Can you "save" your exercise calories?

Now I know there is much debate and personal preferance on whether to eat your exercise calories. My question is, let's say I work out today and burn 500 calories, can I eat them tomorrow instead of today? or is that defeating the purpose? Won't I still have a deficit for the week?

oh boy, this is another hottie...take cover for I'm quite sure you'll get many various responses.

I really can't say as I've never done it that way but that doesn't mean others haven't or will share that it's ok to do. What I do, and this is simply that...what I DO. I finish out my day at the end of the day and begin a new one the next morning carrying nothing over. That seems to work for me so I have continued to go that route. One thing is that if I have a less than stellar day I don't wake up trying to figure out how to fix yesterday's mess.:bigsmile:

I'm not sure I even know the correct answer on your question or if there even is a 'correct' one.
I imagine there will be many opinions though...

not much help am I?:laugh:
FC

I know on weight watchers you can "bank" your points for use later in the week if you don't use all your points for the day.

I wonder if calories could be done the same way???

I do it sometimes. I also sometimes burn calories off tomorrow that I overate today. But I think (based on nothing but my own superstitions, or whatever) that if too much time goes by then it isn't okay. like if I have leftover calories, I will eat them tomorrow, but if I have them still at the end of tomorrow, then I forfeit them.

I just made this rule up for myself, IDK if it is based on any solid science at all.

I sometimes do this from one day to the next, but I don't same my Monday calories for Sunday.

I routinely put the calories I burn today on tomorrow's exercise log. Then I know tomorrow exactly how many calories I should eat. I very seldom can work out in the mornings, so that way I don't overeat early in the day planning to work out and then have something come up and end up not exercising.

Today I'm doing Zumba & will burn around 500 calories. I didn't have time to exercise yesterday and that means that on today's food diary I only have my regular calories... so I'll probably split my calories from tonight's workout between today & tomorrow so I can eat a little bit more today.

It all comes out in the wash.

It takes about 1/2-1 day (that is a very general estimate) for the nutrients to go from your 'top fat' out your 'bottom half'. For most of that, nutrients are being taken up from the food and sent throughout the body. Fat digestion takes longer than carbohydrate digestion because of how fat is sent out to the body (it needs a lot of 'processing'). What you eat today is being used for part of the day, and then for part of tomorrow. You're in a constant state of building up and breaking down. If you eat 500 calories more than what you need in one day, some of that may be used up for muscle repair, and some may be stored as fat and then used up the next day when you undereat again. It's not really possible to look at this in single day increments because digestion takes so long and is fairly constant.

It takes about 1/2-1 day (that is a very general estimate) for the nutrients to go from your 'top fat' out your 'bottom half'. For most of that, nutrients are being taken up from the food and sent throughout the body. Fat digestion takes longer than carbohydrate digestion because of how fat is sent out to the body (it needs a lot of 'processing'). What you eat today is being used for part of the day, and then for part of tomorrow. You're in a constant state of building up and breaking down. If you eat 500 calories more than what you need in one day, some of that may be used up for muscle repair, and some may be stored as fat and then used up the next day when you undereat again. It's not really possible to look at this in single day increments because digestion takes so long and is fairly constant.

what she said ^

I'll add to that by saying this, your body doesn't have memory, it won't remember 4 days from now that you exercised today and save up those calories to burn then (not in that sense at least), use it when you have it. I guess you could consider it like rollover calories, where, you could probably move them forward a little, but not a whole week, at least that's what I have been lead to believe. Songbyrd, am I correct in that?

That's right. Our bodies do keep some fatty acids (parts of fats, but not the whole thing) and glucose in the blood for a quick source of energy. The rest is in 'storage'. We use up a lot of the glucose and fatty acids while we exercise, and this is where a lot of breakdown occurs. It would also occur throughout the day as we move around--blood sugar and fatty acid levels fall a little, hormones are released to break down glycogen and triglycerides (fats), and they're brought back up to normal. That's constant. And nutrient uptake is fairly constant as well when you consider that we eat at regular intervals and it takes a loooooong time for food to go from one end to the other.

It's best to look at a week's worth of deficit--make sure it's 3500 calories. However, that obviously does NOT mean to create that deficit with 3 days of a 1200 calorie deficit or something extreme. You should AVERAGE a 500 calorie deficit.