I am 3 weeks into lifestyle change and have a question -

You will get a lot of responses.

Mine is - do what works best for your body.

My mom has lost 94 pounds eating back all of her exercise calories. However my body won't lose an ounce if I eat them back (exceptions include days where there is extreme exercise... like an entire day snowboarding). Try different things and see what works best for you! Just make sure you are getting enough of the nutrients you need.

MFP is designed so you do, if you don't there is a good chance that a lot of your loss will be from lean muscle, not just fat.

I have so far lost 8lbs and am very proud of my accomplishment.

However, I am wondering if most eat their exercise (workout) calories?

Yes, to fail to eat back your exercise calories will sabotage your progress.

Simply stated MFP has already figured out your total calories you need to eat per day to lose 1lb etc. a week. That's WITHOUT exercise. You'll notice that when you actually add exercise in, the calorie limit goes up. Why? Because it's telling you to eat your exercise calories. Large deficits aren't really good to do because while you will lose weight, what kind of weight will it be? In many cases you'll lose lean muscle tissue which LOWERS your metabolic rate even more. Then you have to eat even less to compensate for less of a calorie burn to continue to lose the same amount of weight each week.
Be efficient. Exercise hard and eat back the calories. The hard exercise will RAISE your metabolic rate and burn more fat at rest.

Im sure you will get a lot of answers...but coming from a medical professional who asked several different medical providers this question...the answer was the same...eating back the calories you have burned defeats the purpose of working out.

Two days a week I play rugby, so I end up gaining over 1000 calories from that one workout. Usually because of that I eat almost all of them back because I sometimes get a negative net calorie

But on days where I'm just doing a workout like running on the treadmill or just doing something at the gym I usually only eat half of them back, but not all of them.

Congratulations on the weight loss!:flowerforyou:

Agree with your first responder. Do what works for you. If I eat my exercise cals I start to regain weight.

Like another poster said, it's all up to the individual and what works for them.

That being said: I'll eat my exercise calories only if, with exercise, I'm under 1200 cals/day. Because most of my exercise is at night, if I'm under, I'll make a smoothie to bring my calorie count back up.

but again, it's what works for you!

It depends. Usually, I eat back about half. I find I'm also hungrier the days I've exercised, so it's great to have them available.

I do go over on protein and frequently carbs when I do this, but that's to be expected. Those values would have been calculated based on your normal day, not taking into account your exercise. I also go over on water when I exercise. I kinda figure those are all good things for those days as long as I'm making reasonable choices. (Hopefully not eating chocolate cake to fill the extra calories!)

I've had great success with this formula... eating back 1/2 of my exercise cals if I'm hungry, not eating them back if I'm not hungry, and even eating all of them back if I'm *really* hungry. I am an RN, to boot, and our group generally tells people to eat back up to 3/4 of exercise calories. We do not feel this defeats the purpose of exercise... we feel the purpose of exercise is to strengthen and tone your body, boost your metabolism - a byproduct that will actually BURN calories more efficiently.

With that said, you'll have to experiment with what works or you.

Best of luck!

Being over on protein is just fine.

As far as the exercise calories goes, it depends on your body. In my case, I know that I have to net 1500-1600 calories in order to keep burning fat, so I absolutely have to eat my exercise calories. Other people don't have to eat them. Just experiment a little to see what works best for you.

From some reading that I've done, MFP sets the protein % fairly low so going over should not be considered a negative.

I eat some of them back, especially if it's a harder workout where I burn off at least 400-500 calories. But that works for me. You'll need to play around with it to see how your body responds.

Its a very contentious subject. Ask yourself this. If you exercise 500 calories, then eat back 500 extra calories, your net calorie intake/burn is zero, so what's the point of doing the exercise!!!
Personally I use the burned off calories as a buffer should I need the. I usually eat into them but very rarely eat them all back!! People on here will give you lots of different opinions, I'm no expert, but what I do works for me.

When figuring out how many calories to "give" you per day, MFP calculates the deficit for you as if you were not exercising...by not eating back exercise calories, you increase the deficit MFP ALREADY calculated. Whether a larger or smaller deficit works for individual people is obviously a very individual thing.

Edited to add: I know I didn't explain the deficit thing quite right, but the point is that MFP has already done that calculation for us. So it works (for most people) to eat exercise calories back and still lose.

Im sure you will get a lot of answers...but coming from a medical professional who asked several different medical providers this question...the answer was the same...eating back the calories you have burned defeats the purpose of working out.

Really? I find that surprising seeing that SO many people have success with losing weight by eating back their exercise calories.

Yeah. My weight doesn't go anywhere unless I eat around 1,200 - 1,400 calories a day. There is a great buffer zone when I am maintaing though. It's kind of a bummer, but it is what it is.

I lost about 65 lbs last year and did not really eat back my workout calories. The math of it is, 3500 calories = 1 lb of fat. Create a defecit of 500 cals per day and you get 1 lb of fat loss per week. If you increase the defecit, you lose more fat. Also, keep in mind that not all foods are created equally. 1000 calories of nutrient rich vegetables and lean proteins will leave you feeling better than 1000 calories of junk food. I'm typically over on my protein every day as I want to maintain muscle mass while staying in a calorie defecit situation. Feel free to check out my diary if you want to see what I mean.

I almost always eat all the calories I earn. I also almost always go over on protein. I used MFP the way it was designed, and it worked perfectly for me.