Is it ok to eat back your "unused" calories all in 1 day?

Are you purposely banking calories? If so that can backfire. If you just had some extra calories here and there, then of course you can eat them in 1 day. Prepare for weight gain from water and food waste for 2-3 days after.

weight3049 wrote: »

brianpperkins131 wrote: »

Which weight loss per week setting did you use when setting up MFP? How many calories per day are you short of your 1500 goal? How accurate are you in your logging?

2 lbs per week. I am close to my goal weight so I lose no where close to that anymore.

Most days I am off by 100-200 because my sleep schedule is so messed up, I miss lunch almost every day.

Is there a known cause for your messed up sleep schedule, like work? If not, you may be sleeping poorly because you are undereating as 2 pounds per week is way too aggressive when one is close to goal. I've seen lots of posts by people with too aggressive calorie deficits who have problems sleeping.

It depends on how you get your calorie goal. If you use a TDEE calculator to get a goal that already includes exercise, you should not eat it back. If you use MFP as intended or otherwise have a goal that does not include exercise (perhaps because it is inconsistent) and then log exercise when it's done, then you should eat back cals or run the risk of undereating unless your goal is a conservative one to start with.

It has absolutely nothing to do with how much one enjoys exercise.

b120in2021 wrote: »

I don't "eat back" calories. I think it fosters an unhealthy attitude about exercise. I like exercise and I get that not everyone does. If you don't like exercise, just put it on your to do list with other necessary and un-fun things like brushing your teeth or whatever.

What do you think?

I think it's another of those "personal style" things. Exercise ought to be accounted for somewhere in one's initial calorie goal, since it's just one subset of activity (calorie burn). There are various sensible ways to account for it:

* The standard MFP method of getting a calorie goal (with deficit built in) based on non-exercise activity (NEAT), then carefully estimating it and eating it back;
* Getting a calorie goal based on a decent TDEE calculator (that already includes exercise averaged in); or
* Setting a calorie goal closer to pre-exercise maintenance calories, and letting a reasonable amount of exercise create most of the deficit (if the numbers involved don't cause too fast or unnecessarily slow loss).

Any of those can work.

When it comes to what's a "healthy attitude" toward exercise, I don't think the calorie part is *necessarily* inherently a factor in that (though it could be for some people). For sure, someone with fitness goals is going to want to fuel their exercise adequately, while still losing some weight if loss is needed. Underfueling exercise is a poor way to achieve fitness goals.

Personally, I like the standard MFP method of logging exercise and eating it back when I do it. My main/favorite exercise is both weather-dependent and seasonal. Therefore, my exercise activity differs from week to week, and drops off (or at least changes) in Winter. After some logging experience during loss, I know how to manage my calorie intake to lose or maintain, with or without exercise (or with varying amounts/types of exercise).

As far as a healthy attitude to exercise, I think it's relevant to my personal preferences that I didn't add exercise when I committed to losing weight. I'd been very active for around a dozen years, while still class 1 obese, including some formal training programs leading to competitions, going to sport-specific camps on vacations, and that sort of thing. I was that supposedly mythical sort-of-fit fat person: Low resting heart rate, decent (not elite) race pace, good endurance, and that sort of thing.

I didn't change that exercise routine appreciably during weight loss, mostly just kept doing what I'd been doing for well over a decade and enjoying. (I did get a little bit more consistent about strength training during loss, trying to minimize risks of losing muscle while losing fat. Normally, I'm a bit on again, off again with strength training, though that's also been in my life for the longer time period. During loss, I made a bit extra effort to be in the "on again" state, more of the time.)

I'd observe that once we reach goal weight, we need to account for exercise calories somehow (i.e., fuel them, either via TDEE, NEAT + exercise, intuitive eating, or whatever works) - they need to be eaten somehow, or we'll keep losing weight below goal weight. (I've been in maintenance for around 5 years now, though *ultra* slowly losing a few vanity pounds over the past year.)

IMO, there's so much about successful weight loss (and long term weight management afterward), as well as about ongoing fitness, that benefits from a personalized approach. The same thing doesn't need to work for everyone, and I think we can help people by clearly explaining the sensible options, and talking about how we each see the pros/cons.

P.S. to the OP more directly: Like others, I'm concerned that your base calorie goal may be too low/too aggressive, since 1500 is the MFP minimum for a male. No way to be sure, without knowing more about you, though. With a reasonable, non-extreme calorie goal, I think it's fine to eat 100-150 calories under goal most days of the week, and use that calorie cushion to eat a little more on the weekend, or something like that. I've been doing exactly that through most of 5 years of weight maintenance, and I'm pretty healthy as far as I know. The key is not to either severely underfuel our daily energy needs (which could happen with calorie banking if one's loss rate is too aggressive to start with) or short our daily nutritional needs by not having enough calories to "buy" the nutrients we truly need.