Eating Back Your Exercising Calories?

I have read on here that you should be eating the calories that you are exercising off. That's what I've been doing and it is working. Your body is probably in starvation mode and you won't lose weight that way. Good luck!

Use the search function and look up exercise calories. There are a ton of forums on this topic

You are going to get lots of different answers. Use the Search function at the top of the forum and you will find lots of discussion on this.

I personally don't eat mine back, occasionally I dip into them. Maybe when I am closer to goal I will, but for now I am fine with what I am doing and I am losing. Everyone is different.

I agree with BB55. Eat all or most of your calories to prevent your body from starvation mode.

If you calculate your BMR you'll find that you are actually burning more than 1200 calories a day so MFP has already worked in your deficit. I don't always eat back all of my exercise calories, but I make sure that I have at least a net of 1200. So it's really trying to figure out what works for you. Try eating all of them back, try eating some of them back as long as you are netting 1200 calories a day

So, let me use myself as an example:

If I sit around and do absolutely nothing all day, I burn 2000 calories. Just sitting on my butt.

In order to lose my goal of 1.5 pounds a week, I must only ingest 1200 calories. This puts me at an 800 daily calorie deficit. 800x7(days in a week) = 5600 calories...which equals out to about 1.5 pounds of weight loss a week.

If I work out, and let's say burn 500 calories...this is added to the 2000 calories I burn just sitting on my butt. Therefore, the total calorie burn for the day is 2500. If I only eat 1200 calories on a day like that...it leaves a 1300 calorie deficit (as opposed to only 800), which puts your body into starvation mode.

That being said, eating the calories you burn from working out is not canceling out. It is essentially allowing you to eat MORE and still lose the same weight.

Hope this makes sense...lol

I personally have been eating back a portion of my workout calories but never all of them. I typically burn 800ish calories 6 days a week and have lost 22 lbs in 60 days. MFP says to eat 1200 calories (which already puts me at a deficit) on days I don't w/o, and I usually eat back enough calories to have a 500-600 calorie net. Some might say that's not enough, but I never get hungry, I am eating good food and it's working for me!

Good luck. I think you just need to play around and see what works for your body. And be patient! Don't rush it.

There is already a deficit created in MFP's calorie goal, but I agree that it depends on you. It seems that if I eat all of mine back, I don't lose as fast as I want to, but I do try to eat some of them back, especially if I'm burnning 400 or more calories during my workout. I usually end up eating about 1500 calories a day and try to still have about 100-200 calories left when I complete my diary for the day. That way, the deficit already created (for me is about 400 calories right now) plus that 1-2 puts me at about where I want to be of burning about 500-600 calories a day. I use this website: http://exercise.about.com/library/blbmrcalculator.htm to calculate what I should eat if I want to maintain and then figure from there.

Personally, I don't ever eat my exercise calories and rarely go over my 1200 calorie limit. I am still losing weight, but my metabolism may be different than yours. Maybe try increasing your calories to 1300 and see how you do. Just make sure you get that extra 100 calories from eating something wholesome, as opposed to a "100 calorie pack" or something of that nature.

I just started and I'm having an issue not going over my protein, fat, etc. when I try to eat back my exercise calories; Is that just something that I will learn to adjust as time goes by?

Personally, I don't ever eat my exercise calories and rarely go over my 1200 calorie limit. I am still losing weight, but my metabolism may be different than yours. Maybe try increasing your calories to 1300 and see how you do. Just make sure you get that extra 100 calories from eating something wholesome, as opposed to a "100 calorie pack" or something of that nature.

Yeah this will work great for a couple weeks.... but thats too low for 5'5 and what you need to lose. It will stop.

Don't forget that your body burns calories even if you just sit still and do absolutely nothing all day long. That's where your first calorie deficit comes in, because just say you burn 2,000 calories just sitting around, and you're only eating 1,200, then you have an 800 calorie deficit regardless of whether or not you're working out. So, with that being said, if you work out on top of that and still only eat 1,200 calories, it would be like you're burning 2,000 calories from your normal body functions + say 500 calories from exercise.

So, say you eat 1,200 calories that day and it says -500 for exercise which gives you a net of 700 calories, but you can't forget about the 2,000 that you burn just from basically being alive, so you then have to take that 700 calories - the 2,000 calories that you are burning regardless of activities, giving you -1,300 calories. Now remember, your goal in this example was only to have an 800 calorie a day deficit, but in this case, you would have a 1,300 calorie a day deficit, so you'd be eating too little because it was only necessary for you to have an 800 calorie deficit.

Now, say you eat 1,200 calories that day and it says -500 for exercise which gives you a net of 700 calories, but then you eat back 500 calories, putting you back at 1,200 calories for the day. You know that you burn 2,000 from living and 500 from exercise, so that 2,500 calories burned that day, and a total of 1,700 calories consumed. Even though that's higher than 1,200, if you subtract your calories burned from your calories eaten (1,700 - 2,500) that gives you 800, which was your original deficit goal.

Don't forget that the number of calories you are allowed for a day is ALREADY a deficit. You don't have to go lower than that number, because it's already x amount of calories LOWER than what your body will burn in a day. So if you're exercising on top of that, you're burning more calories, and if you don't eat them back, you run the risk of having a deficit that is much too large.

Like said above, I would focus on net, and having around a 500 calorie deficit.