Exercise calories: eat them?
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melizabeth1995
Posts: 102 Member
I used MFP years ago when I wasn't working out. Now I work out 4-5 days a week and also walk a lot at work. I'm wanting to lose fat and gain muscle. Do you advise to eat my exercise calories I've earned or leave them?
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Replies
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If you got your calorie goal using My Fitness Pal the answer is yes eat them - you earned them.
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf
The trick is finding a reasonable number to eat back. Many people start with 50% - then after a few weeks adjust the % up or down based on your results. The reason for the % is - there are many estimations at work here.3 -
MFP intends you to eat your exercise calories back. I eat 100%. That works for me. Others eat 50-75%. If you are losing faster than expected, eat more. If you are not losing as quickly as expected, based on the math, then eat less.2
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I don't log walking or hiking personally - steady state stuff that I do absolutely daily. It's part of my lifestyle though not job - I've got 5 dogs and do a lot of dog sports. I account for THAT in my activity level. I know the set up guide talks jobs or whatever, but my job is sitting on my butt. My HOBBY involves a lot of moving because, well, high energy dogs man. It's move or they eat my house.
I do account for and eat back 'work outs' that I do X or Y times a week and eat back about half, if I want it - but only cardio. I entirely ignore weight stuff. It's just not worth figuring out for me.1 -
I try not to. I'm not a premium user, so MFP won't let me ignore them, but I try not stick to my calorie goals for the day.0
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malevolentmuse wrote: »I try not to. I'm not a premium user, so MFP won't let me ignore them, but I try not stick to my calorie goals for the day.
If you use MFP to set your calorie goal, exercise, but don't eat back any exercise calories, you are not using MFP the way it was designed.
https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals-
Unlike other sites which use TDEE calculators, MFP uses the NEAT method (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), and as such this system is designed for exercise calories to be eaten back. However, many consider the burns given by MFP to be inflated for them and only eat a percentage, such as 50%, back. Others, however, are able to lose weight while eating 100% of their exercise calories.
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Yes eat them, all sensible calorie counting methods involve you in counting significant calorie expenditure and exercise is just a part of that. Try to think a bit longer term than just focussing on making weight loss fast, such as supporting your exercise to get the most out of it, or as practice for maintenance at goal weight when you must take them into account, or simply making a hard job easier by keeping a sensible deficit with a larger food allowance.
Your body counts them and you should too if you intend trying to achieve the rate of loss you actually selected yourself. Presumably you intend trying to estimate your calories IN so why not your calories OUT as it's the balance of the two sides you are trying to control?
I would be in a terrible mess if I pretended the 183,000 calories burned cycling in a year don't actually count for anything.
The database here is just one option to use to get reasonable estimates for your exercise. For some exercises it's pretty good, for some it's pretty poor.
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MFP is designed for you to eat back your exercise calories. Some people come up with other ways to account for the calories they burn through exercise, so if another way works better for you, it's not that you can't do that. But for your own health and to meet your fitness goals, you need to find SOME WAY to account for the calories you're using for exercise unless exercise is a rare thing for you.4
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What I ended up doing is sitting down with a dietician and personal trainer. The dietician helped me figure out what to eat, and how many calories a day, including how to deal with excercise. That includes how much excercise compared to how much food and calories. Personal trainer helps with things like excercises and motivation, and we leave the food to the dietician, but i do share with the trainer.
Apps like this, online calculators, smartwatch, smart scale the calories results like BMR they gave me varies, per day. I need something I can count on, and something set as goal for a longer period
I am looking to lose for health reasons, and you are looking to gain.
Afaik there are two ways to eat excercise calories:
1. Spread out over the week, every day the same
2. non excercise days versus excercise days
My smartwatch (garmin) adds the excercise calories it calculates automatically to this app, so that saves time having to add it manually.
I would use this app as an aid to track stuff, but not rely on it too much solely. I still have to regularly correct food in the database for example
Not to be negative, but to be realistic, from my real world experience
Also don't know how much fat you are trying to burn, and how much muscle you want to build., so it's hard for me to give an answer. I would look to find a healthy diet and excercise schedule that balances your needs, and if you want to be serious hire a professional, instead of relying to much on do it yourself technology
Having said that, I do enjoy using this app and how easy it is to add food and stuff, and did get a premium membership for now at least. It's just I would use the app as a tool in the toolchest, instead of relying on it too much on it's own1 -
Yea definitely but be careful because many exercise calculators including MFP incorrectly inflate exercise calories.3
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I would suggest NOT eating your exercise calories. In my experience, I believe MFP over estimates both the number of calories to consume and the number of calories you burn during exersize. If I had logged and eaten my exercise calories, I would have gained weight!1
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Very different to my experience then - if I didn't eat my exercise calories I'd be struggling seriously! They're calculated accurately though (with a power meter) rather than mfp's calculations, and after over a year I know I can trust them.
