So the whole exercise calorie thing ...

I think a big problem with the entire exercise calorie thing is that everyone doesn't get an accurate count of calories burned. If you use an exercise machine, they often tend to give a much higher number (ask around to those who own a hear rate monitor.) If the data you have is inaccurate - ie you're working off a higher number of cals burned than you actually burned - you'll gain weight eating them all back.

I do something entirely different. Since my workout is crossfit, I just feel like it's too difficult to get a good estimate of cals burned without a heart rate monitor, and I'm not going to go buy one. We just do such different things everyday, it's hard to estimate that well.

SO - I have my food diary set to MAINTAIN my weight (and it's on light activity - I figure that accounts for walking to work and the gym everyday which are each a mile away).

Then - since I don't log exercise because of accurate count issues...
To maintain my weight i get about 1900 calories a day. I usually eat 1700-1900 every day (I workout 5 days a week). I figure on days I workout, I create my deficit from my workout. On days I don't workout, I can either hang out below my maintenance number and still create a small deficit - or if I'm hungry enough and eat them all, I just stayed the same and won't gain weight.

This has been very successful for me. It also stops me from obsessing on numbers, and focus more on listening to my body and eating when I'm hungry and stopping when I'm full.

I also like this because it stops me from basing what I eat off of estimates based off of other estimates. I'm sure there is a margin of error of +/- 100 in my food diary. Sometimes you just don't get to measure and more importantly, I eat a lot of produce... have you seen all the different estimates for sweet potatoes and apples, etc? Hard to get that perfect. This way, I only have estimates in the food I eat, rather than in my exercise COMPOUNDED with the food I eat.

(**The exception is during the warmer months when I do marathon training - If I'm running 20 miles on a long run day, 1900 calories doesn't cut it!)

The reason why you gained, is because you're under eating.. when your already cutting a thousand calories a day to lose two pounds a week , burning off X amount during that 2 hrs at the gym, and don't eat it back, your body thinks its starving. When you do eat them back, you gain for a bit because your body is like Oh look food.. I don't know when more is coming, so I'm going to hold onto everything I got. When it gets used to the extra food.. it starts to let stuff go, and you lose again.

I eat all, some, half or none of mine.. and have lost doing all of it. Most weight that you gain is temporary water weight anyway, since it takes 3500 calories to gain/lose a pound. It also takes up to 4 weeks for a body to get used to a diet/exercise regimen.. which is why you can't try something for a week, see a gain and then say oh its not working.. back to XYZ.

I currently set mine to lightly active, and then add exercise in.. and eat that. On days that I don't exercise, I don't eat as much because I don't need as much food... and that works for me.

no argument here :drinker:

I'm not sure if the calories burned are 100% accurate so that's why I leave wiggle room.

Can we all please agree that eating your exercise calories back works for some people, and not eating them back works for others! It's a constant argument on these boards and nobody loses weight the same! If I ate my exercise calories back, I'd never lose weight (I tried, I gained) ... for someone else it helps them lose! We're all different ... that is what makes us wonderful!

AMEN!!!!:flowerforyou:

Bump.....this makes sense.

I have an HMR and have been doing programs like turbofire, chalean extreme, p90x and insanity. All I've done with eating exercise calories is stay the same weight. Now I'm kind of waivering between 1000 and 1300 net but because I've been frustrated, I've had two day a week over my maintenance days. Sooo once I'm back on track consistantly, will be able to report how not eating back the 500+ cals does for me.
Everyone is different.

It has to do with how you do your accounting and how accurately you count. No one is exempt from the laws of thermodynamics. So in this context when we say, "every body is different", it really means, "every body counts differently".