Eating back the calories you burn excercising??

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  • MissLuana
    MissLuana Posts: 356
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    Note to MFP creaters: The eating back your calories question is a constant on the message boards. Please consider a mandatory "Eating excercise calories back, yay or nay" disclaimer and test for all people signing up for MFP (the test is to insure they're read the who, what, where and why concerning eating excercise calories back, not just hitting yes to finish the sign up). All beginning MFP will have to read and test on the information they read prior to their MFP account being set up...LOL

    Please don't mistake my sarcasm for negativity because I too asked the same question in the beginning. I just think that if one question/confusion comes up over and over...it should be addressed for the masses :yawn:
  • Chipmaniac
    Chipmaniac Posts: 642 Member
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    I asked my trainer about this and he said only eat them back if you are hungry. Until your body gets use to the exercise routine eating them will not help your weight loss. Once you are really into the exercise routine you should only eat 25-50% of them back.

    Me personally I only eat them if I am hungry.

    Practical and reasonable.

    :drinker:

    No its not. If you don't fuel your body properly and you are in a caloric deficit the risk of losing muscle is high.
    You're making a lot of assumptions. Who says she isn't fueling her body properly? Why is it assumed that the first 1000 calories of deficit will come from fat stores, but suddenly your body will stop using fat stores beyond that even if you are obese? The reality is not as absolute as the evangelicals on this site would like us to believe.

    actually I never stated that. 1000 cal deficit is too large for most people. Some loss in a deficit will be from muscle and fat. The larger your deficit and the less you have to lose the larger the % will come from lean muscle. In your case you are probably losing 0.5 to 2lbs of muscle per week given your stats and caloric deficit.
    Sweet! I never wanted to be a muscle man anyway. It's strange though. I must have had a lot of muscles in my face and around my waist that I didn't know about as both are shrinking a lot. Who knew?
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    I asked my trainer about this and he said only eat them back if you are hungry. Until your body gets use to the exercise routine eating them will not help your weight loss. Once you are really into the exercise routine you should only eat 25-50% of them back.

    Me personally I only eat them if I am hungry.

    Practical and reasonable.

    :drinker:

    No its not. If you don't fuel your body properly and you are in a caloric deficit the risk of losing muscle is high.
    You're making a lot of assumptions. Who says she isn't fueling her body properly? Why is it assumed that the first 1000 calories of deficit will come from fat stores, but suddenly your body will stop using fat stores beyond that even if you are obese? The reality is not as absolute as the evangelicals on this site would like us to believe.

    actually I never stated that. 1000 cal deficit is too large for most people. Some loss in a deficit will be from muscle and fat. The larger your deficit and the less you have to lose the larger the % will come from lean muscle. In your case you are probably losing 0.5 to 2lbs of muscle per week given your stats and caloric deficit.
    Sweet! I never wanted to be a muscle man anyway. It's strange though. I must have had a lot of muscles in my face and around my waist that I didn't know about as they've both are shrinking a lot. Who knew?

    You will be losing both as I stated, not just muscle of the 3 lbs I am saying most likely anywhere in the range of 0.5 to 2lbs would be lean muscle, meaning that 1-2.5 would be fat.
  • sa11yjane
    sa11yjane Posts: 491 Member
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    I posted about this two days ago a posting entitled 'point of exercise?' Some people didn't get what I actually meant, maybe I wasn't very clear, but I had some really helpful comments so maybe check them out. I get it now!!!
  • Chipmaniac
    Chipmaniac Posts: 642 Member
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    I asked my trainer about this and he said only eat them back if you are hungry. Until your body gets use to the exercise routine eating them will not help your weight loss. Once you are really into the exercise routine you should only eat 25-50% of them back.

    Me personally I only eat them if I am hungry.

    Practical and reasonable.

    :drinker:

    No its not. If you don't fuel your body properly and you are in a caloric deficit the risk of losing muscle is high.
    You're making a lot of assumptions. Who says she isn't fueling her body properly? Why is it assumed that the first 1000 calories of deficit will come from fat stores, but suddenly your body will stop using fat stores beyond that even if you are obese? The reality is not as absolute as the evangelicals on this site would like us to believe.

    actually I never stated that. 1000 cal deficit is too large for most people. Some loss in a deficit will be from muscle and fat. The larger your deficit and the less you have to lose the larger the % will come from lean muscle. In your case you are probably losing 0.5 to 2lbs of muscle per week given your stats and caloric deficit.
    Sweet! I never wanted to be a muscle man anyway. It's strange though. I must have had a lot of muscles in my face and around my waist that I didn't know about as they've both are shrinking a lot. Who knew?

