HRM+exercise calories..eat or not eat?

I dont eat.. want to lose weight faster.. I sometimes might go over by a little bit with exercise but they to leave the majority of the kcals untouched!

Would rather not exercise and stick to 1200.. than exercise and eat more kcals.. but thats just me!

i am interested in answers to this also!

Eat. Simple as that. Try eating 75% of those exercise calories back.

I agree with this statement. 50 to 75% . Theirs some days that i do 1000+ cals burned and I get a daily of 1700. So in turn I get 2700 cals or more and I will almost eat all of it back. I do these kinds of number more than 2 or 3 times a week and I feel if I am burning like that I need to refuel like that.

Eat back some of them and see how that works for you. I've had great success eating back at least half of my workout calories (200 or so calories). I've also done well eating back all of them one day and none of them the next...play around with it a bit and see what works best for your body

For me it depends on how much I have exercised and what my day looks like. Lately since I am recovering from an injury I've only burned 150 or so calories a day with exercise and I don't eat them back. When I was more actively exercising I burned 600-1000 and I did eat some of them. I find though that when I have so much wiggle room I use it as an excuse to eat bad food and to drink beer/wine which isn't the healhiest thing.

I'm gradually increasing my exercise and would like to get to 300-400 burned a day. I won't eat them on most days. I just make sure that I am at least at 1200 net calories for the day no matter what. But, if I needed the calories back that I burned I wouldn't hesitate to use them (lunch out, special dinner, etc).

I also think it has to do with where your weight loss goals are (as in pounds per week). I've got mine set at a pound a week after struggling to find where I was happy. I'd like to lose two a week if I can but the calories allowed on that setting were too restrictive. At one pound a week I have plenty available for the average day even with no exercise. So I look at it as the exercise I do getting me down lower to the 2 pound a week goal that day but by keepin the setting at 1 pound I have the safety net for days I don't get it in or not that much so I can still eat.

If my goal was at 2 pounds a week and I only had 1200 calories to start with I'd eat every single exercise calorie.

You need to fuel your exercise. Exercise is negative calories, it erases food you've eaten from a nutritional standpoint, so you need to eat those back in order to make sure you are getting proper nutrition.

Let me ask this, which sounds healthier to you, eating 1200 calories a day with no exercise, or eating 675 calories a day with no exercise? Because if you eat 1200 calories, then burn 525 through exercise, it's the exact same thing as eating 675 calories a day, because the calories you burn for exercise are calories your body doesn't get to use for nutrition and normal functions (your heart, lungs, brain, and other vital organs need food, too, since they are the priority, they get all of what little you have left, and your muscles and bones get to starve.)

Here's how it works, your body during exercise relies on glycogen which is stored in the muscles by the food that you eat. As a secondary energy source, your muscles also store small reserves of fat (and no, you can't see it, it's not why "body part A" looks fat, it's intramuscular, so you can't see it, just like you can't see the water inside your muscle.) So when you exercise, your body burns the glycogen, then burns the small amount of fat in the muscles that are stored.

Then, later, your body turns the food you eat into glycogen in order to restock the glycogen in your muscles, and while you're resting, the body transfers fat from one of your fat depots (the depot it chooses is based on genetics) back into the muscles that fat was depleted from. Now, if the muscles run out of both glycogen and fat (as in a long workout, or if you aren't eating enough to keep the glycogen stores full,) the body starts catabolizing muscle (meaning, it breaks the actual muscle tissue down and converts it to glycogen,) because it needs the energy NOW, and can't wait for the muscles to be refueled.

So, by not eating extra exercise calories back, you're basically sabotaging your exercise efforts. It doesn't help you to burn more fat, you actually burn less fat and lose more muscle, and losing muscle causes your metabolism to slow down, meaning that you lose weight slower, because your body is burning less calories.

So, in other words, EAT YOUR EXERCISE CALORIES! :drinker: <-- or drink them if you prefer.:laugh:

I also eat most, if not all of mine back. The concept of doing so seemed counter intuitive at first to me, but when my weight loss hit a crawling point this summer, I decided to give it a try.... and it really worked! Why not try eating some of them for a couple weeks and see if things don't start moving again?

So glad you asked this! I just started using a polar because I am really stuck on a a plateau. I am noticing at least a 100 cal less burn indicated on the HRM than the estmates I was using before. I would really appreciate anyone who has recently started using a HRM friending me so I can see what works for you and having more mfp friends is always a good thing :flowerforyou:

I'm with you on this one, I just picked up my polar yesterday and trying to today

It's pretty simple when you get to basics, the less you eat the more your body protects itself and stores fat. Eat good nutritious food, exercise regularly and you'll see gains where it counts. Your health.