Hope it helps.
http://blog.myfitnesspal.com/ask-the-dietitian-should-i-eat-back-my-exercise-calories/

nelja · November 2017

I have a vivosmart hr which measure my steps daily and I upload it to MFP. I want to loose some weight. And I measure and log my food and drinks.

heybales wrote: »

So you aren't truly sedentary then.

But if distance and time is correct - that is very accurate calories in the scheme of things - do it.

nelja · November 2017

Thank you will have a look at it

clin7802 wrote: »

Recently read via community blog. Hope it helps.
http://blog.myfitnesspal.com/ask-the-dietitian-should-i-eat-back-my-exercise-calories/

nelja · November 2017

I was just confused if I should eat back steps because I have found articles on the internet which says steps below 8000 must not be eaten back.

malibu927 · November 2017

nelja wrote: »

I was just confused if I should eat back steps because I have found articles on the internet which says steps below 8000 must not be eaten back.

Sedentary only accounts for about 3000-5000 steps. As @heybales said, it’s the total calorie burn you receive from your tracker that is what you’re eating back because you burned more calories than MFP expected.

nelja · November 2017

So I can basically eat back half of the calories, or all above 5000 steps. The first 5000 is already been calculated for in the sedentary activity level. Now at least I have a estimate to work with

Thank you

malibu927 wrote: »

nelja wrote: »

I was just confused if I should eat back steps because I have found articles on the internet which says steps below 8000 must not be eaten back.

Sedentary only accounts for about 3000-5000 steps. As @heybales said, it’s the total calorie burn you receive from your tracker that is what you’re eating back because you burned more calories than MFP expected.

ladyhusker39 · November 2017

If your tracker is connected to MFP it should be making adjustments for you. Since you're talking about steps I'm betting is very accurate. (Trackers can be less accurate for other non-step activity.) You'd be ok to eat what it tells you to. When you set up your goals in MFP if you chose to lose weight, the calorie deficit is already built in.

JillianRumrill · November 2017

Personally I have my daily goal as 1200 cals and I try to stay within that. My fitness tracker automatically deducts calories from walking, so if I'm very hungry, I eat an extra 300 cals. One of the tips I've heard is overestimate calories consumed and underestimate calories burned.
I try not to go too far beyond that b/c I could easily slip into a binge.

Lola_Mercury · November 2017

I would eat most of it back. If you try to stick to 1200 calories, youll just starve yourself unecessarily and give up after a few months.

NewMeSM75 · November 2017

Depends on how I'm feeling. If I feel satisfied, I won't eat the calories back. If I feel as if I need more, I will eat them back. Sometimes I might eat half of them back. Just depends.

Christine_72 · November 2017

Steph38878 wrote: »

Depends on how I'm feeling. If I feel satisfied, I won't eat the calories back. If I feel as if I need more, I will eat them back. Sometimes I might eat half of them back. Just depends.

Same here. Sometimes i eat back none, some or all of them. It all depends how hungry i am on the day.

nelja · November 2017

That is also what I do, I maybe eat about 50-75 back. Then I am full. SOmetimes even no eating back.

Christine_72 wrote: »

Steph38878 wrote: »

Depends on how I'm feeling. If I feel satisfied, I won't eat the calories back. If I feel as if I need more, I will eat them back. Sometimes I might eat half of them back. Just depends.

Same here. Sometimes i eat back none, some or all of them. It all depends how hungry i am on the day.

heybales · November 2017

At least the thing with walking, unless just an almost max pace and hills or carrying extra weight and therefore more of a workout for you - it's a great % of fat calories as energy source (at least as you become more fit, doesn't take long just walking).

So if it is only burning say 400 cal an hour, it's likely to be 80% fat as energy source (unless you ate within 2-4 hrs, in which case energy source is what you just ate for carbs and fat).

So the importance of eating back exercise calories to keep a reasonable deficit, and fuel your workout or recovery in order to have another good hard workout tomorrow - just isn't as important for walking frankly.

You don't need to refuel the say 320 cal of fat, or 36g.
And the 80 cal of carbs, or 20g, will likely be refilled by normal diet (unless just taking an extreme deficit, in which case body probably isn't getting enough anyway).

That's why so many that talk of not eating back exercise calories would probably benefit others by mentioning what their exercise is.

Just because everyone's exercise calories shows up on the Exercise diary and in the math for eating goal - doesn't make them all equal.

