Exercise calories

liwo81
liwo81 Posts: 23 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I’ve lost about 30# in the last year with MFP and keep calories around 1400-1500 concentrating on protein at about 100g. My questions is about eating back exercise calories. I have not been. My MFP is set at active and calculated out to about 1460 to lose a # a week. I walk outside about 4 miles or ride my bike usually 6-10+ miles and that usually comes out to about 400 extra calories burned daily. Should I try to use some of those calories. It seems I should be losing that # a week or even half that would be good. I’m 62 yo menopausal female and track honestly and consistently. I do good to lose a pound or two a month. I am still about 5 pounds overweight at 150 an ultimate goal of about 130-135. Just looking for a little insight regarding how many, if any, of the exercise calories to eat. Some people say to cut but most people who’ve had long term success say to make sure you’re eating enough. I do try to drink about 100 oz of water daily.

Answers

  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,458 Member
    edited September 20
    I always ate them all, but you're going to have to run the experiment for yourself. We can't really answer your question, it depends on too many factors.

    Log your food as accurately as you can. If you used myfitnesspal to arrive at your 1400 calories, the site's calculations expect you to eat more on days you do purposeful exercise. Here's the explanation of how they set your calories.
    https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals

    Maybe eat back 50%-100% of the exercise calories if you're hungry. At the end of a month, look back and see how your success lines up with your Goals and adjust if necessary. It's an experiment we all have to run for ourselves.

    You don't have a lot of weight to lose, so expect it to take time. I was hungry quite frequently during the last 15 pounds of weight loss, so I ate every single calorie I earned by exercise. I would have chewed off my own arm at 1400 calories. With exercise, most days I was eating 1800-2000 calories to lose that last 15 pounds, and I still had hungry days...but I'm not you, ya know?
  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,749 Member
    I'm 67 and I eat all my exercise calories in maintenance. It keeps me from being over-hungry on days I am more active. I lost 50+ lbs. and have maintained that loss for about 10 years. As stated above, try eating back a percentage of the calories and see what happens. In my case I learned that I burn more than the norm for someone my age. it gives me a lot of flexibility. If you are not losing as expected, then eat less. If you intend to lose only half a pound a week for the last 5-15 pounds, then you do need to be really accurate in your calorie counting. Small errors can erase the 250 calorie deficit pretty easily.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,869 Member
    edited September 20
    You'll get all kinds of anecdotes about eating back X% or Y% and it worked for this or that person.

    What the research is saying, is that if you do a lot of additional exercise, the body compensates by decreasing NEAT while you rest and recover, or by becoming more efficient. So you shouldn't eat back 100% of exercise calories despite what MFP says, and frankly you shouldn't need to.

    Ultimately, if you exercise is consistent, you're past the point of needing to worry about this. You already have all the data you need. If you know you're consuming X calories and you're losing 0.5 pounds per week, then your TDEE is about X+250. Track your weight change, track your calories, and adjust accordingly.

    Btw, your exercise calorie estimates are off. This is another reason why people shouldn't eat back 100%. They tend to over-estimate. At 150 pounds and 3mph, walking for 4 miles would burn 277 calories. But wait, that's not 277 extra. You already accounted for daily calorie burn when you chose Active, so the net additional calories is less than 277. Sorry I can't be bothered to figure out more accurately what it actually is, but it's going to be more like 200 extra, not 400.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,458 Member
    edited September 20
    What the research is saying, is that if you do a lot of additional exercise, the body compensates by decreasing NEAT while you rest and recover, or by becoming more efficient. So you shouldn't eat back 100% of exercise calories despite what MFP says, and frankly you shouldn't need to.

    I don't quite understand why you continue to post this...let's see that citation...

    I eat a full 400-500 calories MORE than myfitnespal or any other calculator says to eat. I've been logging food and purposeful exercise for 17 years on this site, so I'm pretty good at it. I use a digital food scale, I even weigh my vegetables in grams.

