eating your exercise calories back ?

MFP is set up so that you have a calorie deficit already, without exercise. So if you exercise, you should eat back your calories burnt so that you have the recommended deficit for steady weight loss.

HOWEVER, that does assume that
a) your calorie burn is honest and accurate
b) your food logging is honest and accurate
c) you have mfp set to the right activity level for you (sedentary, lightly active etc)

Personally, I do eat back my exercise cals, but not all of them. Usually around 2/3rds.

I look at exercise as a bonus way to lose more weight. I may eat a little more protein after because it does make me hungry, but if you use it as an excuse to eat more, you are at a stalemate.

To lose weight you need to be in a healthy caloric deficit. There are 2 ways to accomplish that

1) set your daily caloric intake at a deficit
This is what most people do, and is how MFP is designed to work. You figure out your daily caloric need (BMR), then set your calorie goal lower than that. For example.. if your BMR is 1800, you would set your daily calorie goal to 1400. That puts you in a caloric deficit and you will start to lose weight*. When you exercise you burn additional calories. These burned calories are not accounted for in your BMR or the calorie goal you set based on your BMR. So exercising increases that caloric deficit. The thing to watch here is how big that deficit gets. Every body responds differently, but the larger the deficit the worse it is for your body (the assumption is that the larger the deficit gets the harder it is to properly fuel your body). And this is why people recommend eating back exercise calories.

2) use exercise to create the deficit
With this method you set your daily caloric intake to equal your BRM. Then you exercise and burn calories. Those burned calories are not accounted for when you set your daily goal equal to your BMR, and thus you end up in a deficit. The size of that deficit is dependent on your workouts. You burn 75cals walking the dog and your deficit is 75 cals. You burn 500 cals running and the deficit is 500.

Make sense?


* this is greatly oversimplified and makes a lot of assumptions, but is good enough for this conversation

I ate mine back this week, but I am on 1200, so eating back to 1200. Once I go up to 1400 in a few weeks....i won't eat them back.
So far lost 1.4 lbs!

Your BMR is 1400, you net ~1000, is that right?

And your husband thinks you eat A LOT???? Seriously? 1000 cals is pretty low, but if you feel good and are getting a decent amount of fat/carbs/protein then I wouldn't worry too much about it.

As for not losing anymore, you need to find the sweet spot where you body is happiest, that is, where you are losing but still feel good/have energy and are healthy. I'd try eating a bit more for a month or so and see how your body responds. And you do need to give your body time to adjust... making a change for a week or two isn't long enough to see what's REALLY going on with your body.

If you are eating under 1200 calories net, your body may have went into 'starvation' mode. This happened to me before I started MFP and wearing a banded heart rate monitor- now I know what I burn and need to eat back so not to drop below the 1200. Do I eat them all back everyday? Nope but I try to be within 100 or so and if I spluge on something later in the week, those calories are there to cover it. It took me awhile to understand and accept the whole idea of eating the calories i burned off but after seeing the pounds start to drop again AND the energy I was lacking, return. I am a believer. Good luck!

I try to get my net up to 1200. But sometimes im just not hungry. So I really do have a hard time eating when im not hungry.
I really do want to do it the right and healthy way.

Try eating foods that are more calorie dense. Nuts/legumes are a good example. You'll get more calories in the same volume of food, so you shouldn't end up feeling like you're stuffing yourself.

Several articles I've read over the last couple of years have suggested that, while exercise can be of great help in maintaining weight, it's not actually much use for losing weight.
This has certainly been my experience.

I don't think this is right. Maybe you should site where you read these articles. This goes against every basic pricipal of weight loss and good health.

Wildly overstated by whom? Most people with at least a modest amount of knowledge on the subject realize that exercise is only part of the weight loss equation, and a relatively small part when compared to diet.

My husband just doesn't understand that I eat so much. He says thats why im not lossing anymore.
I thinking Im starting think that way also. Can anyone help me understand this please. Im starting to get tired of not lossing..

I try not to eat my cals back i just have them there as a bonus but I save a few incase I'm hungry when I'm out the gym but then I just have something light.

I recently stalled for about a month, have upped my exercise to approx an hour daily, and started eating 90% back, whereas before I was avoiding eating hardly any back.
This week I lost 2.4lbs, more than I have in the whole month preceeding.
I would also echo that the exercise is not just for the weight loss but to change your figure. Last week before the scales
showed a loss, I was still measuring 2inches smaller around the waist.
It seems that sometimes the scales do need a little time to catch up with the inch loss.

check when adding yor food to your diary somtimes the calorie counts may be wrong that other people have put on .check against the labels on the food that you are eating .