Do you eat Your Exercise Calories
Replies
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Vanessa1969 wrote: »Disclaimer: This is just my personal approach as someone who lost a considerable amount of weight a few years ago using this website, but then gained it back after a fairly bad car accident... and then some.
Wishing you a speedy and complete recovery!! 🫂3 -
Yes, I "eat back" exercise calories. I have a weight loss goal that I believe is sustainable for me, and I don't try to lose weight faster by exercising - exercise is for fitness, not weight loss.
I think it is in general a very bad idea to try to "bank" exercise calories. If exercising makes you extremely hungry because you just increase your calorie deficit on those days, eventually you will stop exercising out of self-preservation. Undereating with exercise also impacts recovery.
There is a "but" here, though. I exercise around 7-10 hours per week, but I have set my activity level to sedentary because, exercise aside, I have a desk job and my lifestyle is sedentary. Since I log my exercise calories in my diary, I cannot also take exercise into account in my TDEE calculation because that is double-counting and would sabotage my weight loss.
There's no getting around the fact that, if eating back your exercise calories stops you from losing weight, you have over-estimated either your TDEE or your exercise calories.5 -
Not if I'm full. No reason to eat if I feel full.
But if I do eat some back, I don't go above my baseline (in my case lightly active) maintenance calories. I have no count days, so factor in that I might need some calories in the bank.0 -
mpkpbk2015 wrote: »Maybe this is a bad habit, but If I anticipate a meal that has a lot of calories, I tend to kick up my exercise for that day to balance it out. I'm no expert in the subject so my thoughts could be totally wrong. The one thing I have found out on MFP is that my induced hunger has significantly reduced when I record my daily intake and I stopped eating after 6pm.
I find that I sleep better also if I stop eating and drinking after 6 too. Have a great day. Thanks for sharing.
I sleep worse. Hate waking up cold and hungry at 3am!0 -
Really depends if I need to drop a few or gain a few. I eat at maintenance mostly and eat back 3/4 of workout calories. I cycle, run and lift (in that order). I can burn 1000 calories a day, If I did not eat back most calories I would loose muscle mass and become a twig.4
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dhfitness1969 wrote: »Really depends if I need to drop a few or gain a few. I eat at maintenance mostly and eat back 3/4 of workout calories. I cycle, run and lift (in that order). I can burn 1000 calories a day, If I did not eat back most calories I would loose muscle mass and become a twig.
Thanks for sharing appreciate it, have a nice day.😀😀0 -
There ISN'T a "fat burning zone". Fitness industry manipulates info to make it seem that people who don't exercise intensely enough aren't wasting their time. While you burn a higher percentage of fat at lower intensity, you ACTUALLY burn more fat calories overall when your intensity is higher for the same duration.middleagegirl wrote: »Oh my goodness. Way too technical. Eat your calories back or not. I do not. Defeats the purpose of all of my heard work. Why would there be a calorie and fat burning zone to burn fat and calories then???
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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Thank you for sharing this makes a lot of sense actually.
There ISN'T a "fat burning zone". Fitness industry manipulates info to make it seem that people who don't exercise intensely enough aren't wasting their time. While you burn a higher percentage of fat at lower intensity, you ACTUALLY burn more fat calories overall when your intensity is higher for the same duration.middleagegirl wrote: »Oh my goodness. Way too technical. Eat your calories back or not. I do not. Defeats the purpose of all of my heard work. Why would there be a calorie and fat burning zone to burn fat and calories then???
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
0 -
rightoncommander wrote: »Yes, I "eat back" exercise calories. I have a weight loss goal that I believe is sustainable for me, and I don't try to lose weight faster by exercising - exercise is for fitness, not weight loss.
I think it is in general a very bad idea to try to "bank" exercise calories. If exercising makes you extremely hungry because you just increase your calorie deficit on those days, eventually you will stop exercising out of self-preservation. Undereating with exercise also impacts recovery.
There is a "but" here, though. I exercise around 7-10 hours per week, but I have set my activity level to sedentary because, exercise aside, I have a desk job and my lifestyle is sedentary. Since I log my exercise calories in my diary, I cannot also take exercise into account in my TDEE calculation because that is double-counting and would sabotage my weight loss.
There's no getting around the fact that, if eating back your exercise calories stops you from losing weight, you have over-estimated either your TDEE or your exercise calories.
Thank you for sharing, have a great day.0 -
dhfitness1969 wrote: »Really depends if I need to drop a few or gain a few. I eat at maintenance mostly and eat back 3/4 of workout calories. I cycle, run and lift (in that order). I can burn 1000 calories a day, If I did not eat back most calories I would loose muscle mass and become a twig.
Thanks for sharing have a great day.0 -
There ISN'T a "fat burning zone". Fitness industry manipulates info to make it seem that people who don't exercise intensely enough aren't wasting their time. While you burn a higher percentage of fat at lower intensity, you ACTUALLY burn more fat calories overall when your intensity is higher for the same duration.middleagegirl wrote: »Oh my goodness. Way too technical. Eat your calories back or not. I do not. Defeats the purpose of all of my heard work. Why would there be a calorie and fat burning zone to burn fat and calories then???
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
The bold part isn't true, but the rest is worth listening to.
Any exercise that takes more than about 15 seconds "burns" a mix of fat and carbs. The lower the intensity you exercise at, the more of that energy comes from fat. Higher intensity burns mostly carbs. Carbs give you lots of energy quickly, but you can't store that much of them, and you can't get them out of food very quickly. Even skinny people have more fat to use as energy than they'll ever need.
Zones are basically ranges of heart rates, one of the lower ones is the fat burning zone. If you're running a 100 yard dash you want to go all out, and burn almost all carbs. You can't do that running a marathon, you'll run out of carbs (glycogen) and bonk. So if you're running a marathon, you need to spend most of the time in the fat burning zone. In order to finish.
This is an everyday thing for all endurance athletes everywhere in the world since we've been human.
I hope knowing a little of the background helps. 🙂2 -
I generally eat back some but not all. I also give a 10% or so as a cushion and this seems to work as On really big exercise days, like 2-4 hours on the bike, I don’t even come close to eating back.1
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LtHammerhead wrote: »I generally eat back some but not all. I also give a 10% or so as a cushion and this seems to work as On really big exercise days, like 2-4 hours on the bike, I don’t even come close to eating back.
Thank you so much for sharing, have a great day.0 -
Wearing a hrm I learned the estimates that MFP provides aren't accurate for me anyway. Wear a heart rate monitor and use those calories to add to the tracker instead of the activity selection here.0
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MauiCinnamon wrote: »Wearing a hrm I learned the estimates that MFP provides aren't accurate for me anyway. Wear a heart rate monitor and use those calories to add to the tracker instead of the activity selection here.
Heart rate monitors are likely to give very inaccurate estimates for some things, such as strength training or interval workouts, among others.
They measure heartbeats, and estimate calories. The two are indirectly and imperfectly related via oxygen consumption, for cardiovascular exercise. They're not magically accurate. They're kinda OK for some things, possibly the best available but still not great option for others.
The specific tech info in this is out of date now, but the concepts are still completely applicable:
https://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view?id=the-real-facts-about-hrms-and-calories-what-you-need-to-know-before-purchasing-an-hrm-or-using-one-21472
The better fitness trackers these days don't use heart rate to estimate every type of exercise.3
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