Please help. Question about calories + exercise
CZoschke
Posts: 7 Member
Hello. I just started going to the gym (3 days so far) and have been burning around 600-1000 calories for 2 hour sessions. So far I have been going in the morning.
My question is: is it bad to eat back the calories you burned during exercise? For example this morning I ate just a protein bar pre-workout and after burning 1035 calories grabbed breakfast since I was starving. All together with coffee it was around 700 calories. I've looked it up and seeing articles sayng it does nothing for weight loss if I just eat them all back.
So I'm at a loss of what to do. This is my first time trying to get healthy via diet and gym so there is a lot I dont know. Any help would be appreciated!
24/F. Currently 181 and on a calorie deficit of 1200.
My question is: is it bad to eat back the calories you burned during exercise? For example this morning I ate just a protein bar pre-workout and after burning 1035 calories grabbed breakfast since I was starving. All together with coffee it was around 700 calories. I've looked it up and seeing articles sayng it does nothing for weight loss if I just eat them all back.
So I'm at a loss of what to do. This is my first time trying to get healthy via diet and gym so there is a lot I dont know. Any help would be appreciated!
24/F. Currently 181 and on a calorie deficit of 1200.
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Replies
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Hello. I just started going to the gym (3 days so far) and have been burning around 600-1000 calories for 2 hour sessions. So far I have been going in the morning.
My question is: is it bad to eat back the calories you burned during exercise? For example this morning I ate just a protein bar pre-workout and after burning 1035 calories grabbed breakfast since I was starving. All together with coffee it was around 700 calories. I've looked it up and seeing articles sayng it does nothing for weight loss if I just eat them all back.
So I'm at a loss of what to do. This is my first time trying to get healthy via diet and gym so there is a lot I dont know. Any help would be appreciated!
24/F. Currently 181 and on a calorie deficit of 1200.
Forgot to add: Should I exercise after I've eaten for the day?0 -
It's not bad to eat back the calories you've burned from exercise. If your calorie goal comes from MFP, that's how it was designed to work. Did you get your calorie goal of 1,200 from MFP? Since your goal is so low, it's even more important that you eat back the calories you've burned.
1,035 does seem really high for exercise though. How are you estimating how many calories you've burnt?
You can exercise before or after eating, whichever you prefer.10 -
Mfp already creates a deficit for you and expects that you will eat back some, if not all, of your exercise calories. 1200 calories is typically the bare minimum for a sedentary person, so exercising is one way that you can remain in a deficit if you eat over 1200 calories. If you were to burn 600-1000 calories by working out and then still only consume 1200 calories per day, your net calories would only be 200-600, which is not healthy or sustainable. I would recommend eating back half of your exercise calories, at the very least. However, you may want to be mindful of post workout hunger and be careful not to "go crazy" with eating back calories because it can be easy to overestimate your burn and underestimate how many calories you're consuming. Some may agree or disagree, but I would also recommend that you cut your gym time down to an hour. It can be very hard to maintain proper form and effort for two whole hours, and if you're somewhat new to working out you may end up injuring yourself.5
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Hello. I just started going to the gym (3 days so far) and have been burning around 600-1000 calories for 2 hour sessions. So far I have been going in the morning.
My question is: is it bad to eat back the calories you burned during exercise? For example this morning I ate just a protein bar pre-workout and after burning 1035 calories grabbed breakfast since I was starving. All together with coffee it was around 700 calories. I've looked it up and seeing articles sayng it does nothing for weight loss if I just eat them all back.
So I'm at a loss of what to do. This is my first time trying to get healthy via diet and gym so there is a lot I dont know. Any help would be appreciated!
24/F. Currently 181 and on a calorie deficit of 1200.
You need to understand the method of dieting you are doing. MFP gives you a calorie goal based on no exercise...it is unaccounted for activity. You account for that activity with MFP by logging and getting additional calories to eat back. Whatever article you read wasn't specific to MFP...it was more in regards to your average diet.
