You can?

When did I miss this?

I try to keep my calories at 1450 every day, ESPECIALLY, on days when I work out.

I've been doing this wrong all this time?!

I'm not upping my calories and the best I can do is a pound a week loss. If I up my calories, I'll never lose.

Oh dear.

If I sound a bit panicked, I guess I am.

Did I really just read in another thread that I should UP my calories on days I work out?

I use a body bugg. I believe I burn, on average, about 300-400 calories per hour when I work out.

Am I supposed to increase my calories by the amount I burn off when I work out?

I'm so confused.



Help please.

Relax, you're doing just fine. If we eat back the calories we've burned when we exercise, then we negate the calorie burning benefits of exercise. You would see your calorie deficit wiped out right there on your BodyBugg if you ate back your exercise calories. I'm not sure why anyone would do that?

From discussions we've had in the past here at 3FC, it seems that most members are just like you and don't change their calories based on their workouts. They keep exercise and calories eaten separate. The exercise simply adds to the calorie deficit you're creating with your food plan.

Personally, I never, ever ate back any exercise calories -- never even tried to calculate them (which is just about impossible anyway) -- and lost just fine. I think you should keep on doing what you're doing.

Oh no, no, no. I agree with Meg.

This would be totally and completely counterproductive. That's the whole idea - creating MORE of a deficit. The more of a deficit we create, the better and easier our weight loss/maintenance is!

I would never dream of eating back my exercise calories. Any deficit I create due to exercise and/or activity is an added bonus. The more of a deficit I can create, the better.

I keep my calories consumed completely and totally separate from my calories burned. I eat what I eat and I burn what I burn. One has nothing to do with the other. I track my calories and don't even bother to track my exercise. I mean I have a formal plan for exercise, but I don't monitor the calories that I burn due to it. Because like Meg said, that would be next to impossible - and pointless, IMO.

IMO, the only one who should be eating back *some* of those exercise calories are daily long distance runners. And I definitely don't fall into that category and won't be any time soon - or ever.

For purposes of weight loss, it is a bit counterintuitive to eat back your exercise calories, because the goal is to create a big deficit. The bigger the deficit, the greater the loss, in theory. Two cautions, though...one, it is entirely possible to stall out your fitness and weight progress because you're just not eating enough fuel for your exercise level. Either you'll stop progressing fitness-wise (this happened to me...I hit a "wall" in increasing cardio intensity when I dropped my calories to 1200...back to 1400 and the wall went away), or your body will stop losing weight. If you are REALLY active, and you are trying to increase physical fitness as well as or even preferentially to trying to lose weight, you might consider at that point adding in some additional calories to fuel yourself. Certainly not all, though! At the time when I added back that extra 200 calories to fuel myself, I was burning an average of 800-1100 exercise calories a day per my heart rate monitor. Two, some people have reported that they experience a stall if they have too large a deficit...Jillian Michaels, for one, advises keeping a moderate deficit when you only have a 20 or so lbs to lose, to avoid plateaus and struggle.

Obviously, maintainers must be eating those exercise calories back, or they'd be in deficit and continue losing. But as it's nearly impossible to calculate what you're burning anyway (I did use a heart rate monitor and I'm pretty sure it was completely inaccurate for my body, FWIW), just monitor yourself, watch your progress, and adjust when necessary.

What Amanda did makes a lot of sense. When she found that her 1200 calorie level wasn't enough to sustain her exercise intensity, she slightly increased her calories to give her body more fuel. And I have no doubt that every one of those additional calories was high quality and nutrition packed.

What she didn't do was attempt to figure out how many calories she was burning and then eat those back. Even with adding some additional calories to support her exercise, she still was creating large calorie deficits through exercise, which is our goal.

Beth, if you're making sure that you're getting lots of nutritious food at your 1450 calorie level and aren't getting light-headed or weak when you exercise, your calorie level is probably just fine.

Amanda, I've had the same experience with my HR monitor. It's certainly more accurate than the calorie counters on cardio machines, but clearly the formula it uses is based on "normal", average-weight persons -- which we aren't! It's great for comparative purposes but as an absolute measure of calories burned -- nah.

Whew.

Meg, rockinrobin, and mandalinn82, thank you very much for explaining so thoroughly.

I'm not quite sure why this hit me the way it did.

So, I'll just keep on doing what I'm doing. I sure wish I could figure out a way to hold on the the successes I manage to achieve.

Thanks again, ladies.

Happy Holidays, too!

Beth -- Robin, Amanda and I would all tell you the same thing about holding on to your successes -- you just keep on doing whatever works for you for weight loss. You see, maintenance looks just like losing, with a few more calories. So it's simple -- whatever you do to lose the weight is how you'll keep it off for the rest of your life.

If calorie counting is your thing, you keep on doing it. Same with exercise, journaling your food, planning your menus, and all your other strategies and tricks for weight loss. How you hold on to your successes is simply doing whatever works for you for weight loss, every day for the rest of your life.

So you're already practicing the healthy habits and skills that will let you be a long-term maintainer every day! And you're going to love it here.

I eat back enough calories to keep me from feeling hungry. Some days I don't and that's ok too but overall I know if I don't eat enough I don't have enough energy.

What works for me, might not work for you. You have to play around with it to figure out what works.

I have to say that I DO need to eat back some of my exercise calories to continue losing. My body is one that stalls when I dip toooo low.

If I am eating say 1200 cals a day and then burn another 600 or 800 or 1000 (or more!) cals on top of that my body absolutely freaks out :P I don't eat ALL of those cals back of course, probably about a third to half whatever I'd burn in a big session. Generally good quality carbs if its been more cardio based.

I do lose this way. Its not fast on the scale but it IS fast in how loose my clothes start to feel.