Is it really OK to eat back your workout calories?
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Super good topic. Loved reading everyone’s post!0
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Also, I'll leave this here...
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10503681/exercise-calories-do-i-eat-these-a-video-explanation/p1
I'll also never understand why people think MFP would add them in if you weren't supposed to eat them...that one always baffles me...like MFP is trying to trick you.10 -
I don't believe that I am overestimating calorie burn or underestimating calorie intake. ALL of my calorie burn data comes from my Fitbit Charge 2. ALL of my calorie intake comes from religiously weighing/measuring all food and liquids using label data or the MFP database. Not sure what else I could do. I think there are just a lot of inaccuracies in Fitbits, label data and MFP's database. So I would continue to recommend to anybody that over the long haul, don't assume you can eat all of your exercise calories if you want to lose weight. These days there is a strong incentive for food makers to fudge their numbers and little real regulation.9
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cwolfman13 wrote: »mutantspicy wrote: »roadglider48 wrote: »I have always found that if I eat all of my exercise calories, I won't lose weight despite my best efforts to accurately determine calories consumed. Past discussions of this issue here indicated that a lot of others found the same results as I have. If I keep it to eating half or less of the exercise calories I will lose weight. The mathematics just don't seem to fit with the biology. I think some of the reasons for this is that in eating more of the exercise calories a person is likely to have consumed more fat calories and/or more sodium resulting in water weight gain. I'm not a dietitian and maybe we could hear from someone who is that might have a better explanation.
Same for me. I wonder if it has to do with fitness level. Like if you're heart, lungs, muscle are used to working out for years and years. Maybe the calorie burn is a lot less, than for someone who is out of shape. I know they're supposed to take that into account, but I just feel like the numbers for me are highly inflated. On average I burn over 1200 cals a day from steps and workouts, If ate that back I'd get fat quick.
Actually, the more fit you are, the more calories you're going to burn because you'll actually go further and go harder.
It also depends on what your exercise is...determining exercise expenditure from things like boot camps or classes or lifting, etc is difficult...figuring out calories for running and walking is very straight forward. I always used my Garmin bike computer calorie burns minus my basal calories when i was doing the MFP method and I ate around 2300 - 2500 calories per day to lose about 1 Lb per week on average. A power meter on a bike is very accurate.
There are ways of more accurately determining energy expenditure. But really, the problem in most cases is that people are really bad at estimating both calories coming in and out which is why they have issues.
I agree with you for the most part, I probably wasn't clear. I was referring the way fitness trackers guestimate our expenditure not our actual expenditure. People with more muscle and endurance and more strength do more. No doubt. Just wondering if fitness trackers have a tendency to over estimate for people are in better condition, because even though they use heart rate, there is still a lot mathematical algorithms behind it all.
For instance my average step count is about 17000 to 25000, and I'll get up to 900 calories for that. That just seems crazy to me. Based on my experience I need 1900 cal a day to lose weight. Not 2800 to 3000, I'm not an NFL player. If I actually put mapmyfitness on it will tell something 450 cal for 4 mile walk. And then give me about the same for 40 mins of intense weight lifting. The weight lifting seems more accurate than the walking to me. But really I think they're both pretty high. And my food diary is on point, btw. Its easy to make errant selection, I constantly audit it, import online recipes I use audit them tweak them. I don't pick stuff thats close enough. MFP is solid. Its the trackers that are off.2 -
Think of it like this. Let's just say at 1280 net calories your deficit is 500 per day resulting in 1lb per week loss (your's may be different but go with me here). You told MFP your goal is 1lb per week (500 deficit per day). MFP took you at your word and is holding you to that goal. No more of a deficit than that, no less of a deficit than that.
If you eat 1280 calories and exercise during the day you are eating at a deficit greater than 500 calories or greater than your goal. That's not what you told MFP your goal was. You eat your exercise back to keep your deficit right at 500 calories and right at your goal of 1lb per week. MFP is defaulted to losing weight slow and steady (healthy weight loss) vs. a lot in a short time frame (unhealthy).
