Why would you eat exercise calories?

I don't eat them for all my exercise calories. Just the ones where I get a good burn and feel extra hungry. If you don't stay close to the calories MFP sets for you to loose, I think you have more chance to Plateau. I have lost weight eating mine.

I eat my exercise calories and I still lose. I eat anywhere between 1800 to 2000 cal total and I net an average of 1490 calories a week. Here is what helped me understand "eating my exercise cals":

My activity level (excluding exercise; this is important) is sedentary because I work a desk job. MFP calculated my Total Daily Energy Expenditure to be 1760 calories. This means to maintain my current weight I must stay at 1760 calories.

Now I have set myself to lose 0.5lb per week because I'm getting pretty lean and I want to focus on reduce body fat while maintaining muscle. MFP assigned me 1490 calories per day. A deficit of 250 calories per day. Now I work out ALOT. 6 days a week for 1 to 2 hours. I can burn an additional 500 to 1000 calories on those days.

I use a Polar FT4 HRM and it has been a godsend because I can know for sure what I burn.

For example, I went to zumba today and burned 554 calories. My total calorie burn is no longer 1760...it is now 2311 (1760+551). It is very important to me to maintain my deficit. I don't want to lose more than 0.5 lb per week. So my calorie goal for a 0.5 lb loss per week is now 2061 (2311-250). So in essence, I must eat back my "exercise calories". I really don't like how it sounds because it seems like you are eating away all your hard work but if you don't fuel your body properly you run the risk of stalling your weight loss. Now I always leave a little room for error. So I always leave about 100 to 150 calories for cushion.

I've been losing about 0.5 to 0.75 lbs per week. The key to making this work is making sure your activity level reflects your normal life not including exercise. Then you can add in exercise.

You can, as an alternative, set your activity level to include exercise. For example, active or very active with exercise. MFP will give more calories to eat. In this case you don't log your exercise and you wouldnt have to eat them back.

My settings are sedentary and I add in my exercise cals. I eat a average of 1800 to 1900 cals per day and burn an average of 400 calories per day through exercise (2800 cal per week). I net between 1400 to 1500.

BUT If I change my activity level settings to very active to include my exercise....MFP will give me 2152 as my TDEE and a calorie goal of 1902 to lose 1/2 per week. IN this case I wont "eat back my exercise cals". The math turns out to be the same.

Hope this helps

I dont eat mine back either. I think it works for some people to eat some/all of their calories back but not for others. Everyone's body is different.

I eat a lot of them almost every day and I've continued to consistently lose weight. I actually lose faster when I eat more of them. Plus, I'm starving when I don't eat them, which makes sense, because I would net less than 1200 every day if I didn't eat them back.

http://shouldieatmyexercisecalories.com/

Haha

I appreciate these explanations. I hit a plateau and when I started eating my exercise calories I got off the plateau. Thanks for the info.

http://shouldieatmyexercisecalories.com/

Haha

Definitely!!!:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Sue x

lol sorry but this will make u think again........been on here three weeks it say i should eat 2600 to maintain my current weight. now i can only eat around 1700 on a good day or i feel sick if i eat more...now in saying that i burn on average 900cals a day and in 3 weeks i have lost 8.8 kgs and i dont eat my cals back that i burn........now i have spoke to a few personal trainers on this topic and they say what the site says is true but in turn what im doin by eating less then is reccomended im now teaching my body to burn fat that is stored instead of storing it......the funny thing is we had a week of rain last week and i couldnt do my normal 20klm a day ride (didnt want to get wet) and i lost more weight when i didnt do exercise then when i did. now i did eat less that week then i normally do but also lost more......i rang 1 personal trainer and he said the reason for this is because my body had gone into FAT BURNING MODE from doing over 100klm a week on my bike and it would stay in that mode for a week or so if i dindt do any riding....ive now started riding again and it hurts and they say its because my body has now gone back into storage mode again and i'll prob put some back on for the next few weeks and the start losing it again..........dont worry its confused me as well

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/376036-eat-exercise-calories

Look at the second page