"People on average end up overeating by over 250 calories per day when they start a cardio program and end up GAINING weight, according to the International Journal of Obesity"

That is scary! I have read similar things before, even an article, I think on spark? Saying that people were more likely to overeat after running, thinking they had burned enough calories for a starbucks muffin or some other such pastry!

Sometimes I do get a bit more hungry after doing a lot of cardio however you should definitely do it! It is so good for you! It reduces your risk for heart disease and it does burn calories but you do have to keep yourself in check and make sure you are not eating more than what you burned.

Oh, I wasn't saying not to do cardio! I was just saying that people seem to think they can pig out because they ran a mile ya know?

I think that the general population has NO idea how little calories are burned during exercise compared to how easy it is to go way over daily cals by eating a candy bar or a bag of chips. People think, "Oh, I"m exercising, this junk food was already burned off before I ate it!" :P

i'm actually more careful days i w/o hard. so i don't eat the cals i just burned. exercise is where my cal deficit comes from. when i don't exercise then i'm much more likely to overeat. it doesn't sound logical, but def. makes exercise super important.

I don't think it's just the general population--I think our bodies themselves have no clue. I get much, much hungrier when I up my exercise. It's like my body is saying 'wow, if we are going to do that all the time, we need more fuel" but has no real idea how much more fuel.

This is my problem with the whole "net calorie" crap and eating back your calories. It's ludicrous! I have never, never had a problem with eating too much with exercise because I keep them SEPARATE. I exercise for my health, and who cares how many calories I burned? I do not keep track of it. I eat within a calorie budget. Period.

Now if I'm light headed and sickish during a workout, I eat. This is my body telling me I've over done it and I don't have enough fuel. This has happened. But I think it's happened three times in a year of working out HARD 5-6 days a week for a year.

ETA: Where's that dieting myth thread? I want to add this!

I think this is completely true - just as you said, general population that is not actually calorie counting or focused on health feels entitled to a treat when they did cardio/extra cardio. I know I grew up with an obese mother feeding me these lines of falsities - Oh, I rode on the exercise bike this morning, so I'm going to have...

It literally wasn't until I started using spark people seriously this year that I have learned how ridiculously hard you have to work to burn what relatively is not very many calories. And I do realize spark people's fitness tracker is basically a calculated estimate, so I always tell myself it's probably high. But when I work out hard, sweat through my shirt and underwear hard, I'll log in to track it, and it's rarely over 500 cals. And yes, growing up as I did, working out like that before would have lead me to justify a treat that would totally undo all those cals burned - a blizzard from DQ, extra helping at dinner, etc.

I'm with Eliana, my calorie food budget is for just that, FOOD. Exercise doesn't go into my equation. I figure I'm not even losing that many calories from it, more like tightening everything thing up and helping my endurance and overall quality of life. That's benefit enough.

Although that being said, the first 6 months of my change in lifestyle was basically "wow i walked around the BLOCK today!!! I get 2 dinner portions" not even kidding...not even a little bit

I'm on WW and they have an activity tracker that racks up points during the week that you're allowed to "eat back." I keep my food and exercise completely separate like the other posters do and use that tool to measure how much exercise I'm doing. The more points I get the higher the deficit for that week!

gale, I wonder if they recommend that to keep people fat and coming back to the program, haha.

I actually know a lady who ate every one of her exercise points and consistently lost 1-1.5 lbs per week (45 lbs total.) Personally, I just like to keep the 2 separate and count exercise as a greater deficit and as a health benefit aside from the weight.

I have a friend that gained 40 pounds while working out 5 days a week. He never tracked his calories, portions, or anything and was not limiting any foods like sweets, fast food, etc.

Me, Exercise is a part of my plan but I don't count it against my food.

This is me! I have to be so so so careful!

Swimming is the biggest culprit for me! I gained 10 lbs back over the winter when I was using the indoor pool to swim laps. I didn't even realize what I was doing... thinking I was burning all these calories. I was burning a lot of calories but I was so hungry afterwards that I was eating them back and then some!

I'm with the people who don't use exercise to change my calorie allotment. My exercise is fairly moderate--I walk a mile and a half, six times a week. I figure I should be at least that active, so I don't give myself any extra calories past my 1400 a day.

To me, this error (overestimating the extra amount one can eat as a result of exercise) seems related to the error of overestimating the amount of "healthy" food one can eat and thinking one can't gain weight on "healthy" food.

In general, this is something that I think about alot. I know several people who think weight loss is achieved primarily through exercise. I think exercise is crucial to overall health and a healthy mindset (which keeps you accountable foodwise) but the calories burned from exercise really isn't a long term weight loss strategy. For me, 85-90% of weight loss comes from limiting the calories I consume. Calories burned via exercise is like icing on the cake!

I don't eat more on days that are heavy on exercise. I pretty much try to stick to the same calorie goal day in and day out.