Do you eat back your exercise calories burned??

depends on goal i guess i went from 380 pounds to 185 never ate my exercise calories but for someone on 1330 calories a day probly best to eat them health is better then rapid weight loss witch will in turn lead to binge days just make sure the exercise calories are close to accurate if you do eat them

I agree with @Reonnn and @earlnabby.
There's a significant margin of error in MFP's estimate of calories burned, or your fitness tracker's estimate of calories burned. Trial and error will help you determine where your line is in terms of how many exercise calories you can consume, but 50% seems like a good place to start.

cwolfman13 wrote: »

chan0404 wrote: »

I was given a calorie goal on MFP of 1330 calories per day. Just wondering if you eat back your exercise calories or only eat the assigned calories per day.

The difficulty here is estimating those calories realistically and with relative accuracy. A lot of people are also pretty bad about accurately logging their calories in. For myself, I did eat my exercise calories when I was using the MFP method. I never used the exercise database for anything other than strength training and that seemed relatively accurate to me.

For my swimming, I do use the database but I use the entry for "Swimming-Leisurely-General" instead of the entry for the lap swimming I actually do. It gives fewer calories but those are more in line with what actual swimming calculators give. For the water exercise glass, I only count 30 minutes even though it is a 50 minute class. The last 20 minutes are strengthening (often while floating) and cool down so I figure I am not burning much.

OP, it really is trial and error and you will figure out what works for you. The main point is to not undereat. As exciting as it is to see the scale go down fast, it is unhealthy long term.

I've always eaten my (carefully estimated) exercise calories, through just under a year of weight loss, and nearly 6 years of weight maintenance since. One thing I like about that, now that I'm in maintenance (and still calorie counting), is that I have a really good understanding of how many calories I need with or without exercise. Since my exercise volume changes seasonally, and there are inevitably periods when I can't exercise much (post-surgery for example), that's super-useful information, for me. YMMV.

As a general philosophy, I think it's fine for someone who has a slow weight loss goal for their current size (less than 0.5% of current weight per week, say) to let a relatively small amount of exercise (maybe 10% of maintenance calories 3-4 times a week?) increase their calorie deficit, make their loss a little faster.

On the other end of that scale, picking a fast weight loss rate (maybe 1% or more of current body weight weekly) then doing lots of exercise (hundreds of calories daily) . . . that can be a recipe for bad health consequences, periodic uncontrolled eating when it gets too tough physically, maybe even giving up entirely because it's too difficult and exhausting.

In between those extremes? Judgement call. How much health risk is a person willing to take, for faster weight loss?

Slow loss can be frustrating, but unless someone is so overweight that the weight itself is a health risk, that's pretty much the only downside IMO. Fast loss, OTOH, increases health risks, plus things like downstream hair loss that may be undesirable to people who are appearance conscious. (At an extreme, the health risks include gallbladder problems, even heart failure - things like this are fortunately rare, but can happen.)

Does fast loss guarantee that problems will occur? No. It just increases the risk. The risk increase is more important if there are already other physical/psychological stressors in the person's life.

This is a thing to evaluate individually, honestly, carefully IMO.

I only walk for exercise, and I never eat the calories back. I'm down 22 lbs since 3rd week of August. I eat 1200 calories per day but for a few splurges while traveling. Other than traveling, I have not felt an urge to binge eat as a result of denying myself anything. I plan meals pretty well and eat frequently throughout the day. I should include, I'm 5' 3" and started at 170 lbs.

I absolutely do because eating 1400 calories a day is no way to live.

Just think it you had used an average TDEE calculator instead of MyFitnessPal to work out a calorie goal then it would be a really odd thing to do to then deduct an average of your exercise calorie burns from the number given.
MyFitnessPal simply switches the estimating of your exercise from upfront in advance to after the event.

Hey calculator give me your best estimate of my calorie goal to achieve my chosen rate of weight loss - but I'll then deliberately eat to a different number. Doesn't make sense to me!

Exercise is just one of the many calorie needs of your body and if you are calorie counting it makes sense to actually try to count calories.

I lost 80ish pounds using this site's calculations. When I exercised I entered it into the Exercise tab and ate that amount, too.

Yes. Still do, 13 years into Maintenance.


I eat a lot more than the site tells me to these days.

Run the experiment for yourself, it's really the only way. The numbers work for a lot of people and then apparently for some the numbers here don't work.

Just stick with a system of tracking for a month at a time before making changes otherwise you aren't really getting good trending data.