Eating Back Calories

kristin1125
kristin1125 Posts: 61 Member
edited December 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
What's everyone's take on eating back your exercise calories?

So far I have been eating mine back for the most part (some days even more), but I am toying with the idea of not eating them back. I also don't want to run my body down, but I wouldn't mind if the weightloss process went a bit quicker.

My calories are set at 1200 and I typically burn somewhere between 300-900 calories a day through exercise 6 days a week (running, zumba, volleyball, Jillian Michaels workouts). I have about 15 lbs left to lose to reach my goal weight.

Any suggestions?

Replies

  • McBully4
    McBully4 Posts: 1,270 Member
    @ 1200 eat every single one back.

    That's pretty low cals
  • AprilRenewed
    AprilRenewed Posts: 691 Member
    Eat them back. When you're burning that many calories, your body needs the fuel. Take it from someone who DIDN'T always eat them back. I became weak, my workouts eventually started to suffer.
  • kristin1125
    kristin1125 Posts: 61 Member
    Do you think I should increase my calories then? Maybe 1400 or something. Pretty sure I just let MFP do my calculations on where I should be for me.
  • reallyally1
    reallyally1 Posts: 82
    Eat some of them back! I went through a period where I was burning 500-600 cals per workout and I didn't eat them back; I felt tired, I was hungry all the time, and I wasn't as motivated to exercise as I had been before. It also made my weight come off a lot slower, which was a bit surprising. Now I try to eat back 75% of whatever I burn off and I feel so much better! I'm not eating ALL of my exercise calories, but I'm eating back enough to where my body stays fueled.
  • KCoolBeanz
    KCoolBeanz Posts: 813 Member
    I try to eat as much of them back as possible. The thing I have difficulty with, is eating more throughout my exercise days so that it's balanced. Typically, I eat the same thing all week, and then after I work out, I have this huge deficit in the evening.
  • docktorfokse
    docktorfokse Posts: 473 Member
    You'll get pretty varied responses. I don't track "burned" calories, so I don't eat anything back. However, my primary exercise is weight training, so most of the calorie burn is spread over my hours of rest anyway and are hard to calculate. If you do a lot of intense or sustained cardio, you'd probably want to eat back at least half of them.
  • DanaDark
    DanaDark Posts: 2,187 Member
    I am so iffy on this whole eating back your calories thing. Some arguments make sense, others sound ridiculous.

    So, I have come up with my own little rule of thumb...

    1. Eat above BMR
    2. Calorie deficit will be TDEE - BMR (TDEE will include my exercise for that day, no matter what it is)
    3. If the deficit is greater than 900 calories, eat back the amount.

    For example, my BMR is about 1500 (a bit high or lower depending on formula), and my TDEE is listed at 1864 while sedimentary, which makes sense as I have a desk job and also a long commute. So, I will eat at least 1500 a day, and no more than 1864. Thats only a 364 max deficit... not the 500 I want. So, I will exercise to get the deficit to 500. But say I REALLY overdo it and burn 1,000 calories in some marathon... now my deficit is 1364! I will then eat back enough calories to make it 900... which would be 464 calories.

    My logic is this: I have read the body optimally burns 77 calories per kg of body fat, in fat. For me that is 139.8 (my weight) * 0.204 (20.4% BF) / 2.2 (to get kg) all multiplied by 77. (I don't have my reference readily available). Which gets me 998.172 calories I can burn in a day to optimally burn body fat.

    So, overall, I do not think it is as simple as eat back all your calories, it is more about eating above BMR and creating a healthy deficit, as too much of a deficit may cause the body to stall just as it would after a few weeks eating below BMR.


    And as I said, this is what I have come up with... It may be completely wrong, and I am sure there will be some people that will say so he he.
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