Now having said that. The scale will tell you how you are doing. If you are only eating 50% back and still hitting your goal every week, then stick with that, no guilt necessary.
This right here. If you are currently losing weight at the rate you want using your current calorie intake stick with it. Otherwise make adjustments, those may not be setting new goals but instead making sure your food diary is actually accurate.0 -
I never trust my Apple Watch, phone or machines for how many calories are burnt.
Short answer: yes it’s fine to eat back your calories. Your recommended calories already take into account deficit for losing weight.
But
As it’s not always correct I usually steer away from using them all, usually try and eat back half0 -
I always do! If you're nervous about MFP overestimating calories from exercise you log, a lot of folks eat back 50%-75% of them.0
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mutantspicy wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »mutantspicy wrote: »roadglider48 wrote: »I have always found that if I eat all of my exercise calories, I won't lose weight despite my best efforts to accurately determine calories consumed. Past discussions of this issue here indicated that a lot of others found the same results as I have. If I keep it to eating half or less of the exercise calories I will lose weight. The mathematics just don't seem to fit with the biology. I think some of the reasons for this is that in eating more of the exercise calories a person is likely to have consumed more fat calories and/or more sodium resulting in water weight gain. I'm not a dietitian and maybe we could hear from someone who is that might have a better explanation.
Same for me. I wonder if it has to do with fitness level. Like if you're heart, lungs, muscle are used to working out for years and years. Maybe the calorie burn is a lot less, than for someone who is out of shape. I know they're supposed to take that into account, but I just feel like the numbers for me are highly inflated. On average I burn over 1200 cals a day from steps and workouts, If ate that back I'd get fat quick.
Actually, the more fit you are, the more calories you're going to burn because you'll actually go further and go harder.
It also depends on what your exercise is...determining exercise expenditure from things like boot camps or classes or lifting, etc is difficult...figuring out calories for running and walking is very straight forward. I always used my Garmin bike computer calorie burns minus my basal calories when i was doing the MFP method and I ate around 2300 - 2500 calories per day to lose about 1 Lb per week on average. A power meter on a bike is very accurate.
There are ways of more accurately determining energy expenditure. But really, the problem in most cases is that people are really bad at estimating both calories coming in and out which is why they have issues.
I agree with you for the most part, I probably wasn't clear. I was referring the way fitness trackers guestimate our expenditure not our actual expenditure. People with more muscle and endurance and more strength do more. No doubt. Just wondering if fitness trackers have a tendency to over estimate for people are in better condition, because even though they use heart rate, there is still a lot mathematical algorithms behind it all.
Any of the devices are estimating. Work, in pretty much the physics sense of the term, determines calorie burn. The devices use algorithms based on formulas from research, plus various proxy measures (heart rate, distance, speed, body weight, etc.) to estimate work and therefore calories.
IMO, a heart-rate-based device is more likely to underestimate calories for an above-average fit person, and overestimate calories for a very unfit person. Why? Because I suspect the algorithms are pitched to average fitness, and a very fit person will perform work X with a lower than average heart rate (look like they're doing less work), while a very unfit person will spike their heart rate doing the same X work (look like they're doing more work).For instance my average step count is about 17000 to 25000, and I'll get up to 900 calories for that. That just seems crazy to me. Based on my experience I need 1900 cal a day to lose weight. Not 2800 to 3000, I'm not an NFL player. If I actually put mapmyfitness on it will tell something 450 cal for 4 mile walk. And then give me about the same for 40 mins of intense weight lifting. The weight lifting seems more accurate than the walking to me. But really I think they're both pretty high. And my food diary is on point, btw. Its easy to make errant selection, I constantly audit it, import online recipes I use audit them tweak them. I don't pick stuff thats close enough. MFP is solid. Its the trackers that are off.6 -
While losing weight, and for 2+ years of maintaining my weight since, I estimated exercise calories thoughtfully/conservatively, then ate pretty much all of them back. I had no problem losing weight (50+ pounds in just less than a year) doing this, and have maintained a healthy weight since.
Nonetheless, because others report varied experiences, I suggest eating back 50% of exercise calories to start, then adjusting once you have 4-6 weeks of actual weight loss experience, to keep your actual weight loss rate at a satisfying yet sensible level. People vary.