Some doing triathlon training almost every day would just about kill their training if they followed the advice of 50% eatback or possibly none. Because they most obviously burned a whole lot more than 0 calories over their base calories with exercise.
And burning say 600-800 cal in an hour with easily 60-80% carb as energy source - you start not refueling that - your workout the next day will suffer being in a diet already especially.

The way MFP handles manually added walking (not the way Fitbit syncs work though) also means there is more duplication of already accounted for calories - so walking as a lower calorie burner for longer time, really plays that up and makes the 50% recommendation not such a bad idea, especially when combined with above fact about energy source.

So for walking, be mindful of hunger, and knowledgeable about how the body can fool you and not be hungry, but still need calories.

And for devices syncing - be mindful if more intense workouts are part of that adjustment too, which need refueling if you desire to keep them up.

Christine_72 · November 2017

Good point about specifying what ones exercise is when talking about eating back the calories, heybales.

My only exercise is walking, i probably max out at 3.5mph, so definitely not intense or physically draining/demanding . My goal is 13k steps a day.
If i was doing hardcore training I'm sure I'd be needing to eat every one of those exercise calories back.

Halloweenmom31 · November 2017

I’m confused... I eat the calories I get from my steps. If I don’t eat them I will loose weight quicker?? My weight loss has been slow.

heybales · November 2017

Maybe.

If weight loss is slow because you have little left to lose and purposely are making it slow - then good.
If it's slow because body is stressed out and forced slowness on you - that's not good.

However you create a deficit, traditional eat less and move more, or just eat less, or perhaps just move more - you have control over the deficit amount.

And sadly most have no idea what is healthy, adhereable, reasonable, ect - hence the reason majority of those who reach a goal weight (some don't of course) - fail to maintain it.

The time spent losing was not spent on making a new life style sustainable - so it failed during maintenance at some point.

NewMeSM75 · November 2017

Halloweenmom31 wrote: »

I’m confused... I eat the calories I get from my steps. If I don’t eat them I will loose weight quicker?? My weight loss has been slow.

As mentioned above, I also consider how my steps are achieved. If I'm just casually walking around the house, I don't worry about it as much. If I make a conscious effort to walk for a solid hour at a good pace, I might eat some back. You kind of have to play around with it to see what works best for you.

MelanieCN77 · November 2017

I consider myself base sedentary even though I usually hit 10k steps a day - a good amount of those would be during workouts, and wandering around the gym during my time there. As I am logging the actual workouts like a run or strength training, I don't count the steps also as that would be double dipping. Any up and down stairs or out to the yard to see my animals or wandering a supermarket or whatever I feel like I've always done anyway so I just consider that to be within my baseline and not meaningful in terms of edible extras.

heybales · November 2017

MelanieCN77 wrote: »

I consider myself base sedentary even though I usually hit 10k steps a day - a good amount of those would be during workouts, and wandering around the gym during my time there. As I am logging the actual workouts like a run or strength training, I don't count the steps also as that would be double dipping. Any up and down stairs or out to the yard to see my animals or wandering a supermarket or whatever I feel like I've always done anyway so I just consider that to be within my baseline and not meaningful in terms of edible extras.

Well - that's why logging a workout (especially if you have more accurate calorie burn) in an activity tracker syncing situation is different.

You are replacing the calories the tracker came up with. So no double dipping. Only if you totally got the time wrong (5am instead of 5pm) would their be double-dipping.

That logging can be done on the tracker site or MFP if you have your own calories. For Fitbit, it's database is used smarter than MFP's and many activities have better options of intensity, so should log there.

Now strength training, if it was long and frequent (3 x weekly @ 20 min doesn't matter in scheme of calories) then HR-based calorie burn would be inflated - database entry is best.
Then again in that case, it was never step based calories showing up on MFP anyway.

Now logging a run, where most trackers are already going to have a good estimate - really no need (unless doing intervals and again inflated HR-based calorie burn) to log it separately - you really aren't making a difference.

Unless you mean you just aren't syncing the tracker with MFP anyway - and don't consider increased daily activity meaningful enough to count, I suppose hoping you guessed the activity level correctly from 4 options.

Because increased daily activity doesn't show up as increased calories on MFP when syncing, unless you've really done more burn than the activity level was expecting.

Eating Back Step Calories

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