Look at it this way...if you're only eating 1200 calories and exercising off 1,000 calories, that would be the exact same thing as only eating 200 calories per day...does that sound remotely healthy?11 -
Rule of thumb for me is to eat back 1/2 the exercise calories or less. This compensates for bad calorie estimates. Congrats on your 3 day habit, keep it up and you'll figure it out.3
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So you are eating 1200 calories a day and burning 600-1000 at the gym? That’s dangerously unhealthy. That means you are really only giving your body 200-400 calories to function. So, yes you need to be eating back pretty much all of the calories you burn at the gym. 1200 is the minimum needed to function/meet nutritional requirements.
Also, I’m not sure how you are figuring out how many calories you are burning at the gym but be aware that the machines (treadmill, elliptical, etc) and MFP both will way over estimate. In general I assume I’ve burned maybe half what the machine or MFP says I did.4 -
Unlike other sites which use TDEE calculators, 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
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Hello. I just started going to the gym (3 days so far) and have been burning around 600-1000 calories for 2 hour sessions. So far I have been going in the morning.
My question is: is it bad to eat back the calories you burned during exercise? For example this morning I ate just a protein bar pre-workout and after burning 1035 calories grabbed breakfast since I was starving. All together with coffee it was around 700 calories. I've looked it up and seeing articles sayng it does nothing for weight loss if I just eat them all back.
So I'm at a loss of what to do. This is my first time trying to get healthy via diet and gym so there is a lot I dont know. Any help would be appreciated!
24/F. Currently 181 and on a calorie deficit of 1200.
One more vote for "eat back half those calories".
I assume you mean a calorie intake of 1200? (A deficit of 1200 would be too aggressive at your weight.)
And, speaking as someone who started at 183: Consider the possibility that 1200 may be too aggressively low a calorie goal to start with. It was too low for me (got weak, fatigued), and I'm about 4 decades older than you are, so my calorie needs would be estimated to be lower than yours. "Getting healthy" includes avoiding losing weight so fast that you lose more than the minimum of existing muscle, or cause other health compromises that can result from underfueling.
When I weighed 183, I'd already been very active for around 10 years and was pretty fit, so I could go pretty hard. I was not earning 1000 calories for 2 hours of exercise, so I'm skeptical that that's accurate. What is the exercise, and what produced the calorie estimate?
Regardless, the best guidance (assuming you got your calorie goal from MFP and not an outside calculator) is to stick to your calorie goal the overwhelming majority of days, eat back 50% of estimated exercise calories, and monitor for around 4-6 weeks (for sure 6 if a premenopausal woman). At that point, average loss per week should be reasonable to calculate.
If you're losing more than 1% of your body weight weekly on average (or feeling any sign at all of undereating, such as fatigue), eat more calories. At your current weight, depending on how tall you are, 1% might be too fast - somewhere between 50-25 pounds from goal, a pound a week is a better maximum if it's less than the 1%, and it should drop to 0.5 pounds/week at 10 pounds or so to goal.
The articles saying exercise shouldn't be eaten back are not using the MFP approach. Outside of MFP, people usually get their calorie goal from a TDEE calculator. (TDEE = total daily energy expenditure). TDEE calorie estimates already include calories to adjust for planned exercise. MFP does it differently. It gives you a calorie goal that is not adjusted for exercise, but already includes a calorie deficit. Then, when you exercise, it expects you to log the exercise and eat back those calories to keep the same deficit for the same rate of loss whether you exercise or not. With the MFP method, missed workouts don't torpedo weight loss.
People tend to start by eating back 50% of exercise out of concern that the exercise calories may be over-estimated, as that's a common issue. 50% should be enough to avoid problem under-fueling for most people in that first 6 weeks, then one adjusts, as I mentioned.
You can exercise at any time of day that works well for you, before or after eating as you prefer: It has the same weight-loss effects either way.