Unless you do only a tiny amount of exercise, or are targeting a very slow weight loss rate before considering exercise calories, you risk your health by not eating back any exercise calories, assuming you're using MFP as designed. In particular, doing high amounts of exercise, while targeting a very fast loss rate, is a recipe for problems: Crash and burn, in one form or another.
Be conservative and value your health and energy level: Eat back at least part of the exercise calories, until you see the results.4 -
not ok..13
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OliverRaningerVegan wrote: »not ok..
That’s how the program is set up0 -
9
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I generally eat some, but not all, back as I find the calories allocated to an activity seem to be over generous at times.0
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mutantspicy wrote: »roadglider48 wrote: »I have always found that if I eat all of my exercise calories, I won't lose weight despite my best efforts to accurately determine calories consumed. Past discussions of this issue here indicated that a lot of others found the same results as I have. If I keep it to eating half or less of the exercise calories I will lose weight. The mathematics just don't seem to fit with the biology. I think some of the reasons for this is that in eating more of the exercise calories a person is likely to have consumed more fat calories and/or more sodium resulting in water weight gain. I'm not a dietitian and maybe we could hear from someone who is that might have a better explanation.
Same for me. I wonder if it has to do with fitness level. Like if you're heart, lungs, muscle are used to working out for years and years. Maybe the calorie burn is a lot less, than for someone who is out of shape. I know they're supposed to take that into account, but I just feel like the numbers for me are highly inflated. On average I burn over 1200 cals a day from steps and workouts, If ate that back I'd get fat quick.
I've been riding a bike my whole life. It used to be that riding a 10 mile loop would burn 200 calories. Then 100. Then I got so efficient it didn't burn any calories at all. Now I don't even need to eat anymore, I get all the nourishment I need from my exercise.10 -
mutantspicy wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »mutantspicy wrote: »roadglider48 wrote: »I have always found that if I eat all of my exercise calories, I won't lose weight despite my best efforts to accurately determine calories consumed. Past discussions of this issue here indicated that a lot of others found the same results as I have. If I keep it to eating half or less of the exercise calories I will lose weight. The mathematics just don't seem to fit with the biology. I think some of the reasons for this is that in eating more of the exercise calories a person is likely to have consumed more fat calories and/or more sodium resulting in water weight gain. I'm not a dietitian and maybe we could hear from someone who is that might have a better explanation.
Same for me. I wonder if it has to do with fitness level. Like if you're heart, lungs, muscle are used to working out for years and years. Maybe the calorie burn is a lot less, than for someone who is out of shape. I know they're supposed to take that into account, but I just feel like the numbers for me are highly inflated. On average I burn over 1200 cals a day from steps and workouts, If ate that back I'd get fat quick.
Actually, the more fit you are, the more calories you're going to burn because you'll actually go further and go harder.
It also depends on what your exercise is...determining exercise expenditure from things like boot camps or classes or lifting, etc is difficult...figuring out calories for running and walking is very straight forward. I always used my Garmin bike computer calorie burns minus my basal calories when i was doing the MFP method and I ate around 2300 - 2500 calories per day to lose about 1 Lb per week on average. A power meter on a bike is very accurate.
There are ways of more accurately determining energy expenditure. But really, the problem in most cases is that people are really bad at estimating both calories coming in and out which is why they have issues.
I agree with you for the most part, I probably wasn't clear. I was referring the way fitness trackers guestimate our expenditure not our actual expenditure. People with more muscle and endurance and more strength do more. No doubt. Just wondering if fitness trackers have a tendency to over estimate for people are in better condition, because even though they use heart rate, there is still a lot mathematical algorithms behind it all.
Any of the devices are estimating. Work, in pretty much the physics sense of the term, determines calorie burn. The devices use algorithms based on formulas from research, plus various proxy measures (heart rate, distance, speed, body weight, etc.) to estimate work and therefore calories.