My advice - start eating some of them and adjust as you go.4 -
I would suggest NOT eating your exercise calories. In my experience, I believe MFP over estimates both the number of calories to consume and the number of calories you burn during exersize. If I had logged and eaten my exercise calories, I would have gained weight!
Even if the exercise calories are over estimated and the e.g. 250 calories you get for your workout is incorrect, you know for sure that 0 is also incorrect. So not eating back any at all is also guaranteed to be wrong.12 -
How accurate are you going to be?
If you are estimating don't eat them.
If you are weighing your food and tracking everything eat them.0 -
I would suggest NOT eating your exercise calories. In my experience, I believe MFP over estimates both the number of calories to consume and the number of calories you burn during exersize. If I had logged and eaten my exercise calories, I would have gained weight!
If you think MFP is over-estimating your exercise calories, the ideal solution would be to eat back the portion of them that reflects your actual calorie burn more accurately, not to assume your exercise is burning zero calories (which is what you're doing when you don't eat back any at all).7 -
melizabeth1995 wrote: »I used MFP years ago when I wasn't working out. Now I work out 4-5 days a week and also walk a lot at work. I'm wanting to lose fat and gain muscle. Do you advise to eat my exercise calories I've earned or leave them?
I personally ate back exercise cals from intentional exercise, but tried to include daily walking cals from commuting and errands and so on in my general activity level (you can also use a device like a Fitbit). If the walking is a daily thing, you might want to consider if your activity level should be adjusted and then log and eat back workouts.
Depending on the type of workout and the way you are getting the calorie estimate, you might want to adjust it down somewhat too. I started eating all of my running cals, but adjusting others down to about 75% or intentionally logging them as lower intensity than it felt. If I had been losing faster than expected, I would have adjusted them up. Some start with 50%, some with 100%, but the main thing is to adjust based on results or perhaps run the totals by others to see how realistic they seem.2 -
Exercise should be accounted for in you calorie needs just like anything else you do...they aren't some kind of "other" calorie.7
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I started out (this time) just eating 50% of my fitbit given calories, with my MFP setting as 'sedentary '. I didn't lose a thing for 4 weeks... so I decided to try eating... all of them. Counter intuitive? You bet. But I figured- at least I'll know...
And I started losing a 1lbs a week. It's not steady loss, but it is going. Eating 100% of Fitbits exercise calories.
YMMV but I, for one, advocate going for the full 100 for 4 weeks before dialling it down.4 -
In terms of how much of the exercise calories to eat... MFP has a minimum for men of 1500 calories a day. My BMR is about 1900.
If I want to lose about 0.5kg per week, that is around a 500 calorie deficit. MFP will set my target at 1500 as this is the minimum.
But if I want to lose 1kg a week - a 1000 calorie deficit - my target is still 1500 (only a 400 calorie deficit).
I burn around 3200 calories a day. Should I ignore the first 600 exercise calories, to bring my deficit back up to 1000, then eat the rest?
Or should I manually set my target to 2200 calories and really just use MFP to keep track of my intake?0 -
In terms of how much of the exercise calories to eat... MFP has a minimum for men of 1500 calories a day. My BMR is about 1900.
If I want to lose about 0.5kg per week, that is around a 500 calorie deficit. MFP will set my target at 1500 as this is the minimum.
But if I want to lose 1kg a week - a 1000 calorie deficit - my target is still 1500 (only a 400 calorie deficit).
I burn around 3200 calories a day. Should I ignore the first 600 exercise calories, to bring my deficit back up to 1000, then eat the rest?
Or should I manually set my target to 2200 calories and really just use MFP to keep track of my intake?
If you want to base your weight loss numbers on an average burn of 3,200 calories per day, then I wouldn't bother with tracking exercise calories (as they're included in that 3,200). I would set a goal of 2,700 per day (as that is a deficit of 500). If you wanted a deficit of 1,000 per day, then you would set a goal of 2,200 a day.
This would be what is called the TDEE method (using an average daily burn instead of tracking exercise calories based on specific exercise daily).2 -
melizabeth1995 wrote: »I used MFP years ago when I wasn't working out. Now I work out 4-5 days a week and also walk a lot at work. I'm wanting to lose fat and gain muscle. Do you advise to eat my exercise calories I've earned or leave them?
It's hard to add much muscle while losing weight, of you haven't lifted much before, there's a thing called "newbie gains" that you might enjoy. If you want to gain muscle, not eating enough will sabotage that goal. Exercising most days and walking a lot, you're burning enough calories that you need to eat more because of them.3
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