Eating back exercise calories

Easternsky4
Easternsky4 Posts: 24 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Eating back exercise calories.. just wondering how many of you do this and if it works for you??

Replies

  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    I do. It works very well for me.
  • Easternsky4
    Easternsky4 Posts: 24 Member
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    I do. It works very well for me.

    If you don’t mind me asking do you do it with every workout or just some?
  • glassyo
    glassyo Posts: 7,743 Member
    Eating all the calories I could get my hands on while still losing weight (when I was trying to lose weight) always works for me. :)
  • Easternsky4
    Easternsky4 Posts: 24 Member
    kshama2001 wrote: »
    MFP uses the NEAT method (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), and as such this system is designed for exercise calories to be eaten back. However, many consider the burns given by MFP to be inflated and only eat a percentage, such as 50%, back. Others, however, are able to lose weight while eating 100% of their exercise calories.

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf/p1
    kshama2001 wrote: »
    MFP uses the NEAT method (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), and as such this system is designed for exercise calories to be eaten back. However, many consider the burns given by MFP to be inflated and only eat a percentage, such as 50%, back. Others, however, are able to lose weight while eating 100% of their exercise calories.

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf/p1

    Thanks so much
  • kami3006
    kami3006 Posts: 4,979 Member
    I eat all of mine. Lost, bulked, cut, etc with no issues. You're already in a deficit before you exercise so eating them puts you right where you want to be to hit your target for weightloss and allows you more food for energy for better workouts. All workout calculators are estimates though so I recommend eating a portion of them back and then evaluate your progress in 4-6 weeks and adjust accordingly. I also follow a weekly calorie average, so while I do eat them all, I don't always have them on the same day as my workout.
  • Easternsky4
    Easternsky4 Posts: 24 Member
    Just want to make sure I’m not sabotaging myself :)
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    Easternsky4 wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    I do. It works very well for me.

    If you don’t mind me asking do you do it with every workout or just some?

    I have a synced Fitbit, so my "exercise calories" aren't in the form of "workouts," but adjustments for my total activity (which includes my workouts, but also things like walking around). I eat them all.
  • clar8166
    clar8166 Posts: 3 Member
    I don't typically eat them. Have had no problems so far. But I also don't abstain from eating extra if I feel I need to eat more. I just try to pay attention to my body and give it what it needs.
  • Easternsky4
    Easternsky4 Posts: 24 Member
    Thanks for the help and good advice everyone! :)
  • Jadub729
    Jadub729 Posts: 135 Member
    I eat some of them but I more or less use it as a bank for the weekend.
  • Easternsky4
    Easternsky4 Posts: 24 Member
    Jadub729 wrote: »
    I eat some of them but I more or less use it as a bank for the weekend.

    That’s a thought!
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    edited July 2018
    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10503681/exercise-calories-do-i-eat-these-a-video-explanation/p1

    It is the way this tool is designed to work as exercise isn't factored into your activity level. Suffice it to say, activity beyond what you established as your activity level should be accounted for.
    Easternsky4 wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    I do. It works very well for me.

    If you don’t mind me asking do you do it with every workout or just some?

    I always ate mine back, even when I was doing nothing more than walking. An extra couple hundred calories is an extra couple hundred calories. As things moved along I got into endurance stuff...primarily cycling. It became that much more important for me to fuel that activity for performance as well as recovery because I burn way more calories on a long endurance ride than I do walking my dog around the block and would have created a deficit that was too large to be healthy.

    ETA: the trick is estimating that energy expenditure...a lot of people start off with a %. I just used my HRM and subtracted my basal calories and it worked fine for me.
  • CarvedTones
    CarvedTones Posts: 2,340 Member
    I ate back between 0% and 60% of the estimate while losing. In maintenance, the percentage is more like 50%-100%.
  • Easternsky4
    Easternsky4 Posts: 24 Member
    Thanks everyone! :-D
  • mburgess458
    mburgess458 Posts: 480 Member
    I have been in maintenance for a couple of years and eat them back. But I don't blindly eat back the calorie numbers mfp gives me, I figured out better estimates (at least better for me) and eat back those calories. For example, I use mapmyrun and mfp pulls those calorie estimates in. They tend to run very high for me. For my 7 mile 60 minute run mapmyrun estimates around 1,000 calories or more. Other online calculators estimate it to be more like 840 calories so I manually make the change. My weight makes me think 840 is closer to the truth.
  • cebreisch
    cebreisch Posts: 1,340 Member
    I’ve never done it because I don’t get enough activity to warrant it. On days where I do LOTS of activity, I still won’t....it’ll just make that weeks loss “a little nicer”.

    Now that being said, my husband used to do P90X and Insanity. When he was doing those exercise programs, he was burning LOTS of calories, and would eat some of them back because he really needed to. He would still stay within a certain calorie range, and only have enough so he wouldn’t be hungry any longer....maybe some yogurt or a P3 snack or something.
  • deceived1
    deceived1 Posts: 281 Member
    I eat back all of my exercise calories. Due to the format MFP uses (NEAT), that's really the way to go. If I want to lose at a more aggressive loss per week, I will adjust my weekly goals to accommodate. I really very much like knowing where I'm at for net calories each day. If I set my goal for 1900 calories net and reach that goal, it's much easier for me to track my expected weight loss versus actual weight loss (I use Libra to provide me with the trend of my weight loss).

    While weight loss is not linear, I feel eating at your net goal allows you to see if what you're doing is where you need to be. If it's not, you can make adjustments (either re-evaluating how many calories I'm actually burning during exercise, tightening up my logging for food, and/or adjusting my weekly goals as needed).

    I do see merit in not eating back your exercise calories so long as your net calories is still at a healthy level (as that creates a larger deficit), as that would obviously speed up your weight loss. However, I am perfectly content with my goal weigh of 1.0/week and I do love me some food. Good luck!
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,943 Member
    I'm maintaining, and I have a very good idea how many calories my workouts burn per minute (it's a lot less than what mfp gives me). As such I'm confident to eat them all back
  • swimmchick87
    swimmchick87 Posts: 458 Member
    Right now I'm mostly just walking, so I'm just getting a little bit of extra calories from my fitbit- usually around 100-150. I just use it kind of as an extra cushion- if I go over my 1200 calories by a little it's not that big of a deal. I don't purposely plan to eat each extra calorie back or anything.

    I used to do really intensive exercise and honestly just got burnt out with it. I was tired of being sore all of the time and tired of spending so many hours each week in the gym. I'm planning to work up to 30 minute workouts 4-5 days per week and that's it. I'd rather do something sustainable than something I'm going to burn out on.

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