    You will be losing both as I stated, not just muscle of the 3 lbs I am saying most likely anywhere in the range of 0.5 to 2lbs would be lean muscle, meaning that 1-2.5 would be fat.
    All without seeing me or knowing my body composition, genetics, build or even what weight I started at. You must be psychic!
  • Victoriav99
    Victoriav99 Posts: 260 Member
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    Sometimes I eat back my calories and sometimes I don't. It all depends on whether or not I'm really hungry. I won't eat just to eat.
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    I asked my trainer about this and he said only eat them back if you are hungry. Until your body gets use to the exercise routine eating them will not help your weight loss. Once you are really into the exercise routine you should only eat 25-50% of them back.

    Me personally I only eat them if I am hungry.

    Practical and reasonable.

    :drinker:

    No its not. If you don't fuel your body properly and you are in a caloric deficit the risk of losing muscle is high.
    You're making a lot of assumptions. Who says she isn't fueling her body properly? Why is it assumed that the first 1000 calories of deficit will come from fat stores, but suddenly your body will stop using fat stores beyond that even if you are obese? The reality is not as absolute as the evangelicals on this site would like us to believe.

    actually I never stated that. 1000 cal deficit is too large for most people. Some loss in a deficit will be from muscle and fat. The larger your deficit and the less you have to lose the larger the % will come from lean muscle. In your case you are probably losing 0.5 to 2lbs of muscle per week given your stats and caloric deficit.
    Sweet! I never wanted to be a muscle man anyway. It's strange though. I must have had a lot of muscles in my face and around my waist that I didn't know about as they've both are shrinking a lot. Who knew?

    You will be losing both as I stated, not just muscle of the 3 lbs I am saying most likely anywhere in the range of 0.5 to 2lbs would be lean muscle, meaning that 1-2.5 would be fat.
    All without seeing me or knowing my body composition, genetics, build or even what weight I started at. You must be psychic!

    I am basing it off your profile pic (your face looks quite thin already) the fact you only have 7 lbs to go, tells me you don't have a large amount of fat to lose, and my knowledge of how the body works with fat/muscle loss and gain. Then base the rest off of what you told us about your deficit and how much you have been losing that is why I gave such a large range of lean muscle loss of 0.5-2.0, if I had more info I'm sure it could be nailed down to a smaller range.

    Next thing you will tell us that if you had a 1500 caloric surplus you would gain 3lbs of muscle/week with no fat.
  • YvonnePtm
    YvonnePtm Posts: 28
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    I think that perhaps your calorie intake could be too low anyway. Boys aged 1 - 3 years intake is 1300 calories per day. It may be better to eat more during the day and less at night after you have done your exercise regime. You may start feeling tired if you do not have the correct calorie intake, Perhaps discuss this with your trainer at gym.
  • runfatmanrun
    runfatmanrun Posts: 1,090 Member
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    I typically workout at night and I burn around 500 calories a day excericising which typically puts me under my limit for calories. I'm confused about whether or not i'm supposed to eat again until I am back at 1200 calories or not. I don't understand the point of working out if I turn around and eat again. Also I work out late so am I supposed to eat at midnight???

    Has it been cleared up for you yet?:grumble:
  • dfsnell
    dfsnell Posts: 14 Member
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    Thank You for asking this question, I was wondering the same thing. Not going to eat them back...by the way, I like to work out at night also.
  • wendyjo3
    wendyjo3 Posts: 52 Member
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    To lose weight you need to consume fewer calories than your body burns over the course of the day. There is a healthy range for how far under you can be. You eat back your exercise cals to keep your total daily intake in that healthy range.

    That's the basic concept. Whether or not you need to eat back cals to stay in that healthy range depends on what your daily caloric goal is, how much you are exercising, and personal variable (genetics, hormones, etc).

    Well said!
  • llkilgore
    llkilgore Posts: 1,169 Member
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    I typically workout at night and I burn around 500 calories a day excericising which typically puts me under my limit for calories. I'm confused about whether or not i'm supposed to eat again until I am back at 1200 calories or not. I don't understand the point of working out if I turn around and eat again. Also I work out late so am I supposed to eat at midnight???

    There's no problem with applying exercise calories earned late in the day to the following day. Eat last night's calories today, tonight's calories tomorrow, and so on. Your body won't know the difference and you won't have to worry about the accountability issues that might occasionally come up if you eat first in anticipation that you'll exercise later.

    As for whether or not you should eat back the calories at all: Yes, I think so, but... You do need to be really careful that you don't over estimate the burn. A heart rate monitor is best, but if you're relying on MFP's notoriously generous database or on a fitness machine readout, then I wouldn't eat back more than about 2/3rds of the reported calories.

    And you should exercise to rev up your metabolism, for your general health and fitness, and to look good naked, not to create a calorie deficit for weight loss. The required deficit is already baked into the base calorie budget, assuming you've set up the software as intended.

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