    Yes, I always ate all my "exercise" calories on myfitnesspal. Could I be a Special Snowflake? Don't think so, I've read this same story repeatedly.

    No matter which calculator is used, there is a pretty significant amount of user error with the input, but the offset of lowered NEAT really only comes into play with a too-aggressive calorie deficit. I would imagine 1460 calories for a women with this level of output/exercise probably wouldn't cause a significant calorie deviation due to adaptive thermogenesis - which is what you seem to be arguing here. I think she'd notice other issues, like fatigue and hunger.

    She's going to have to run that data experiment.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,869 Member
    edited September 20
    cmriverside wrote: »
    I don't quite understand why you continue to post this...let's see that citation...
    Because it's relevant to the topic, and to all of us. Here are a couple of reads for you:

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/oby.23308
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S216183132300217X

    No, I am not talking about adaptive thermogenesis after long term high calorie deficits. I'm talking about the rest of your day after exercise. Say you do an hour or two of something intense. You may rest and recover deliberately for hours after that, which means you're burning less than your baseline daily estimate for those hours, and you may limit movement subconsciously for more hours after that via less fidgeting etc. This lowers your daily NEAT. This is a common sense observation I'm sure we've all experienced. Haven't you?

    Former pro bodybuilders I follow on YT talk about 50% as being a reasonable guideline for calories to eat back after exercise, and those guys have years of meticulous experience tracking this sort of thing.

    The OP literally describes a situation where they have inflated their estimate of exercise calories burned, which is a very good reason not to eat back 100% of that estimate when trying to lose weight. Don't you agree?

    There are several different settings in MFP for Sedentary, Lightly Active, etc. I could pick Sedentary and eat 100% of exercise calories, or Active and eat 0%, or Lightly Active and eat 50%, and it would probably all come out around the same.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,458 Member
    No, I am not talking about adaptive thermogenesis after long term high calorie deficits. I'm talking about the rest of your day after exercise. Say you do an hour or two of something intense. You may rest and recover deliberately for hours after that, which means you're burning less than your baseline daily estimate for those hours, and you may limit movement subconsciously for more hours after that via less fidgeting etc. This lowers your daily NEAT. This is a common sense observation I'm sure we've all experienced. Haven't you?

    Okay, so you burn maybe 25 fewer calories in the hour or two after exercise? Not really, because there is a post-exercise metabolic effect and most of the BMR calories were going to be "burned" anyway. Fidgeting for an hour? Maybe 20 calories? C'mon... that's a weak point.

    Not only that but exercise increases energy levels long-term.

    I absolutely move around more, and get more done when I'm exercising regularly.
    Former pro bodybuilders I follow on YT talk about 50% as being a reasonable guideline for calories to eat back after exercise, and those guys have years of meticulous experience tracking this sort of thing.

    Sure. That's super relevant to this menopausal light-exercising lady.

    Is this when they're in a cut? I mean...so much I could argue here.

    I am a menopausal lady and I've been meticulously logging for 17 years.

    The OP literally describes a situation where they have inflated their estimate of exercise calories burned, which is a very good reason not to eat back 100% of that estimate when trying to lose weight. Don't you agree?

    There are several different settings in MFP for Sedentary, Lightly Active, etc. I could pick Sedentary and eat 100% of exercise calories, or Active and eat 0%, or Lightly Active and eat 50%, and it would probably all come out around the same.

    I agree with you on this part. Sort of.

    I mean, when I first started losing weight I was using 600 calories-burned for an hour of Zumba or swimming. Was I actually using that many? Prolly not. No, I didn't math-out the BMR calories vs the strictly exercise calories - but I still lost the weight using my data consistently.

    I stand by my points that there are too many variables and she's going to have to do the work with the numbers. We don't really know enough here to be making the statement that you made and with which I took issue:
    you shouldn't eat back 100% of exercise calories despite what MFP says, and frankly you shouldn't need to.