Best wishes!6 -
OP didn't say she is eating 1200 calories per day - she said she has a 1200 calorie deficit. (I am assuming that is per day although it doesn't say that). We have no idea how many calories you are eating a day, but at a 1000 calorie deficit you should lose about 2 lbs per week. So a 1200 calorie deficit isn't that outrageous - although a little more than the healthy weight loss guidelines I think.5
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OP didn't say she is eating 1200 calories per day - she said she has a 1200 calorie deficit. (I am assuming that is per day although it doesn't say that). We have no idea how many calories you are eating a day, but at a 1000 calorie deficit you should lose about 2 lbs per week. So a 1200 calorie deficit isn't that outrageous - although a little more than the healthy weight loss guidelines I think.
It would be 2.4 pounds a week, so not appropriate at 181 pounds, given that OP mentioned "trying to get healthy via diet and gym", not "trying to lose at maximum speed, healthy or not".
Since a 1200 calorie deficit is kind of a weird number, I think it's more likely that since she is female, she's set her profile for 2 pounds a week loss, has a goal of 1200, and has simply misspoken.8 -
OP didn't say she is eating 1200 calories per day - she said she has a 1200 calorie deficit. (I am assuming that is per day although it doesn't say that). We have no idea how many calories you are eating a day, but at a 1000 calorie deficit you should lose about 2 lbs per week. So a 1200 calorie deficit isn't that outrageous - although a little more than the healthy weight loss guidelines I think.
It would be 2.4 pounds a week, so not appropriate at 181 pounds, given that OP mentioned "trying to get healthy via diet and gym", not "trying to lose at maximum speed, healthy or not".
Since a 1200 calorie deficit is kind of a weird number, I think it's more likely that since she is female, she's set her profile for 2 pounds a week loss, has a goal of 1200, and has simply misspoken.
Well I was responding to what she wrote - not what I thought she meant.
And I never said it was appropriate, as I said "a little more than the healthy weight loss guidelines"7 -
janejellyroll wrote: »It's not bad to eat back the calories you've burned from exercise. If your calorie goal comes from MFP, that's how it was designed to work. Did you get your calorie goal of 1,200 from MFP? Since your goal is so low, it's even more important that you eat back the calories you've burned.
1,035 does seem really high for exercise though. How are you estimating how many calories you've burnt?
You can exercise before or after eating, whichever you prefer.
Thank you:). Yes 1200 is what MFP gave me. The machines at the gym have a calorie burn count, so 1035 is a rough estimate.0 -
OP didn't say she is eating 1200 calories per day - she said she has a 1200 calorie deficit. (I am assuming that is per day although it doesn't say that). We have no idea how many calories you are eating a day, but at a 1000 calorie deficit you should lose about 2 lbs per week. So a 1200 calorie deficit isn't that outrageous - although a little more than the healthy weight loss guidelines I think.
It would be 2.4 pounds a week, so not appropriate at 181 pounds, given that OP mentioned "trying to get healthy via diet and gym", not "trying to lose at maximum speed, healthy or not".
Since a 1200 calorie deficit is kind of a weird number, I think it's more likely that since she is female, she's set her profile for 2 pounds a week loss, has a goal of 1200, and has simply misspoken.
Yes my goal was set to 1200. I apologize for misusing my words
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OP didn't say she is eating 1200 calories per day - she said she has a 1200 calorie deficit. (I am assuming that is per day although it doesn't say that). We have no idea how many calories you are eating a day, but at a 1000 calorie deficit you should lose about 2 lbs per week. So a 1200 calorie deficit isn't that outrageous - although a little more than the healthy weight loss guidelines I think.
I meant 1200 is my daily goal for calorie intake. I apologise for my misuse of words
I'm still a bit new to all this haha. 1 -
Hello. I just started going to the gym (3 days so far) and have been burning around 600-1000 calories for 2 hour sessions. So far I have been going in the morning.
