Eat Exercise calories or not

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  • LadySaton
    LadySaton Posts: 500 Member
    I actually modify the exercise calories that my watch will automatically input to MFP for me. For example, if I run 8 miles my watch might input that as a 780 calorie burn, but I go and edit it to 640 calories. If I play DDR for an hour sometimes that gets input as nearly 400 calories, but I know from prior experience that an hour of moderate cardio like that is closer to 200 so I edit the exercise entry to reflect that. Once I edit the entries to reflect a level of calorie burn I trust, I do allow myself all those calories when I want them. I like to eat and I need to eat well if I want to continue my training anyhow. With a higher calorie allowance I can get adequate nutrition and still have a chocolate bar and/or ice cream pop. 🤷🏼‍♀️ There are weeks I have been slightly over my goal and others I come under because hunger levels aren't static and I’m not going to stress over a 400 calorie variance.

    I really think it makes more sense for me to edit the exercise entries to reflect what I think I actually burned and then eat to my goal rather than watching the exercise portion and subtracting 50% of that number daily.

    Some people actually significantly underestimate how much they eat though - those people could benefit from not eating exercise calories and using them as a buffer. They’ll still be eating back the calories, just their own math is incorrect and doesn’t reflect that.
  • erekstrusinski1989
    erekstrusinski1989 Posts: 42 Member
    I eat them back most of the time I just choose healthy enough foods that I'm not going over on nutrient intake on things like fat and sugar. If I burn 500 calories i will have an extra snack like hard boiled eggs or a small sandwich to compensate, that way im not losing muscle or bone mass.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,521 Member
    MikePTY wrote: »
    The point remains though that using MFP generated goals and not eating your exercise calories back are incompatible with one another. It is not how the site is intended to be used. People should only not eat their calories back if they use a goal setting method that already accounts for exercise, which MFP does not.

    MFP is totally flexible on this point. You can choose to track individual workouts or not. You can set your activity level to whatever you want or even manually enter whatever calorie goal you want (at least in Premium).

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