Why you should eat your exercise calories

My personal trainer told me that what MFP gave me for my personal training class was not accurate. He said it was too high. To get an accurate court I needed a Heart Rate Monitor. I don't have one and probably won't be getting one anytime soon. So what I do is I add my exercise but I don't add the whole hour I only add 1/2 hour and he said to never ever go below 1200 calories and to Yes - eat back my exercise calories, and to eat the right foods, ex. carbs before class and protein after class. Exercise alone is so important for health reasons not just losing weight, heart health, cholesteral health, diabetes health, etc.

I have gone from doing almost nothing in about 1 1/2 years to doing a personal training class 3 days a week and I know that has got to be better for me overall then doing nothing.

I think each person's body make up is different, especially for women depending on their age. I know I used to be able to drop 10 lbs in a couple weeks by limiting my food and working out, now it takes more like 10 weeks to lose 10 lbs!

I think the OP here is trying to say that if you limit your calorie intake too much even if you are working out, you will most likely stall in your weight loss.

It is different for each person. Someone trying to soapbox how all people should do this one thing is pretentious.

I put in an hour of cardio every day 6 times a week. That's roughly 5-6 miles of running or eliptical a day, or 25-30 miles a week. My goal burn is 6000 calories a week.

If I eat my calories back, I don't lose weight.

If I don't eat my calories back, I lose what I'm supposed to lose.

If I eat some of my calories back, I may or may not lose weight depending on how my body feels at the time relational to saturn's axiom tilt compared with the cross nebula of EB192.

In short: I try not to eat my calories back because it gives me the best results and always has. There are some people who are the reverse of me. That's perfectly ok too.

Note: I do not starve myself. I eat 1700-2000 calories a day.

If you gain by eating them back then either you have a slow metabolism, are under estimating what you eat, or over estimating what you burn. If you are tracking everything with any degree of accuracy and your BMR and activity level on MFP are correct then you must eat 100% of your exercise calories back in order to lose your weekly goal amount of weight.

With the amount of cardio you are doing there is a good change you are burning a lot of lean muscle away which will further lower your metabolism. I eat 1900-2200 cals/day and don't gain and my maintenance is arount 1900, the extra 200-300 accounts for exercise.

For those that don't want to eat your exercise calories back you should be setting your activity level much higher to account for exercise that way. Instead of sedentary put in active, this will give you more cals to fuel your workouts and if you do this you should not eat the exercise calories back. This is the way nutritionist and doctors set your caloric intake and if you set the proper weekly weight loss goal for your stats you will always be higher than 1200 cals unless your are 5 foot nothing and 100 and nothing pounds.

great post ! common sense should always prevail
GREAT discussion and information!!! Ya'll rock!

Its been touched on here but I think it is crucial to the issue. Especially when you are eating back ALL your calories. I think eating back all of your exercise calories can be difficult advice especially for newbies. Not because the science and mathematics of it doesn't make sense. I think it makes sense and I believe in a starvation mode. I think it is difficult advice because it is HARD to ACCURATELY calculate your calories in vs. calories out.

1. Track calories in carefully. Are you really eating *just* a tablespoon of peanut butter - better yet I see people recording they had a PB sandwich with 1 TEASPOON of PB. Really??? 1 tsp how in the world did you spread it on??? Was that apple really a small 80 calorie apple? Those giant fuji apples can be >120 calories a pop - that's 50% more. Now I'm not saying you are going to get fat eating apples but it applies to other areas as well. There is wonderful blog www.freewebs.com/goingskiing/plateaubusters of a lady (who has done a lot of research on many things including portion sizes) She even went to McD's and ordered a small fry took it home and weighed it. The website says small order weigh 90g = 150 calories. Her small order actually weight 30% more and thus 30% more calories (256cal).

In one study she cites, a bunch of registered dietitians were asked to keep a food diary. Even registered dietitians UNDERreported their calories by 10%. What about studies on the average dieter - the average was to under report by 29%.


2. Track Calories burned carefully. This one is hard. HRM's aren't 100% but neither are MFP's exercise calculators, and those calorie calculators on the cardio machines - fuhgetaboutit! In almost all cases, these tools OVERestimate your calorie burn. Yesterday I saw where someone said they burned 400 calories doing 10 minutes of exercise (I'm hoping that was a mistake because I'm not buying it). Ideas to help, set your HRM for a lower weight than you actually are. Round down your numbers.

Or like me... I eat back roughly half of my exercise calories to make up for my errors. I'm not perfect. I leave that slightly larger deficit as "insurance" to cover mistakes - is my ACTUAL deficit really that large - probably not. I might have forgotten to record that my teaspoon of EVOO actually overflowed a little, I didn't actually weigh my grapefruit to make sure it was the textbook size (a lot of these calorie guides were made years ago and produce was smaller - produce has gotten bigger with advances in agricultural practices), I wore my HRM but it might have not been 100%, was that soft serve ice cream cone that was supposed to be a 150 calorie treat really the standard 150 calorie size - it sure looked HUGE

If all else fails, let weight loss be your guide! Try it both ways and see what happens.

I posted this a while ago, but I have been seeing more and more new members asking whether or not they should be eating them back.

Short answer: YES!

Here is why: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/why-big-caloric-deficits-and-lots-of-activity-can-hurt-fat-loss.html

MFP has already created a deficit for you. When you don't eat your exercise calories back you are creating an even larger deficit which can cause you to stop losing. I strongly suggest you to read the link I provided for details!

It is different for each person. Someone trying to soapbox how all people should do this one thing is pretentious.

I put in an hour of cardio every day 6 times a week. That's roughly 5-6 miles of running or eliptical a day, or 25-30 miles a week. My goal burn is 6000 calories a week.

If I eat my calories back, I don't lose weight.

If I don't eat my calories back, I lose what I'm supposed to lose.

If I eat some of my calories back, I may or may not lose weight depending on how my body feels at the time relational to saturn's axiom tilt compared with the cross nebula of EB192.

In short: I try not to eat my calories back because it gives me the best results and always has. There are some people who are the reverse of me. That's perfectly ok too.

Note: I do not starve myself. I eat 1700-2000 calories a day.

If you gain by eating them back then either you have a slow metabolism, are under estimating what you eat, or over estimating what you burn. If you are tracking everything with any degree of accuracy and your BMR and activity level on MFP are correct then you must eat 100% of your exercise calories back in order to lose your weekly goal amount of weight.

With the amount of cardio you are doing there is a good change you are burning a lot of lean muscle away which will further lower your metabolism. I eat 1900-2200 cals/day and don't gain and my maintenance is arount 1900, the extra 200-300 accounts for exercise.

For those that don't want to eat your exercise calories back you should be setting your activity level much higher to account for exercise that way. Instead of sedentary put in active, this will give you more cals to fuel your workouts and if you do this you should not eat the exercise calories back. This is the way nutritionist and doctors set your caloric intake and if you set the proper weekly weight loss goal for your stats you will always be higher than 1200 cals unless your are 5 foot nothing and 100 and nothing pounds.

My metabolism is 20% slower than normal and I have to account for that. This was confirmed after several months of study and finding what numbers work for me and involved using an HRM (MFP states I burn over 1000 calories if I run 6 miles but I actually only burn 750; MFP often times is wrong when it comes to calories burned and seems to use a base average)

My non-active BMR is 1900 calories. For a 220 lb guy it should be between 2200 and 2400.

In addition to my cardio I also do about 180-240 minutes of strength training per week.

I am a former wrestler/pro-wrestler so gyms and nutrionists etc are not new concepts for me.