My question is: is it bad to eat back the calories you burned during exercise? For example this morning I ate just a protein bar pre-workout and after burning 1035 calories grabbed breakfast since I was starving. All together with coffee it was around 700 calories. I've looked it up and seeing articles sayng it does nothing for weight loss if I just eat them all back.
So I'm at a loss of what to do. This is my first time trying to get healthy via diet and gym so there is a lot I dont know. Any help would be appreciated!
24/F. Currently 181 and on a calorie deficit of 1200.
One more vote for "eat back half those calories".
I assume you mean a calorie intake of 1200? (A deficit of 1200 would be too aggressive at your weight.)
And, speaking as someone who started at 183: Consider the possibility that 1200 may be too aggressively low a calorie goal to start with. It was too low for me (got weak, fatigued), and I'm about 4 decades older than you are, so my calorie needs would be estimated to be lower than yours. "Getting healthy" includes avoiding losing weight so fast that you lose more than the minimum of existing muscle, or cause other health compromises that can result from underfueling.
When I weighed 183, I'd already been very active for around 10 years and was pretty fit, so I could go pretty hard. I was not earning 1000 calories for 2 hours of exercise, so I'm skeptical that that's accurate. What is the exercise, and what produced the calorie estimate?
Regardless, the best guidance (assuming you got your calorie goal from MFP and not an outside calculator) is to stick to your calorie goal the overwhelming majority of days, eat back 50% of estimated exercise calories, and monitor for around 4-6 weeks (for sure 6 if a premenopausal woman). At that point, average loss per week should be reasonable to calculate.
If you're losing more than 1% of your body weight weekly on average (or feeling any sign at all of undereating, such as fatigue), eat more calories. At your current weight, depending on how tall you are, 1% might be too fast - somewhere between 50-25 pounds from goal, a pound a week is a better maximum if it's less than the 1%, and it should drop to 0.5 pounds/week at 10 pounds or so to goal.
The articles saying exercise shouldn't be eaten back are not using the MFP approach. Outside of MFP, people usually get their calorie goal from a TDEE calculator. (TDEE = total daily energy expenditure). TDEE calorie estimates already include calories to adjust for planned exercise. MFP does it differently. It gives you a calorie goal that is not adjusted for exercise, but already includes a calorie deficit. Then, when you exercise, it expects you to log the exercise and eat back those calories to keep the same deficit for the same rate of loss whether you exercise or not. With the MFP method, missed workouts don't torpedo weight loss.
People tend to start by eating back 50% of exercise out of concern that the exercise calories may be over-estimated, as that's a common issue. 50% should be enough to avoid problem under-fueling for most people in that first 6 weeks, then one adjusts, as I mentioned.
You can exercise at any time of day that works well for you, before or after eating as you prefer: It has the same weight-loss effects either way.
Best wishes!
Yes I meant my calorie intake is at 1200 :P
That makes a lot of sense now! All the information varies because MFP calculates things it's own way. This is helpful
I started slowing down in losing weight so I thought working out would help. (I've never really been active so I'm quite unfit lol) I'm doing all this on my own so there are things I'm still testing to see what works and what doesn't.
Thank you everyone for the advice and information! 3 -
Hello. I just started going to the gym (3 days so far) and have been burning around 600-1000 calories for 2 hour sessions. So far I have been going in the morning.
My question is: is it bad to eat back the calories you burned during exercise? For example this morning I ate just a protein bar pre-workout and after burning 1035 calories grabbed breakfast since I was starving. All together with coffee it was around 700 calories. I've looked it up and seeing articles sayng it does nothing for weight loss if I just eat them all back.
So I'm at a loss of what to do. This is my first time trying to get healthy via diet and gym so there is a lot I dont know. Any help would be appreciated!
24/F. Currently 181 and on a calorie deficit of 1200.
One more vote for "eat back half those calories".
I assume you mean a calorie intake of 1200? (A deficit of 1200 would be too aggressive at your weight.)
