Tired of this controversy...

stephreed11
stephreed11 Posts: 158 Member
edited November 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
I'm all for eating your exercise calories back. I've read all of the forums & articles about it, & thoroughly agree with it. It works out for me, because knowing I'll get to eat more by exercising, pushes me to do the exercise.
Anyway, I just ordered Turbo Jam from Beach Body. I was reading about it on their site, & I came across this paragraph:
"Performing regular Turbo Jam workouts will help you burn calories. However, your attention to nutrition and lifestyle will play a large role in how much weight you can lose on the program. As a simple example, you'll lose no weight if you reward yourself for each workout with 1,000 calories worth of snacks. One of the chief complaints mentioned in reviews of the Turbo Jam program is its total lack of nutrition or lifestyle advice."

We all know it's all about calories in vs. calories out to lose weight. "Health" is obviously about more than that. I wish people wouldn't mix the two & say that it's completely useless to workout if you eat all the calories back. Ugh.

Vent over.

Feel free to share your opinions on this. The controversy just confuses me so much..

Replies

  • 41degsouth
    41degsouth Posts: 40
    Generally I agree, although it may be that the point they are making is that the average workout would burn a lot less than 1,000 calories, so you'd actually put on weight in that scenario (even if there are some health benefits not offset by the poor nutrition in junk food)?
  • stephreed11
    stephreed11 Posts: 158 Member
    Okay I just realized that particular paragraph wasn't from
    Beach Body's site, it was an article about TJ on Livestrong. Still rubbed me the wrong way though!
  • IronSmasher
    IronSmasher Posts: 3,908 Member
    That's more likely aimed at the people that just do the workout and not monitoring nutrition.

    A lot of overweight people will start a new workout regime, and use it as an excuse to eat even more excess junk.

    Exercise is about increasing fitness, calorie deficit is for losing weight.
  • stephreed11
    stephreed11 Posts: 158 Member
    That would definitely make sense, but in this article they were saying you could burn up to 1,000 cals per workout. So I think they were just saying its pointless to even do the exercise if you're going to eat those calories back. It's just discouraging to hear that when that's what I do.
  • stephreed11
    stephreed11 Posts: 158 Member
    That's more likely aimed at the people that just do the workout and not monitoring nutrition.

    A lot of overweight people will start a new workout regime, and use it as an excuse to eat even more excess junk.

    Exercise is about increasing fitness, calorie deficit is for losing weight.

    This definitely makes better sense. I hope that's how they meant it. Thanks for your response! :)
  • Elleinnz
    Elleinnz Posts: 1,661 Member
    Generally I agree, although it may be that the point they are making is that the average workout would burn a lot less than 1,000 calories, so you'd actually put on weight in that scenario (even if there are some health benefits not offset by the poor nutrition in junk food)?

    ^^^^ This.....

    I suspect Turbo Jam does not burn much more than 300 - 400 cals - so eating 1000 cals of junk is not a good idea......I have not read the article, but it does not sound as if they say "don't eat a bit more if you exercise..."

    Personally I mostly eat between 50 and 75% of exercise cals - not all of them....
  • JulesKilvo
    JulesKilvo Posts: 61 Member
    I think what they are trying to say is that when you eat back your calories it should be in healthy snacks like nuts, fruit, vegetables etc if you are going to do a workout then eat back 1000 calories of cakes, chips and chocolate then you may aswell not bother getting off the sofa :-)
  • Captain_Tightpants
    Captain_Tightpants Posts: 2,215 Member
    There is no controversy, only confusion.

    If there's a calorie deficit at the end of the day, body stores (fat, glycogen and to some extent protein) will be broken down to make up for it. There's nothing else to it.

    Whether you eat back some or all of your exercise calories just depends on how much of a deficit you're aiming for. The reason people are told to eat exercise cals back on mfp is that mfp has already calculated a deficit into what you are supposed to be eating.
  • jcmk87
    jcmk87 Posts: 57
    Even when eating your exercise cals back on MFP you will maintain a daily deficit of at least 500 cals. Yes it would have been counter productive if you have eaten your deficit as the golden rule to weight loss is cals in < cals out, but this is not the case on MFP.

