Am I supposed to eat back the calories I burn while exercising

lilo4635
lilo4635 Posts: 1 Member
edited July 2022 in Health and Weight Loss
( I want to maintain my weight)

Replies

  • csplatt
    csplatt Posts: 1,206 Member
    It’s trial and error for me. If you aren’t hungry, don’t eat them back and see if you continue to lose. If so, start eating them back.

    Or vice versa — eat them but watch for weight creep.

  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    Yes.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    You should be accounting for exercise in one manner or another. Exercise calories aren't some magically different calories from your other calorie needs. I haven't used MFP's NEAT method in a very long time...I use TDEE which includes an estimate of my exercise needs in my total calorie needs. ie with exercise and everything else I have going on I need around 3,000 calories per day to maintain my weight. If I didn't account for exercise I would just lose weight...because I would be eating in a calorie deficit.
  • BuellerFerrisBueller
    BuellerFerrisBueller Posts: 35 Member
    If you're hungry, then eat something. If you're not hungry, then don't.

    In summer, I'm always at a calorie deficit. In winter, I'm always at a calorie surplus. It's no big deal.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    If you are calorie counting why would you ignore a significant impact on your calorie balance?
    Even if you are not calorie counting you need to eat enough for all your body's calorie needs and that includes exercise.

    The way MyFitnessPal is designed to be used someone should be eating back their exercise calories whether they are seeking to maintain, gain or lose weight.

    Depending on what your exercise actually is there are a variety of ways to get estimates including, but not limited to, the MFP exercise database.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,868 Member
    Yes, but note that it's easy to over-estimate calories burned from exercise, e.g. machines may inflate their estimates. Also if you burned 300 calories in exercise, note you might have burned 50-100 just sitting on the sofa watching Netflix, so your net calorie burn is lower than 300.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,454 Member
    Well as you can see, lots of differing opinions.

    Here is the Official Myfitnesspal explanation, from Help:
    https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals-

    Then you just have to run your own experiment. I always have eaten all the Exercise calories because that's how this site is designed to be used but more importantly because it works for me with surprisingly accurate results.

    You'll have to see if that is true for you. A lot of the problems people have are either logging food errors or just not understanding how it works.
  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,748 Member
    With the caveat that it can be hard to determine exact exercise calorie burn for some exercises (ie. how hard is moderate intensity?), yes, you should eat back your exercise calories. Otherwise, you will be undereating. For example, if I run for an hour, I burn about 600 calories. If I didn't eat back those calories, I'd lose about a pound a week. Since I want to maintain my weight, I make sure I eat the extra calories. This has worked for me for several years.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,598 Member
    If your weight stays steady (i.e., you achieve your goal of maintaining), you are eating back your exercise calories, whether you add them separately or not. (To add them or not add them is an accounting choice, basically.)

    To maintain weight, it's necessary to eat all of the calories we burn, regardless of how we burn them, and no more . . . on average, over relatively short time periods.

    If we don't eat all of the calories we burn, we lose weight, in the form of fat or lean tissue or some combination.

    If we eat more calories than we burn, we gain weight, in the form of fat or lean tissue or some combination.

    Only by balancing the calorie intake with the calorie expenditure can we hold weight generally steady (within a small range of water weight and digestive transit fluctuations).

    It doesn't matter how we think of them, how we estimate them, how we budget them, how we account for them: Eating all the calories we burn is the only way to maintain weight.

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