And, speaking as someone who started at 183: Consider the possibility that 1200 may be too aggressively low a calorie goal to start with. It was too low for me (got weak, fatigued), and I'm about 4 decades older than you are, so my calorie needs would be estimated to be lower than yours. "Getting healthy" includes avoiding losing weight so fast that you lose more than the minimum of existing muscle, or cause other health compromises that can result from underfueling.
When I weighed 183, I'd already been very active for around 10 years and was pretty fit, so I could go pretty hard. I was not earning 1000 calories for 2 hours of exercise, so I'm skeptical that that's accurate. What is the exercise, and what produced the calorie estimate?
Regardless, the best guidance (assuming you got your calorie goal from MFP and not an outside calculator) is to stick to your calorie goal the overwhelming majority of days, eat back 50% of estimated exercise calories, and monitor for around 4-6 weeks (for sure 6 if a premenopausal woman). At that point, average loss per week should be reasonable to calculate.
If you're losing more than 1% of your body weight weekly on average (or feeling any sign at all of undereating, such as fatigue), eat more calories. At your current weight, depending on how tall you are, 1% might be too fast - somewhere between 50-25 pounds from goal, a pound a week is a better maximum if it's less than the 1%, and it should drop to 0.5 pounds/week at 10 pounds or so to goal.
The articles saying exercise shouldn't be eaten back are not using the MFP approach. Outside of MFP, people usually get their calorie goal from a TDEE calculator. (TDEE = total daily energy expenditure). TDEE calorie estimates already include calories to adjust for planned exercise. MFP does it differently. It gives you a calorie goal that is not adjusted for exercise, but already includes a calorie deficit. Then, when you exercise, it expects you to log the exercise and eat back those calories to keep the same deficit for the same rate of loss whether you exercise or not. With the MFP method, missed workouts don't torpedo weight loss.
People tend to start by eating back 50% of exercise out of concern that the exercise calories may be over-estimated, as that's a common issue. 50% should be enough to avoid problem under-fueling for most people in that first 6 weeks, then one adjusts, as I mentioned.
You can exercise at any time of day that works well for you, before or after eating as you prefer: It has the same weight-loss effects either way.
Best wishes!
Yes I meant my calorie intake is at 1200 :P
That makes a lot of sense now! All the information varies because MFP calculates things it's own way. This is helpful
I started slowing down in losing weight so I thought working out would help. (I've never really been active so I'm quite unfit lol) I'm doing all this on my own so there are things I'm still testing to see what works and what doesn't.
Thank you everyone for the advice and information!
No worries (and no need to apologize for anything in this thread)! Just keep working at it - you'll figure this all out. The only thing that won't work? Giving up. And you're not gonna do that.
And do keep working out: It's excellent for your health and long-term quality of life. At first, muscle repair can cause a bit of water weight retention for muscle repair (perfectly normal/healthy), so that can mask some fat loss temporarily. Hang in there!
Calories for weight management + balanced eating for nutrition + exercise for fitness = best odds of long-term good health
. . . so you're on the right path. Best wishes!
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OP didn't say she is eating 1200 calories per day - she said she has a 1200 calorie deficit. (I am assuming that is per day although it doesn't say that). We have no idea how many calories you are eating a day, but at a 1000 calorie deficit you should lose about 2 lbs per week. So a 1200 calorie deficit isn't that outrageous - although a little more than the healthy weight loss guidelines I think.
I meant 1200 is my daily goal for calorie intake. I apologise for my misuse of words I'm still a bit new to all this haha.
No worries. I also had a 1200 calorie goal when I first started and found it difficult to stick to personally so I adjusted my goals down to 1 lb loss per week and now my goal is 1480 so it is more manageable. I also do eat back 1/2 my exercise calories because it is good motivation for me to "earn" an extra glass of wine or treat with my workouts. Keep in mind the goal calories doesnt take any activity into account at all so you are supposed to track eat those exercise calories.1 -
OP didn't say she is eating 1200 calories per day - she said she has a 1200 calorie deficit. (I am assuming that is per day although it doesn't say that). We have no idea how many calories you are eating a day, but at a 1000 calorie deficit you should lose about 2 lbs per week. So a 1200 calorie deficit isn't that outrageous - although a little more than the healthy weight loss guidelines I think.