IMO, a heart-rate-based device is more likely to underestimate calories for an above-average fit person, and overestimate calories for a very unfit person. Why? Because I suspect the algorithms are pitched to average fitness, and a very fit person will perform work X with a lower than average heart rate (look like they're doing less work), while a very unfit person will spike their heart rate doing the same X work (look like they're doing more work).For instance my average step count is about 17000 to 25000, and I'll get up to 900 calories for that. That just seems crazy to me. Based on my experience I need 1900 cal a day to lose weight. Not 2800 to 3000, I'm not an NFL player. If I actually put mapmyfitness on it will tell something 450 cal for 4 mile walk. And then give me about the same for 40 mins of intense weight lifting. The weight lifting seems more accurate than the walking to me. But really I think they're both pretty high. And my food diary is on point, btw. Its easy to make errant selection, I constantly audit it, import online recipes I use audit them tweak them. I don't pick stuff thats close enough. MFP is solid. Its the trackers that are off.
You are thinking of work from an external physics standpoint, which is of course how the standards are set. You're not wrong. But aren't calories are a thermal unit from heat released due to internal energy expenditure. If you take my meaning, the out of shape guy is a lot hotter than the standard MET number, and the in shape guy can be varying degrees lower. Work in physical Joules does not take into account mechanical advantage, muscle efficiency, etc. of the human who is burning the thermal energy (Cals) to get it done. 1 guy can grab a 20, another a 40, another a 60 and all burn the same amount of energy because of their differing strength.
Also. Just because someone is fit, doesn't mean they can't get their heart rate up in the same workout. I can get mine up to 195 from a simple warm up to max weight dead lifts in just a few minutes. And yet my thermal load isn't going to be as high as someone who is out of shape even if he is doing less, because I'm used to doing it. At least that's the way I'm thinking about it.
Think of it like this if you are used working out at high intensity regularly you can have a super high heart rate and not get as fatigued and hot as you did when say first starting the routine. And you maybe even had a lower heart rate the first time thru and got a lower number, but you actually spent more because you almost had heat stroke. Isn't this why we are always changing up our routines? Its why I change up my routines.
There is an actual fitness tracker that is really new and not connected to anything yet, called the matrix power watch. It uses body heat to generate electric current to power itself so it doesn't need a charge, but it also uses this same tech to calculate calorie expenditure. I've been curious about it since its announcement. But its not ready for market in my opinion, but they're selling them.
Long story short fitness trackers I don't trust em. But>>>> If you realize its fake news. You can still accept that you have data. If you stick with one you have relative kCal data, and heart rate info on your workouts. You can review your trends. very helpful6 -
roadglider48 wrote: »I don't believe that I am overestimating calorie burn or underestimating calorie intake. ALL of my calorie burn data comes from my Fitbit Charge 2. ALL of my calorie intake comes from religiously weighing/measuring all food and liquids using label data or the MFP database. Not sure what else I could do. I think there are just a lot of inaccuracies in Fitbits, label data and MFP's database. So I would continue to recommend to anybody that over the long haul, don't assume you can eat all of your exercise calories if you want to lose weight. These days there is a strong incentive for food makers to fudge their numbers and little real regulation.
I downgraded from Charge to Alta because heart rate measurements over-estimated my calorie burn by a lot to where adjusting the calories it gives me to align with my actual loss required ridiculous measures like making myself 4 feet short in Fitbit settings and even then it was inconsistent. Could it be that the way your heart rate responds to things is as overblown as mine? I currently wear my Alta clipped to my bra (wanted to wear a nice watch) and I have myself set as slightly older on Fitbit but at my actual height, and the extra calories I'm getting are on point. I eat every single one of them and lose at my desired rate. You could fiddle with your height and age to adjust the extra calories you get from Fitbit.2 -
Thanks all for your responses, I think from now on (like yesterday) I’ll just eat 50% of my workout calories that fitbit gives me as eating back 50%-75% seems to be what others do.
I put I was sendetary because I have an office job, my steps come from the walking to school, work, gym, steps throughout the day etc and I gain steps when I do my gym classes too. My step goal is 8k but I tend to do more like 10k.