    The reason why it is suggested to eat back your exercise cals is to prevent loose skin and retain as much muscle mass as possible. Having a greater deficit will make weight loss faster but in the long run it will harder to keep the weight off as you don't have the necessary muscles to aid to help burning cals.

    Lift hard, eat more and enjoy life....
  • jcmk87
    jcmk87 Posts: 57
    Even when eating your exercise cals back on MFP you will maintain a daily deficit of at least 500 cals. Yes it would have been counter productive if you have eaten your deficit as the golden rule to weight loss is cals in < cals out, but this is not the case on MFP.

    The reason why it is suggested to eat back your exercise cals is to prevent loose skin and retain as much muscle mass as possible. Having a greater deficit will make weight loss faster but in the long run it will harder to keep the weight off as you don't have the necessary muscles to aid to help burning cals.

    Lift hard, eat more and enjoy life....
  • SteveTries
    SteveTries Posts: 723 Member
    1000 calories a workout? What's the workout; running a half marathon in world record time? Marketing hype
  • BrianSharpe
    BrianSharpe Posts: 9,248 Member
    1000 calories a workout? What's the workout; running a half marathon in world record time? Marketing hype


    Yup, hence the magic words......"up to".

    I belong to a triathlon club and our cardio/strength classes run 2 hrs. According to my HRM (and depending on how hard I'm working on a particular night) I'll burn anywhere from 1,000 to 1,200 cal - they're advertising "up to 1,000 an hour", be interesting to see if they can back up that claim.
  • Colofit
    Colofit Posts: 177 Member
    I know too many (heavy) women who think "I exercised today so it's ok to eat a tub of Ben and Jerrys".... Not what they have in mind! I eat some of my cals back but not all!!
  • kelsully
    kelsully Posts: 1,008 Member
    That's more likely aimed at the people that just do the workout and not monitoring nutrition.

    A lot of overweight people will start a new workout regime, and use it as an excuse to eat even more excess junk.

    Exercise is about increasing fitness, calorie deficit is for losing weight.

    This definitely makes better sense. I hope that's how they meant it. Thanks for your response! :)


    I see this happen all the time in real life. People start exercising and then give up when they don't lose weight as they think they are doing things "right" and maintaining or gaining. I mention MFP to them and they say counting calories/nutrients what have you doesn't work for them. Then I watch...a friend of mine does triathlons but "just can't lose weight" and she tried MFP for about 4 minutes and it doesn't work for her...but she rewarded herself for every workout with a treat and didn't log it because she earned it exercising and never logged her martini's, wine and beer.

    And to that. If you burn 1000 cals doing any workout, which I promise I would not burn 1000 cals in the workout, I just don't have those high burns anymore, but If I thought I burned 1000 cals because the website said I would, then ate 1000 calories of ice cream EVERYTIME I would be disappointed in my results. Disappointment in results lead many to just quit. I might be eating 1000 cals of ice cream but really only burning 800...and my results wouldn't be a rock solid body like I was hoping. Now if I ate 400 cals of ice cream and 400-500 cals of good clean nutritious food I would get my treat and look fab. The comment was worded poorly but in theory it was accurate.
  • ElizabethRoad
    ElizabethRoad Posts: 5,138 Member
    If you were tired of the controversy you wouldn't have brought it up again.
  • Jorra
    Jorra Posts: 3,338 Member
    If you were tired of the controversy you wouldn't have brought it up again.

    My first thought as well.

    The point is, the MFP program is different because a healthy deficit is already calculated. Exercising increases that deficit to possibly unhealthy levels. Eating exercise calories helps maintain a constant and moderate calorie deficit.

