Pros/Cons of Eating Exercise Calories?

Think of it this way...let's say every day you drive your car (your body) 100 kms (BMR). In order to drive those 100 kms you need exactly 20 litres of gas (calories). Now let's say one day you decide to drive 150 kms instead (exercise)...that 20 litres of fuel will not be enough and you will run out of gas before you reach your destination. There's no argument here that you'd need to add a bit more fuel than usual in order for your car drive 50 kms further. It's that simple.

And to add to that...let's say you refuse to give in, and decide you'll only put 20 litres in your car, no matter how far you drive it. You will run out of gas every day. Think of what that would do to your car mechanically! It would be junked in no time. Your body is no different. If you don't give it enough fuel, it WILL catch up with you.

But the problem with this example is that it's about a car, with few variables other than traffic and road conditions. Whereas a human body has a ton of other variables that effects how it burns or needs calories. And, while every car of the same make and model is going to have the same general requirements, people are very, very different from person to person and everyone needs to find what works best for them.

I have the advantage of having a BodyMedia Fit that I wear so I can see and verfiy my info on a day to day, or even during the day basis. And if I want to keep the deficit that I am currently looking for, then I can't eat my exercise calories, and I can see that clearly in my numeric output.

I tried for about four months to eat back exercise calories because everyone here swore that it was the be-all, end-all of weight loss. And I've spent the last four months trying to re-lose the weight that I gained during that period of time. After one other failed advice following (weekly cheat days) kept me stalled at the same weight, I finally did all the calculations that I mentioned in my previous post. And since doing that, stopping the planned weekly cheat day and not eating my exercise calories, I've finally lost almost all of that weight I put on, and am still losing.

Everyone also has to remember that no matter how MFP is set up to work, it's still a huge, blanket, generalization of data and information. Two women that are both 5'5" and 185 pounds with goal weights of 135lbs and the goal to lose ata rate of 1lb/week will put in those five pieces of data, and get the same exact info spit back out at them by MFP. Even assuming the two work out together, on the same exact schedule, there is very, very little likelihood that both of those women's bodies function in exactly the same way.

One may be successful and hit their goal on schedule, maybe the other one will lose for a bit and then plateau. Or one will lose at a higher rate than planned and plateau while another loses at a lower rate than planned but loses a higher amount of body fat and gets more slender than the other. There's really just no way to predict how the human body is going to work and MFP is certainly not a 100% foolproof plan for every person that uses it. That's why I always try to stress to people to not just take anything as black and white and to take the time to see what works for them, with MFP as a starting point/basic guideline only.

The BMF really simplifies things. With it the whole exercise calorie thing becomes irrelevant. You just eat less calories than the device says you burned. It's a different way if arriving at the same number.

So from the post above, i take it that mfp was prescribing too many calories for you? This is more an issue of a bad starting number rather than an issue of whether or not to eat exercise calories. In your case not eating them is just compensating for error in the net target mfp gave you.

I had the similar but opposite issue way back, where mfp's target for me was way too low so i manually bumped it up.

Posting from phone. Please pardon typos

After I did all the calculations and got my average BMI, TDEE w/typical work out schedule and subtracted my deficit from that, it was higher than the 1200 calories MFP had me set at. And that amount matched up with what BMF showed me as what I should eat daily to meet my deficit. So once I started just eating those calories while doing my regular work outs, I stay at my desired deficit on BMF and have been losing weight.

So what you're saying is that the MFP calculations of 1200+exercise wasn't enough calories, rather than too many calories? Could that be a case of not having the right activity level selected, ie sedentary instead of lightly active?

exercise calories taste better. it is a proven fact.

tigersword: thanks for the response. i really appreciate it.

It's often not as simple as our calculator's would make it.

For example, if you're eating what you calculate to be your workout calories and are still losing weight per reasonable goals, then it's working. On the other hand, if you find you're not losing enough weight, than maybe that 1000 calorie workout really isn't burning 1000 calories, regardless of what it says on paper!

On the other hand, if you're not eating your workout calories and losing weight too fast, then that's telling you that you need to eat more.