Eating back Exercise Calories?

I have always eaten every single one.

I lost 80 pounds using this site the way it is set up.

I didn't use a Fitbit.

I did log all my food as accurately as I could.

Only way for you to decide what to do is to run the experiment. I always try to follow directions, so that's how I worked it.


Depends on a lot of factors though.

Use a number for 4-6 weeks. 100% is what I did. harper16 is saying use half. Whatever you choose, log everything and be consistent. Then at the end of that 4-6 weeks you'll have enough data to establish a trend in your weight based on your settings and your accuracy. Adjust at that time.

I agree with the above responses. How big a percentage I'd suggest would depend on what exercise you do. The clearest answer though, is that your burn is not zero so you need to eat some of your exercise cals.

I always eat all of mine, but 99% of my exercise is walking (and when the gyms are open, cross-trainer) so it's reasonably simple. For walking, I've found MFP to be accurate as long as I'm fairly accurate about the speed I'd walked at (and how long for, obviously). With the cross trainer, I took the number from the machine - I entered my weight at the start of my exercise and it knew the speed and intensity of my workout. When I entered the timeframe of my workout to MFP, it was giving me a much higher calorie burn than the machine said, so I then started reducing the number of minutes until MFP showed the same number of calories as the machine had said. That's what I entered / ate.

As cmriverside says, the best scenario is to be consistent for 4-6 weeks, see what rate you're actually losing at and then either carry on as you were or eat a higher/ lower percentage if you're losing faster / slower than expected.

I think my BMR estimate on MFP must be pretty close, though I do occassionally have that thing where my appetite goes completely bonkers.

I generally eat about the same amount everyday regardless of how much I burn.

Exercise calories taste best.

I estimate my exercise calories as sensibly as I can, then I ate them all back through 50+ pounds of weight loss, and 4+ years of maintaining a healthy weight since.

At goal weight, if you don't (somehow) eat back exercise calories, you'll keep losing weight. Maybe practice at estimating them, now, while you have that calorie deficit as a cushion during the learning process?

You can eat the same amount each day, or eat the exercise calories back the day you exercise, or (as long as it's not a truly massive number) save them up to eat a bit more on the weekend or something like that. Weight loss is weight maintenance practice, IMO: Figure out now how you'd like to handle the exercise calories, experimenting to figure that out if necessary. (Some people find they're hungrier on exercise days, or the day after: Stuff like that is useful to know, about yourself.)

If you want to eat the same number of calories each day, your best plan would be to average them into your week, by using an outside TDEE calculator to estimate your maintenance calories, then subtract 500 daily calories for each pound per week it's sensible for you to lose at your current weight. (Example TDEE calculator: https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/ ).

MFP estimates calorie goals a little differently based on a activity level setting that should not include intentional exercise, but rather just normal work/home activities. It will give you a different calorie estimate than a TDEE calculator (for most people, that'll be true even at "sedentary" settings).

In one sense, exercise calories aren't special. They're like toothbrushing calories, lawn-mowing calories, grocery shopping calories: You burn them by moving. What's different with exercise is that it can be more predictably variable. A common pitfall in calorie counting, when people use a TDEE calculator to set goals, is to start with plans for a super-aggressive exercise schedule (minimum of an hour daily, intense, every day ), and put that plan into the TDEE calculator. Over time, that schedule can be hard for a beginner to sustain, and the exercise can wither away in part or whole. It's very easy to wipe out one's whole calorie deficit by dropping out planned-in exercise. The MFP approach, while it has other down-sides, avoids that pitfall. It teaches the useful lesson that when we move more, we should eat more (because food is fuel, even when tasty); and when we move less, we should eat less (if we want to achieve our weight goals).

So, either approach can work - average over the week, eat the same daily; or add the calories when you actually exercise, and eat them back (within a reasonable timespan, not necessarily that day). It's a matter of thinking about pros/cons, and picking the approach that will work best for you.

Best wishes!

I’m trying not to eat all of them. I bicycle a lot if I’m not hungry I’m not going to eat.
Last week I ate out for lunch then it was a spur of the moment “ let’s go to the fund raising ice cream social At dinner” I was maybe 300-350 over my goal but I still didn’t eat up the exercise calories didn’t feel guilty.