Do you eat back your exercise calories on maintanance?

Yup. If you don't, it's not maintenance - you've got to eat everything you burn (roughly, of course).

Yep, you'll want to balance your calories in vs. your calories out as best as you can.

Keep in mind that fitness machines and Fitbits can sometimes be inaccurate with their calorie counts, so it may take some fiddling. If you're eating back 100% of your exercise calories and you notice your weight slowly creeping up, try just eating back 75% instead.

You wouldn't be able to maintain your weight if you didn't account for your exercise expenditure either deliberately and separately or incidentally as part of your TDEE or just plain accidentally as part of all the various estimates involved.

I follow the MFP method as my burns are very high (some needing considerable fuelling on the day) but very varied day to day, week to week or season to season.

I know you haven't been maintaining long, but how is your maintenance?

Are you still losing because you are not eating your exercise cals?
If so you may be in NEAT maintenance and need to start adding them back in.

Are you maintaining while not eating your exercise cals?
If so you have hit your TDEE maintenance and don't neee to add cals.

I ate mine back using MFP's NEAT, then switched to TDEE because my workouts were consistent. Now, after years of maintenance, I just give myself 1600 and it all evens out with slight inconsistencies in workouts. Some weeks I may be a bit high, others low, but long term I am very stable.

I read numerous times on MFP threads that eating back lifting cals wasn't worth it because it was such a low burn. I took that advice and ended up losing weight and getting tired quickly. If you are petite, include lifting cals as well as cardio.

Cheers, h.

Armywife04_21 wrote: »

I haven’t been maintaining long at all (started last week), and I’m not sure if I have lost weight yet. I tend to get obsessive over the scale due to years of anorexia, so I only weigh myself once a week. Last week I had a .2 gain (few days in), but I’m sure that was just water retention and glycogen levels increasing, so we will see what over the weekend shows when I do weigh myself. I have been so fearful honestly of eating more, it has felt WEIRD after being in a deficit for so long and not feel guilty over eating more. I do know that now I have more energy throughout the day, I still haven’t eaten my calorie allowance of 1720, but I hit it pretty close sometimes.

It's very common to feel this way. Many of us spent months or years in a deficit and now we have to think very differently about how we approach eating. In a deficit, we had the mindset that fewer calories was better (as long as we were eating enough, hopefully!). But in maintenance, fewer calories are no longer the goal. Instead, the goal is to balance your calories in with your calories out. It does get easier, though. I've been maintaining since August and I still sometimes have trouble eating all my calories, but that happens a lot less often than it did at first.

Many people increase their calories slowly rather than jumping to MFP's suggested maintenance calories all at once. That can help alleviate the feeling that you're overeating, and it can also help you figure out whether MFP's maintenance calorie goal is right for you.