earning more calories?

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shadowbug89
shadowbug89 Posts: 1
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm new to this site and I noticed today after I logged my exercise that I'd earned over 400 calories due to exercising. Isn't the goal to remain under or at your target calories? If you earn and consume more calories by exercising aren't you going to cancel out the exercise and not lose weight?

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  • veganbaum
    veganbaum Posts: 1,865 Member
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    http://shouldieatmyexercisecalories.com/

    Try reading the bulletin posts at the top of each section, they are helpful for newbies. Let's say your goal is 1400 calories. You burn 300. Then your NET calories are only 1100 - making you 300 under your goal - so your body is only gettin 1100 calories to keep it going. MFP already calculates a deficit for you to lose weight, when you set up your goals. You don't have to eat all your exercise calories, a lot of people will keep it arounf half. Does that make sense?
  • uubulldawg06
    uubulldawg06 Posts: 102 Member
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    mfp already had built in a deficit for weight loss depending on how what you set your goal as. If you dont fuel your body properly you will hit a plateau and not loss
  • kelseywray
    kelseywray Posts: 18
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    I eat most of my calories back and I'm still losing weight. It keeps your metabolism working by eating the calories back otherwise you could work off everything you eat and then it's like starving your body which ruins your metabolism.
  • tameko2
    tameko2 Posts: 31,634 Member
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    Keep in mind if you are only using MFP to estimate your calories that those estimates can be VERY high. I just did 50 minutes of circuit training - MFP would call that 550 calories, my Polar FT60 calls it 260 calories. Thats an extreme example though - I've seen people say that 20% less is a good estimate and that held true for my Dance Central playing yesterday.

    If you eat back whatever your ESTIMATED calories are you might end up overeating.

    Also - I don't eat mine because I am a) actually overweight not just trying to drop some extra fat and b) have my weight loss weekly goal set low - meaning unlike some people who can only eat 1200 calories a day, I eat 1500-1600 but don't expect to lose 2lbs a week. So for me, I feel like if I work out and burn 300 calories like today It doesn't matter if I eat them all back because I'm still eating a healthy amount. If I feel super hungry then I eat more of them back. So I disagree with saying unequivicably that you should eat your exercise calories back. From my reading it seems like there are a lot of factors. The people who I think DO need to eat them are people who are already a healthy weight or people who are eating such a huge calorie deficit that they shouldn't be trying to put themselves into any further deficit. 2 lbs of fat loss per week is roughly 1000 calories of deficit a day, and 2lbs of loss per week is considered the absolute maximum healthy, less if you are a healthy BMI.

    So be smart about it.
  • tigersword
    tigersword Posts: 8,059 Member
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    All calories are estimates. Personally I usually burn about 10-20% more than MFP says.

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