Eat back resistance training calories or not?

Are you getting enough protein & fat? I know you mentioned a protein supplement, but perhaps you need to factor more protein and healthy fats in for satiety too.

You should be eating back any exercise calories, that's the way the system is set up to work, though resistance training doesn't burn as much as cardio does so it's not going to make a huge difference to your calorie intake.

Are you at all active outside of work hours? The activity level relates to all non-exercise activity not just your job, for example I work in a desk job but still get around 5000 steps in over the course of a relatively lazy day which is more like Lightly Active than Sedentary.

You could also look into recomp - eating at maintenance or just below and focusing on your macros and a progressive strength training program. There's a thread pinned in the Maintenance board's Most Helpful posts.


This might help on the macro front:

Did you select sedentary as activity level but you actually have kids or pets and household duties on weeknights & weekends?
Meaning you are not sedentary overall.

That creates extra deficit.

While lifting doesn't create a big calorie burn during the workout, you should still log it and eat it back - the database estimate is really pretty good - but only for the actual time spent doing the resistance training - not warmup/cooldown or stretching time.
That's so brief that can just be part of daily activity extra.

But if you are doing the resistance training right - there is recovery in 24-48 hrs afterwards that does raise your metabolism while repair is going on - so extra calorie burn there unaccounted for.
So for sure count what is known for during the workout.

That recovery period is also where the extra calories would be most useful.
If morning workout then you are covered - if evening, bounce some calories to the next day.

1. Why not eat back your workout calories? They won't be a lot, and you are hungry. Please note that because you just started this recently, you may be retaining water from it, which will mask weight loss on the scale.

2. How many grams of protein are you eating per day, total?

3. If you're an omnivore, chicken breast is an easy way to add protein for not a lot of calories. I always make extra chicken for dinner so it is available for lunch and snacks. I prefer bone-in, skin-on breasts as they are cheaper, they bake up juicy with very little effort, and I can use the bones to make stock.

Samara_Justicar wrote: »

But if you all say the MFP logger will tell me accurately what I've burnt then I will put that in and adjust my calories accordingly.

I wouldn't say it's really accurate, and resistance training burns so little calories anyway, I'd maybe say to eat back half of what MFP is giving you for a calorie burn? That's the assumption I use and it seems to work ok...

Samara_Justicar wrote: »

Thank you everyone for the advice! I'm new to this so wasn't sure, I read/heard somewhere not to eat back exercise calories as you always overestimate them and eat back too much. But if you all say the MFP logger will tell me accurately what I've burnt then I will put that in and adjust my calories accordingly.

Having a look over my food diary on average I eat 60-80g protein a day. I eat anything, so will up the chicken breast. The protein supplement is 9g protein per 10g powder, it says 10g is one portion so I just thought two a day would be good i.e. 18g per day.

Thanks again!

It will be reasonably accurate for strength training calories, for various reasons that have to do with the nature of the METS-based estimating methodology, the METS value actually used here, and the typical durations of strength training sessions vis a vis their intensity, as I understand it.

I consider some of the other MFP cardio estimates much more questionable, personally, for various reasons . . . but I'm not going to wander through the exercise database and explain the various instances, unprovoked. Way too lazy for that. 😆

Pretty much any exercise calorie estimate is an educated (we hope) guess, but some are more reasonable than others. Happily, pretty much any non-nutzoid estimating method, used consistently, can work fine in a calorie-counting context where we watch the scale and make intake adjustments if needed. (IMU, pretty much only well-calibrated power-metered, narrow-range-of-efficiency activities, like cycling with a power meter, are better than educated guesses, other than what might be possible hooked up to machines in a sports lab. Even the fancy fitness trackers - yes, I have one - are estimating calories not measuring them, in ways that can have serious flaws in some cases.)

Personally, while I was losing, the small calorie bump from the MFP strength training entry was just what I needed. Strength training made me ravenous. Depending on the timing context (when the training/recovery was situated around meals), those few calories were enough to add a few quick carbs before the lifting (if I was feeling low energy), or some protein/carbs after (if a meal wasn't coming up soon), and making the whole process easier, subjectively. The actual number of calories wasn't enough to wipe out my actual deficit at the time (as gauged from actual weight loss rate), so I didn't really care if it was a little high, frankly. (I have no reason to believe it was.)

On the other front, 60-80g protein isn't huge. Many people here think a minimum somewhere around 0.6-0.8g per pound of healthy goal weight (which is loosely equivalent to 0.8-1g per pound of lean body mass for many people) is a reasonable target. (I think that's roughly 3-4g/kg?) At 5'5" (165cm), 125lbs (57kg), female, I'm targeting 100g as a nice round number in that vicinity, and getting/exceeding it daily, as a vegetarian. (I admit it was a tad lower, while losing, often at a calorie goal close to your current one - in the 90s grams, usually.) It should be possible, as an omnivore.

My suggestion would be to review your diary periodically, looking for foods that have a relatively high calorie "cost" that doesn't seem completely worthwhile in terms of nutrition, satiation, tastiness, or the like. Reduce or eliminate some of those things, and replace the calories with foods you enjoy eating that have more protein. Rinse and repeat, and over time you'll reach higher protein levels . . . pretty painlessly, IME.

This may be a useful thread:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10247171/carbs-and-fats-are-cheap-heres-a-guide-to-getting-your-proteins-worth-fiber-also

Best wishes!