Eating exercise calories

bdonahue12188
bdonahue12188 Posts: 8 Member
in Getting Started
Hi All!

Question about exercise calories. Do you eat them? Do you “save” them for one day a week for a splurge? These are legitimate calories from exercise via Fitbit. Could use some advice. My general plan is to stick with my calorie goal despite exercise and have one day off of a treat meal. Thanks.

Replies

  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,981 Member
    If you are calculating your calorie intake from MFP - then, yes, you are meant to eat your excercise calories.
    Some people find the burn estimates are over inflated so they eat back 1/2 or 3/4
    You will have to try one and see how it tallies with real results and tweak if neccesary
    But do eat at least some of them back

    However if you want you can look at weekly calories rather than daily in which case, sure, save the exercise calories for a larger intake day later in the week - as long as your weekly net calories are around the mark it willl work fine this way too.
  • Livhere
    Livhere Posts: 141 Member
    bdonahue12188 wrote: »
    Hi All!

    Question about exercise calories. Do you eat them? Do you “save” them for one day a week for a splurge? These are legitimate calories from exercise via Fitbit. Could use some advice. My general plan is to stick with my calorie goal despite exercise and have one day off of a treat meal. Thanks.

    I eat some of them, but try not to eat all them so I can have a little more leeway during the weekend on rest days.
  • WinoGelato
    WinoGelato Posts: 13,454 Member
    I lost weight eating back exercise cals from MFP, at first just the logged estimates and then after getting a FitBit, by eating back the adjustments. I found my FitBit to always be accurate. I also maintained pretty easily by eating back those adjustments too for a few years till I became less active but didn’t adjust my intake accordingly and saw a slow 10 lb creep.

    I often Bank calories spreading out my intake to have higher intake on the weekends when I tend to have more social activities. This past week for example I was eating 1300-1500 during the week but had 1800 or so extra calories to consume over the weekend due to banked calories. If you use the app you can track your weekly deficit instead of the daily one.

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