Do YOU personally eat back your workout calories?

Posts: 76 Member
edited December 2024 in Fitness and Exercise
Just wondering if you personally eat back your workout calories?

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  • Posts: 8,753 Member
    Yes.
  • Posts: 971 Member
    Yep... normally all of them! So far I have lost at the expected/projected weight.
  • Posts: 6,286 Member
    I generally eat back half or so. For example, I had 375 calories of exercise during the day. Therefore, I ate about 150 calories above goal today.
  • Posts: 10,968 Member
    Yes, of course.
  • Posts: 340 Member
    Yes. My calories are accurately measured (with a power meter while I'm cycling) so there's no reason not to.

    The slight caveat is that I'm still drifting my weight down to find a final goal weight, and at the moment my goal is set at maintenance but I still create a small deliberate deficit by not eating all my exercise calories back. That way of doing it just works better for me when I have some rest days with no exercise and some days where I ride for 5 hours and burn 2500 calories as it smooths my intake out a bit.

    (Typically on the 2500 days I will still eat 1750-2000 of the exercise calories back, I need them for fuel!)
  • Posts: 1,367 Member
    Yes and no. If I'm hungrier the day I work out, I will eat them that day. More often though, I'll have a little bit more to eat that day, and spread the rest throughout the week, so I end up having a bigger deficit on days I work out and smaller deficit on days I don't.

    Years ago, in my pre-MFP days, I used a different logging site and their system was designed so that it automatically split your workout calories throughout the week, so for a 700-calorie run you'd get 100 extra calories every day that week. I have conflicted feelings about that system, but at least it encouraged consistent everyday eating habits that didn't allow the "I have to run to earn this huge chocolate bar" thinking. A little bit of that system is clearly still hidden in the way I approach workout calories, and it works for me.
  • Posts: 539 Member
    edited June 2020
    I eat back about 3/4 of them, over time I've discovered mfp estimates are close to accurate for me (sedentary but work out 6 days a week), and if I don't I feel really sluggish and don't have my normal energy and strength when doing my workouts... + if I didn't eat at least some of it back I'd end up with a net of maybe 800-900kcal a day... keep in mind I'm short and normal weight, only trying to lose a few "vanity" pounds at this point, even a modest -0.5lb per week goal puts me at only around 1250kcal a day (net) to aim for
  • Posts: 3 Member
    Nope, I don't eat them back because I like having a bigger deficit and usually the estimated calories you burn from exercise are incorrect so I don't want to take that risk.
  • Posts: 450 Member
    I selected active and 1/2 pound weight loss. I don’t eat back additional exercise calories.
  • Posts: 9,520 Member
    The guidance I've seen here on MFP is to eat back 50% of calories burned. I don't meticulously track that. But if it's a day that I burned a crazy amount of calories, I'd definitely eat a bit more.
  • Posts: 445 Member
    Not all of them. I may go over my base calorie goal by 40-50, and this is most of then the calories in my pre-workouts. If I was still hungry I guess I would, but that's a non-issue for me. :)
  • Posts: 59 Member
    I listen to my body. If I feel like I need more fuel then yes I'm not afraid to eat them back, but I don't always eat them all back. Also it's important to note that I do this because I am at a pretty extreme deficit and eating 1200 cals. If I had more to play with, I might be stricter about that.
  • Posts: 25,786 Member
    Just wondering if you personally eat back your workout calories?

    Yep, some.

    Depends how I feel but if I'm actively losing weight, I'll do something like this:

    For light exercise like an 45 minute walk, I'll probably only eat about half back.

    For moderate exercise like a 2 hour bicycle ride, I might go for somewhere around 75%.

    For lots of exercise like a half marathon run or 4 hour bicycle ride or something along those lines, I might go for somewhere around 90%.

    That's just my preference and seems to work well for me.
  • Posts: 6,931 Member
    edited June 2020
    I eat them back (both exercise calories and the calorie adjustment from extra activity), and I have done since I started my weight loss journey in August of last year. And my weight loss is as fast as I wanted it to be.

    The only exceptions:
    - sometimes the estimates are a bit inflated (especially walks, and sometimes also runs if it's very warm) so I sometimes keep a small margin
    - sometimes I don't eat them back on the same day: e.g. after a 4 hour hike, having eating regular meals AND half a tub of ice-cream as a snack, I'm not going to 'stuff my face' just for the sake of it. I might carry over some calories to the next day, or just leave myself with a larger deficit.

    My weight loss rate is set at 0.5lbs (0.25kg) per week and I still have about 18 lbs to lose, so it's not a big deal if I have a slightly larger deficit occasionally.
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