Eating 'exercise' calories
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priara31
Posts: 27 Member
Question... do you eat your 'exercise' calories back and still lose weight? For those who have lost weight doing this, what is the average lost per week? I'm curious to see if eating the exercise calories back makes any difference.
Has anyone tried doing this and not lost weight?
Has anyone tried doing this and not lost weight?
2
Replies
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I lost 65 lbs and eat my exercise calories back ! I put my goal at 1/2 pound a week for weight loss. It was easy for me to loose that weight because I was patient, only cutting 250 calories a day for my 1/2 pound weight loss. I was never starving!1
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I set MFP to lose a half pound per week, weighed and logged everything and ate all of my exercise calories. I averaged a half pound per week loss.
The key is to take a few weeks to determine your actual exercise calories as all calculators and devices are estimates. Then make changes as needed.
The video linked above is great too. Please watch it.4 -
When I weigh my food on a digital food scale, eat the calories MFP gives me, eat most (but not all) of my exercise calories, I lose as expected over the course of a month.
If you use MFP to set your calorie goal, exercise, but don't eat back any exercise calories, you are not using MFP the way it was designed.
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.
My FitBit One is far less generous with calories than the MFP database and I comfortably eat 100% of the calories I earn from it back.
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf/p13 -
I have MFP set to lose 1.5 pounds per week. I have have been doing this since the middle of January 2018. So far I have lost over 35 pounds. I average about 1.1 pounds lost per week. I set MFP to sedentary and I eat back all of my exercise calories. (I still have about 20 pounds to lose to reach a normal BMI). My exercise consists of swimming and water exercise, walking, and lawn work.3
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Thank you! Watching it now.3 -
Thank you everyone for your feedback!3
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I eat some of them back. If I stuck to the 1200 MFP allowed me before exercise I wouldn't have the energy to get through my workouts. I do think it overestimates my calorie burn though, so while MFP usually gives me an extra 600-700 calories per day, I eat around 350 of them.0
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Thank you! That video explained a lot!2 -
Thank you! That video explained a lot!
It's one of the "must reads" posts at the top of each forum section for good reason. If you haven't been through those yet, they're a treasure trove of good info.4 -
Yes. I've lost about 185lbs (so far). I earned every one of my exercise calories, I eat them back!1
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