    Most people who try to lose weight on their own continue to eat at maintenance levels and need exercise to create the deficit.
  • texastango
    texastango Posts: 309
    I agree with you that "healthy" and "weight-loss" or "calorie-deficits" are often confused. In a similar way BMI is confused with Percentage Body Fat. Someone might actually be "unhealthy" by being over or at their BMI, but have a normal percentage "Body Fat".

    As you allude health is not just weight...it's not even just calories..but a function of many things. How we breathe, how our hearts pump, our kidneys work, and our brains think just to name a few.

    Healthy Eating could be defined by not only how much, but by what we choose to eat, and perhaps how we choose to prepare it, and when we eat it. Without openning up a pandora's box here (the above is a interesting discussion for a different blog rant), it's composed of vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats for starters. Too little of something can be just as bad as too much. Balance is needed in most things and the problem many of us suffer as human beings is that we are never taught perhaps the most important life lesson there is.....how to eat right. We do it every day, and yet when was nutrition stressed in elementry school, high school, or after?

    Exercise is part of the equation as well. It helps condition our muscles and heart and cleanse our bodies.

    So, if you're one of the lucky ones and perfect weight/body fat for you, and eating back all the calories with healthy foods works for you, then do it. For most, running a deficit baseline count and eating back all the calories (healthy) from exercise may not get them where they want to go because our system of tracking isn't perfect. We can't exactly know how many calories are in everything we are eating, nor how many we are exactly burning with exercise unless we have pretty special equipment at home and at the gym. So remember MFP is a guide, not an absolute. If it works for you, then keep doing it. I personally rarely eat back all the calories from exercise and the only thing that's changed in the last 4 months is my waistline...down two inches. My weight is identical. That's what I wanted......and "that's as far as she goes"....at least for now.
  • texastango
    texastango Posts: 309
    Cute, but asbolutely not true for the reasons I alluded to in my response :-) elsewhere. Getting off the sofa and exercising does provide for better health even if you eat back all the calories burned exercising with unhealthy snacks. You may still lose weight if your baseline deficit is calculated to be very big...or if you miscalculate how much exercise you do (are underestimating) or are wrong about how many calories you are eating to replace the exercise (overcalculating). But assuming all is right with the world, and you figured your numbers exactly correct, and you even went over your baseline deficit guideline calorie count...it was still valuable to get off the couch, because the exercise with hopefully give you some cardio benefit you wouldn't have had. I get your point, but it is too simple a statement to be accurate...enjoyed it though. LOL
  • stephreed11
    stephreed11 Posts: 158 Member
    To the people with genuine comments, thank you! To those who think I love controversy & just wanted to keep it going, I was simply stating that I was tired of hearing diff. answers pertaining to the subject, as it confuses me. Thanks for taking the time to put in your useless two cents though ;)

    To the helpful comments, I now completely understand the text the article was trying to use, & that I just took it "the wrong way". Thanks again helpful posters!
  • belgerian
    belgerian Posts: 1,059 Member
    I burn at least 1,000 calories on each run. I run 8 miles for about 60 minuts to 70 minutes depedending on the weather how I feel and terrain. According to my GPS/HRM and all resources I have looked at.
  • BigBoneSista
    BigBoneSista Posts: 2,389 Member
    I think what they are trying to say is that when you eat back your calories it should be in healthy snacks like nuts, fruit, vegetables etc if you are going to do a workout then eat back 1000 calories of cakes, chips and chocolate then you may aswell not bother getting off the sofa :-)

    This is how I took it as well.
  • stephreed11
    stephreed11 Posts: 158 Member
    1000 calories a workout? What's the workout; running a half marathon in world record time? Marketing hype


    Yup, hence the magic words......"up to".

    I belong to a triathlon club and our cardio/strength classes run 2 hrs. According to my HRM (and depending on how hard I'm working on a particular night) I'll burn anywhere from 1,000 to 1,200 cal - they're advertising "up to 1,000 an hour", be interesting to see if they can back up that claim.

    I will be wearing my HRM so I will be eating the appropriate amount of calories back.
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