It would be 2.4 pounds a week, so not appropriate at 181 pounds, given that OP mentioned "trying to get healthy via diet and gym", not "trying to lose at maximum speed, healthy or not".
Since a 1200 calorie deficit is kind of a weird number, I think it's more likely that since she is female, she's set her profile for 2 pounds a week loss, has a goal of 1200, and has simply misspoken.
Well I was responding to what she wrote - not what I thought she meant.
And I never said it was appropriate, as I said "a little more than the healthy weight loss guidelines"
I got "woo'd" three times for responding to what the OP actually wrote? Tough crowd. 🤣7 -
janejellyroll wrote: »It's not bad to eat back the calories you've burned from exercise. If your calorie goal comes from MFP, that's how it was designed to work. Did you get your calorie goal of 1,200 from MFP? Since your goal is so low, it's even more important that you eat back the calories you've burned.
1,035 does seem really high for exercise though. How are you estimating how many calories you've burnt?
You can exercise before or after eating, whichever you prefer.
Thank you:). Yes 1200 is what MFP gave me. The machines at the gym have a calorie burn count, so 1035 is a rough estimate.
These machines are well known for grossly inflating calorie burns so take that number with a grain of salt. This is one reason why many only eat back 1/2 to 2/3 of their exercise calories back. The other is to balance out logging inaccuracies. My suggestion would be to continue to eat your 1200 calories plus 1/2 your exercise calories and continue doing this for at least 4 weeks. If you find that you are losing weight quicker than your goal then you can increase the number of exercise calories you eat back.
In saying that make sure your goal is not too aggressive to begin with. At your weight aiming to lose between 1/2 -1 pound a week is a realistic weight loss goal for long-term health and success.3 -
I'll second the idea of taking the calories burned as given by the machines with a huge grain of salt. I find that the MFP numbers are more accurate for walking and running than my TM's numbers, which seem to assume I weight 250 lbs. (i.e. 1000 calories an hour running at 6 mph - no way.) The bike's numbers are similar to the MFP numbers, so I assume they are a bit more accurate.0
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@spiriteagle99spiriteagle99 wrote: »I'll second the idea of taking the calories burned as given by the machines with a huge grain of salt. I find that the MFP numbers are more accurate for walking and running than my TM's numbers, which seem to assume I weight 250 lbs. (i.e. 1000 calories an hour running at 6 mph - no way.) The bike's numbers are similar to the MFP numbers, so I assume they are a bit more accurate.
Walking and running are easy to calculate reasonable net calorie estimates.
Bike numbers can be extremely accurate if the bike measures power output.
you can't use MFP's speed related guesstimates for indoor cycling (stationary bikes do zero mph!).
The effort related stationary bike categories can be miles off - different people's performance and resulting effort level is a massive range.
Rather than guess that machines are inaccurate or compare to other inaccurate methods (such as some of the MFP database categories) it's better to use more suitable methods to estimate. Although some machines give poor or exaggerated estimates some also give very good estimates.2 -
janejellyroll wrote: »It's not bad to eat back the calories you've burned from exercise. If your calorie goal comes from MFP, that's how it was designed to work. Did you get your calorie goal of 1,200 from MFP? Since your goal is so low, it's even more important that you eat back the calories you've burned.
1,035 does seem really high for exercise though. How are you estimating how many calories you've burnt?
You can exercise before or after eating, whichever you prefer.
Thank you:). Yes 1200 is what MFP gave me. The machines at the gym have a calorie burn count, so 1035 is a rough estimate.
Gym machines are notorious for over-estimating calorie burn. I would begin by eating back just a portion of these (maybe 50-75%) until you can compare your real life results over time to see if you should be eating more back.1
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