To eat your exercise calories or not... that is the ??

Bump....

Biochemically...your body goes for the energy in your blood first (blood sugar from eating) then if there is no food calories to burn it will go to burn fat. But only IF it doesn't need HUGE amounts of energy. IF it needs HUGE amounts of energy, it will burn the muscle because muscle is higher in stored energy than fat is (presuming it NEEDS that input.) That is why marathon runners and athletes "carb up" BEFORE their big energy expenditures. (so the energy is readily available to transport from the bloodstream into the muscle.)

Long story longer, any time those (blood sugar) calories are NOT used, they get stored as fat to be used later. So in my case, I was very similar to a Sumo wrester...eating everything one meal a day typically) before I went to bed at night...so burning muscle for my body to get through the day, then eating calories that just went into fat storage at night.

Ideally, you give your body the energy it needs shortly before it needs it. So larger meals earlier in the day...or a steady stream of incoming calories to pull from and then the body can pull from fat when the food calories aren't enough. The "be careful" warning comes in when you don't eat enough and then put your muscles into HIGH calorie demand by exercising. The body says pulling from fat is like trying to put out a house fire by pulling your water through a straw when what you need is a firehose! The firehose in this instance being the high energy cells called muscle. We want to burn the FAT *not* the muscle. So...keeping those calories MOSTLY available through food when we need them so the fat can be pulled to compensate for any shortage because that's all the extra we need. (putting out a match instead of an inferno.)

NOW that I am eating throughout the day, my body is no longer in starvation mode. It is burning what I eat plus some fat. IT IS WORKING. It is a new lifestyle I am building. SOOOO worth it. Cravings are reducing (thank heavens!) and I have noticed an increase in my energy.

So that is the mini biochemical side of it. hope it helps.

Different bodies react differently.

In my case, I eat back my exercise calories if I can. This weekend, I went for a 40-mile bike ride and I simply could not eat them all, but I ate 2/3 of them and felt like I had stuffed myself silly (and I still left almost 1000 calories "on the table").

If I don't eat pretty close to them, I have the following problems:

1. I feel really hungry all the time. I don't like feeling hungry. I tend to eat unhealthy things when I'm really hungry. I can't make rational decisions about food.
2. I feel tired. I don't like feeling tired. My exercise intensity suffers.
3. I feel distracted and depressed. I'm less likely to work out, and I feel like crap.
4. I get colds and other illnesses more readily. Then I drop my exercise and increase my food to get over the cold, and I've just suffered a setback.
5. My weight loss tends to slow down, or at least go at the same rate.

I'm OK with losing 2 pounds a week, which is what I've been doing pretty regularly. A 1,000-a-day calorie deficit seems to work well for me so far. I'm rarely super hungry, I feel energetic and clearheaded. I'm not in some huge hurry to lose weight - I'm trying to set myself up with reasonable eating habits that I will maintain for a lifetime.

I lost my first 30 pounds by eating very little and exercising very much. I was hungry. I got sick all the time. I was tired. Workouts were a chore. I was rude and difficult to the people around me. And the 30 pounds took about a year.

My next 20 pounds were done by upping my exercise, focusing on a balanced and healthy diet, but never depriving myself of food I really felt my body was asking for. It took me three months, and I felt pretty good during that time.

So, obviously, I found what worked for me and what didn't, through experimentation and honest (if belated) evaluation of what worked and what did not.

For me, it's become more about being able to CONTROL the pace of my weight loss than trying to rush it as fast as possible. I try to run as close as possible to my 1,000 calorie deficit every single day. If I burn off 500 calories, I add them to my intake. As I approach my goal, my weight loss will slow down naturally, and I will increase my calories to try and sustain a 1-pound-a-week loss. When I reach my goal, I will increase my calories gradually and set up an eating plan that will allow me to sustain my weight. The closer I get to my ideal weight, the less this becomes "weight loss" and the more it becomes "my lifestyle".

But YOU gotta try different things and do what works for YOU. If you feel healthy and energetic at a 2,000 calorie daily deficit, and you're losing weight, who am I to judge?

Whether you are losing weight or not, if you feel tired and hungry all the time, I can only say that doing your weight loss without all the misery sets you up in a better place to sustain healthy eating habits for life, and will reduce the chance that you'll want to binge-eat or give up losing weight altogether. I'd urge you to try it for a few weeks and see if it works out for you. You might find that the path to your ideal weight is a lot more comfortable than you think.

But I ain't your doctor and I ain't your mom. However you choose to approach weight loss, congratulations on your decision to do it, and I wish you the very best results regardless of your chosen approach. There are a LOT of ways to lose weight.

I think it needs to be stated here...

Unless you know FOR SURE (ie, chest heart rate monitor), you should not eat back everything the machine said you burned. They aren't that accurate and it's an estimate. That said, if you use a specific, for you method of tracking, then you can eat back more.

I try to stay around 50% of what I "earned" since I don't have a heart rate monitor and thus it's an estimate and I don't want to go over when I don't know for sure.

Also, I agree with what some people are saying - for women, you should eat at least 1200 calories per day AFTER EVERYTHING ELSE - so let's say your treadmill says you burned 300 calories - that means you get an extra 150 and you should eat that for a total of 1350 for the day - going up to 1500 is unnecessary since probably the treadmill isn't that accurate.

Finally, as a few people have said - don't stuff yourself just because you "Can" - if you aren't hungry, stop eating!

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/10589-for-those-confused-or-questioning-eating-your-exercise-calo

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/3047-700-calories-a-day-and-not-losing

eat your calories back. you will gain weight the first couple weeks but it will come right back off. mfp already builds in the deficit to lose weight. if your net calories on mfp is set at 2000, then your bmr is around 2500. if you eat 2000 calories a day with no exercise, that i 1 pound lost per week.

if you exercise and burn 500 calories one day, and dont eat the calories back, that is a 1000 calories deficit for that day. do this over a sustained amount of time and your metabolism will start to lower itself because your body thinks it is going into starvation mode.

the links provided will be a much better explanation, but this is the gist of it. i think eating back at least half of the exercise calories would be good enough

it will burn the muscle because muscle is higher in stored energy than fat is

Err, wrong.

a) Fat has 9 calories per gram, protein (muscle) has 4

b) fat reserves might be 50 kg, lean muscle is a lot less.

Bodies store fat, they don't store muscle. There's a reason for that.

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