Your responses have been a great read - thanks1 -
mutantspicy wrote: »mutantspicy wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »mutantspicy wrote: »roadglider48 wrote: »I have always found that if I eat all of my exercise calories, I won't lose weight despite my best efforts to accurately determine calories consumed. Past discussions of this issue here indicated that a lot of others found the same results as I have. If I keep it to eating half or less of the exercise calories I will lose weight. The mathematics just don't seem to fit with the biology. I think some of the reasons for this is that in eating more of the exercise calories a person is likely to have consumed more fat calories and/or more sodium resulting in water weight gain. I'm not a dietitian and maybe we could hear from someone who is that might have a better explanation.
Same for me. I wonder if it has to do with fitness level. Like if you're heart, lungs, muscle are used to working out for years and years. Maybe the calorie burn is a lot less, than for someone who is out of shape. I know they're supposed to take that into account, but I just feel like the numbers for me are highly inflated. On average I burn over 1200 cals a day from steps and workouts, If ate that back I'd get fat quick.
Actually, the more fit you are, the more calories you're going to burn because you'll actually go further and go harder.
It also depends on what your exercise is...determining exercise expenditure from things like boot camps or classes or lifting, etc is difficult...figuring out calories for running and walking is very straight forward. I always used my Garmin bike computer calorie burns minus my basal calories when i was doing the MFP method and I ate around 2300 - 2500 calories per day to lose about 1 Lb per week on average. A power meter on a bike is very accurate.
There are ways of more accurately determining energy expenditure. But really, the problem in most cases is that people are really bad at estimating both calories coming in and out which is why they have issues.
I agree with you for the most part, I probably wasn't clear. I was referring the way fitness trackers guestimate our expenditure not our actual expenditure. People with more muscle and endurance and more strength do more. No doubt. Just wondering if fitness trackers have a tendency to over estimate for people are in better condition, because even though they use heart rate, there is still a lot mathematical algorithms behind it all.
Any of the devices are estimating. Work, in pretty much the physics sense of the term, determines calorie burn. The devices use algorithms based on formulas from research, plus various proxy measures (heart rate, distance, speed, body weight, etc.) to estimate work and therefore calories.
IMO, a heart-rate-based device is more likely to underestimate calories for an above-average fit person, and overestimate calories for a very unfit person. Why? Because I suspect the algorithms are pitched to average fitness, and a very fit person will perform work X with a lower than average heart rate (look like they're doing less work), while a very unfit person will spike their heart rate doing the same X work (look like they're doing more work).For instance my average step count is about 17000 to 25000, and I'll get up to 900 calories for that. That just seems crazy to me. Based on my experience I need 1900 cal a day to lose weight. Not 2800 to 3000, I'm not an NFL player. If I actually put mapmyfitness on it will tell something 450 cal for 4 mile walk. And then give me about the same for 40 mins of intense weight lifting. The weight lifting seems more accurate than the walking to me. But really I think they're both pretty high. And my food diary is on point, btw. Its easy to make errant selection, I constantly audit it, import online recipes I use audit them tweak them. I don't pick stuff thats close enough. MFP is solid. Its the trackers that are off.
...aren't calories are a thermal unit from heat released due to internal energy expenditure. If you . very helpful
No. A calorie is just a unit of energy. It's quantified against a thermal energy benchmark, but it's an extensible metric.
The issue in this area is how does one measure work in a meaningful way. For running and walking it's really easy; distance and mass. For cycling and rowing, measure power output and extrapolate from there.
If your using the wrong tool to measure something then errors are inevitable.6 -
roadglider48 wrote: »ALL of my calorie burn data comes from my Fitbit Charge 2.
Just because it's a piece of technology doesn't mean that the data are correct. If you're using it to measure something that is not designed for then you've got an error.
Would you use a 12 inch rule to measure the volume of water in a fish tank?4 -
MeanderingMammal wrote: »roadglider48 wrote: »ALL of my calorie burn data comes from my Fitbit Charge 2.
Would you use a 12 inch rule to measure the volume of water in a fish tank?
I don't disagree with your larger point that gadget calorie burns should be taken with a pinch of salt but yeah I would actually, if it was a regular shape lol5
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