Eating calories burned

If you were losing weight then , I wouldn't if I were you. People tend to cheat both counting their food calories and exercise calories. If anything, not eating your exercise calories will provide you with a safe cushion that you actually running a deficit.

We have to agree to disagree.

lyuro57 wrote: »

This is why I posted the question. Many people say don't eat them, then I have others who say you should. I haven't been, but since I've increased my workouts I've found myself hungry more, tired, etc...

Well... Unfortunately, you won't find a single answer. It really depends on your unique situation. If you get tired and dizzy, then may be yes you need to eat more. Maybe you need to change your macros. Maybe you need more energy carbs, maybe you don't have enough fats in your diet. Often it is not about amount of calories, but the composition of your diet and whether you get enough micro-nutrients and vitamins.

It's hard to say. Everyone's situation is fairly unique when you get to the nuts and bolts.

It works best for me when i don't eat the calories. I learned that experimental way over a long period of time.

Congrats on the weight loss!

What you're describing sounds like what happens when you don't get enough food. And the numbers back it up.

You're going to want to keep the weight off one you get to your goal. I mean it'll fluctuates and your goal will turn out to be a range not a single number, but you want to stay in that range, not gain it all back. Running unsustainably big deficits can get dinner weight off quickly, but it's not a long term strategy for keeping it off. Running a moderate deficit, including eating your exercise calories, will help you establish habits that will serve you long term.

This isn't an opinion question. It is a question about using MFP correctly, using MFP incorrectly, or using a different method of calculating your calorie goal.

MFP's calorie calculations take into account the non-exercise activity that you stated in your goals setup. You are intended to log intentional exercise separately and eat back all of your exercise calories assuming they are calculated correctly. However, many people struggle to calculate exercise calories correctly, and they find that estimates of exercise calorie burns are too high. This is why you often see the suggestion to eat half your exercise calories. It is simply a way to account for inflated exercise calorie estimates.

If you are using MFP's calorie calculations and you are not eating back calories from intentional exercise, then you are not using MFP correctly. Depending on how many calories you burn and how many errors you have in your food logging, you may be creating an unhealthy deficit.

If you would rather have a calorie goal that already includes your exercise, you need to use a TDEE calculator rather than MFP to get your calorie goal.

If you are trying to lose weight, you must burn the calories.

Clarisse_McClellan wrote: »

It depends on you and how you're trying to lose. I think MFP's calorie recommendations are off for me, so I've figured out my calorie needs before exercise using the Mifflin-St. Jeor formula and am trying to eat 3500 fewer calories for one pound loss per week. I like to exercise, but I don't like to depend on it for any weight loss, because I can't guarantee that I'll be able to work out a given number of days per week. (I'm a homeschooling, SAHM.) I get maybe 800 calories from exercise a week, so that might be an extra pound a month. I don't think it's significant enough to worry about right now.

If I felt hungrier from the exercise, which I don't usually, I might eat up to half the estimated exercise calories back but no more, because it's hard to know how many calories you're really burning. Even a Fitbit isn't completely accurate, because it's based solely off your heart rate. If you want accurate calorie burn you need to use one of those breathing masks & instrumentation that measure actual oxygen consumption. And let's face it. That would be pretty annoying.

Whether you can accurately pinpoint your calorie burn using a variety of estimating tools that are available or not - there is one number that is definitely wrong and that’s zero. The exercise you do burns more than zero calories, right? So why would you choose and recommend the only number that is certainly wrong?

No one is saying that MFP Numbers are perfectly accurate as is. Many people have to monitor and adjust, dialing in on whether the original estimate from MFP for NEAT is high or low (for me it’s low) and then how accurate their logging is (are you using a food scale?) and then finding an exercise estimate they feel is reasonable for themselves. Again, MFP was low for me when I was just logging “walking, 30 min, slow pace” but when I got my FItBit I realized I was burning considerably more calories than calculators were predicting.

You’ve adjusted the MFP methodology because it’s off by a certain factor for you , but that doesn’t mean it needs to be blanketly dismissed for OP or for everyone.