Eating back your exercise calories..???

autumnblade75 wrote: »

If you're working out every night, you have 2 options. You can count that as part of your daily activity and adjust your activity level accordingly, then don't enter it as a workout because it's already accounted for. Or you can leave your activity level alone, and eat back as many calories as you've burned with your exercise. The reason many people eat only half of their exercise calories is because they feel the number is inflated. You should eat back your exercise calories because you don't want to be under-fueled.

Either way, do what you've chosen for a month and then look at your results and alter your routine accordingly. If you are not losing as much weight as you expected, you can reduce your activity level or eat fewer of your exercise calories. If you are losing more weight than you expected, you can increase your activity level or eat more of your exercise calories. If you are spot on, then congratulations! Keep going until it stops working, then recalibrate.

sijomial wrote: »

Your activity (job/lifestyle) is completely separate entity from purposeful exercise when using MyFitnessPal as designed. That's different to how the mainstream TDEE calculators work which roll up activity and exercise into one estimated adjusted that assumes you will actually do the exercise you plan to.

Your base daily goal is a goal only for a non-exercise day. Exercise burn isn't accounted for until you actually do it and log it. When you log it and get credited for the approximate calorie burn it aims to keep your selected calorie deficit constant. It is not intended that you use exercise to increase your calorie deficit / increase your rate of weight loss. Think of it as a life lesson that will encourage you to continue to exercise after you get to goal weight.

The eat back 50% idea is sadly very common thinking but very flawed, you should aim to eat back 100% of what you believe to be a good/reasonable estimate. 50% is only sensible if you really believe your estimates are double reality.

Depending on what your exercise is also changes the best or better way to make those estimates - using the database here (which is based on studies and isn't a random guess) is just one option.

If your "workout" is strength/reistance training log it under the cadio section of the exercise diary (entire duration, not just the period actively lifting) and it's a very modest estimate.