  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,869 Member
    edited September 20
    cmriverside wrote: »
    Okay, so you burn maybe 25 fewer calories in the hour or two after exercise? Not really, because there is a post-exercise metabolic effect and most of the BMR calories were going to be "burned" anyway. Fidgeting for an hour? Maybe 20 calories? C'mon... that's a weak point.
    The EPOC effect is small, about 6%-15% of exercise calories, which frankly is noise for most people wrt calorie tracking especially given the inherent inaccuracy involved with estimating the exercise calories in the first place. The OP said her MFP is set to Active, which is a BMR multiplier of what, 1.6? Any reduction in NEAT daily can easily dwarf that small EPOC.
    cmriverside wrote: »
    We don't really know enough here to be making the statement that you made and with which I took issue
    I gave you a couple of citations that you asked for, which reference multiple studies. I gave you common sense rationale about how we may rest post-exercise. I gave you a specific example of how over-estimating calories burned and then eating back 100% is not a good idea for weight loss. So I guess we'll have to agree to disagree then.
  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 2,248 Member
    If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it so just keep doing what you’re doing. Many people, including myself don’t eat back exercise calories I just figure my weekly exercise into my weekly TDEE. Plus you don’t need to drink that much water.
  • nossmf
    nossmf Posts: 12,073 Member
    The Mayo Clinic recommends 2.7L per day for women, which is 91oz, so I can understand somebody trying to get 100oz to be on the safe side. What's sometimes overlooked, however, is how much water is already in the food we eat. So Tom is correct, the OP likely doesn't need to drink 100oz of water since a good portion of the daily water need is taken care of through food, but it remains a reasonable goal.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,617 Member
    First, I think we're in pedantic mode here, going well beyond anything OP wants or need right now in order to succeed.

    @liwo81, IMO what matters most is how fast you're losing recently. Now that you're down to the last few pounds (20 at most), slower loss is a good plan, and I think that's especially true if non-young. (For context, I'm 68, was 59-60 when I lost from class 1 obese to the healthy weight where I've been since.)

    Quite a few people here (me included) think it's a health-promoting plan (for anyone) to lose no more than 0.5-1% of current weight weekly, with a bias toward the lower end of that unless severely obese and under close medical supervision for deficiencies or complications.

    For you, that would be a maximum (at 0.5%) of 0.75 pounds per week. If slower is more sustainable for you for some reason, or you just prefer slower, slower is fine. If you're not losing as fast as that, and want to lose faster, then cutting calories is much more likely the answer than increasing them. (More exercise (within reason) or more daily life activity would be other options.)

    There may be a narrow range of cases in which someone can lose at a more satisfying rate by eating more calories, but IMO it's a tough bet. If you're feeling draggy/fatigued, feeling persistently cold, and some things along those lines - or if you just want to experiment - you could try it. If you do, I'd suggest adding calories slowly, like 50-100 daily at first, another small increment a week or two later, etc., and see what happens.

    Whether you get to any given weight loss rate (theoretically) "eating exercise calories" or "not eating exercise calories" is secondary to total calorie intake and calorie balance. The former's just a question of preferred accounting methods: Averaging exercise calories into a consistent daily goal on the one hand, eating more on exercise days on the other hand. The weekly average is more relevant to weight change over a period of time, and that would be about the same with either of those methods.

    Accounting method may not be a meaningless factor, but it is secondary. (Possible meaningfulness: I'm glad I figured out how to estimate calorie needs with and without exercise calories, because (for example) it's been useful at times when I've had to stop or reduce my normal exercise routine for a few weeks due to illness, surgical recovery, injury, or whatever.)

    If you're set at "active" in MFP because your exercise makes you active (not your job, home chores, or something routine like that), then your estimate already has you eating back exercise calories, in effect. They're just averaged into your daily goal, rather than accounted separately. Either can work.

    Best wishes!

    Use your weight loss experience to adjust your calorie intake, since you have a year's experience: That would be my main advice. Accounting method is more about preference than anything else.

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