Hey hope I posted this right..Do any of you eat back your calories when you exercise> How does that work? Do I have to eat back my calories and if I do how do I figure it out? Thanks and I hope I make sense..LOL
I allow myself a bit more calories when I exercise. The danger here is overestimating how much you've burned, but I generally allow myself 100 to 200 extra depending on the intensity of the workout - sometimes more if I really really pushed myself. The site I use to log my food automatically puts my logged exercise into my daily allowance, but I always lower what they give me for the exercises just to be safe.
I know a lot of people who swear by eating their exercise calories, and others who say they cannot lose weight if they do. So it's really just an individual thing. If you're not doing crazy amounts of exercise then I don't think it would really matter, but make sure if you are working out super hard that you don't eat too little. I say just play around with it and find what works for your body.
I do not eat back my calories. However, there have been 2 times when I increased my exercise and experienced a dramatic increase in my hunger. When this persisted for over a week, I upped my calories by 100-200 a day (I exercise every day). I've since backed my calories back down, as that hunger seemed to subside or perhaps my body got smaller so my BMR went down, canceling out the increased burn from the exercise.
My experience similar to Shmead's. I don't eat them back on purpose, but my daily average calories of 1500 moved up to 1600 once my exercise got up to one hour (or more) per day.
I eat back my calories, but I experimented with how I did that - I can eat all of them back, but I am always under my weekly calorie goals by 100 to 300 calories. (My base calories are about 1300, and then I eat 100 to 600 more on days I work out based on what exercise I did. It's hard to eat enough calories on 2 hour run days, so I occasionally eat a little more over two days.)
I am losing weight by about a half pound to a pound per week. Oddly, when I was training for a half marathon, I didn't lose much weight in the last two weeks of training, even though I was doing great for eating and exercise. But since then I have transitioned to less running and more weight lifting, and my weight loss rate has picked back up.
Take home message: experiment and see what works for you.
ETA: I eat four small meals a day, and I find that regular eating makes a difference for me. I get really really cranky and my head feels off if I go for long stretches without eating or skipping breakfast, so I don't do that and I am rarely without a snack on hand.
Last edited by RunnerChemist; 06-30-2010 at 04:56 PM.
I posted a similar question the other day regarding net calories being before or after excercise. It seems that livestrong calculates calories and what you can still have based on your exercise - or in essence they allow you to eat back.
But when I posted the general concensus then was no, count what you put in towards your allotment and the exercise as bonus.
You have to find what works for you. I have had days where I exercised off more than I consumed in a day, on those days its likely I do eat some back. And then there are times when I have a preplanned splurge so I'll go exercise hard so that I can justify it.
ChristianMom: I cycle my calories depending on my exercise and activity level each day. Right now, since I am not working out as hardcore as I used to, I am for 1,200-1,600 a day. I try to keep it between 1200 & 1400 on non-exercise days, and 1400-1600 on the days I do workout.
I would suggest investing in a HRM to see a realistic view of how much you are acutally burning. Then start with maybe eating back half of the calories you burned and see what happens for a week or two and adjust from there.
Eating back calories
