[k15g15]

Hello! I was looking at lots of great posts on here for calorie counting. I started counting my calories in November, what an eye opener! No wonder I have a lot of weight to loose!
I am some what confused when people say they eat back their calories from exercise...does that mean that you go over your calorie intake goal for the day but subtract it out when you excerise?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Kim

[timkerbelle]

The way I see it is that you have your set limit for the day - say 1400 kcals. If you do no exercise that's what you would eat in a day.
If you do exercise, say you burn 400 from a run, you would eat the calories burned, so your total calorie allowance would be 1800.
Some people do a modification of this, and say they eat back anything they burn over a set amount, for instance 300. So in the above example they would add 100 to the "baseline" of 1400 totalling 1500 for the day.

Hope that made sense

[LandonsBaby]

I don't burn much when I exercise so I've never eaten those calories. I really can't afford to do it like that.

[moonkissed]

I use sparkpeople.com and once you set your fitness on there it will adjust your calories to fit with your fitness level and goals.

So on days I work out I eat toward my higher calorie goal and on days I don't work out I eat towards the lower of my calories.

[k15g15]

I'm thinking I couldn't eat mine back either Landonsbaby...Thanks for your feedback everyone!

[sweetnlow28]

I don't eat my calories back but I do allow myself an extra protein rich snack if I find I am really hungry after working out

[carter]

Originally Posted by sweetnlow28

I don't eat my calories back but I do allow myself an extra protein rich snack if I find I am really hungry after working out

Same here. I do not "eat back" my calories - eating is eating and exercise is exercise, two separate things. Also it is notoriously hard to get a good estimate of the number of calories you burn exercising. So I just eat each day at the level of calories that works for me for weight loss - at the moment it's about 1700/day.

If I am particularly hungry the day after a workout, and really feel like that 1700 isn't going to cut it, I might eat an extra 100 calories or so of something with lots of protein, liked sliced chicken breast or greek yogurt. But I found I only had to do this often when I was first getting into a workout routine. Once I got used to exercising regularly, I no longer had these starving ravenous days after exercising.

[k15g15]

I agree. Today I worked out the the eliptical said I burned 400 calories, but I never trust the machines at the gym for calculating calories.

[Missjessica]

Eating back my calories from working out doesn't work for me either. I start getting into my head that all I have to do is exercise more and then I can eat and eat... I works out for me to exercise right after work, so just about the time I get home and am getting super hungry, it's dinner time.

[eilla05]

I have a body bugg so I know pretty close to how many calories I burn when I workout but I do not eat them back. I have always stuck to my 1700-1800 calorie range everyday and I manged to loose 38lbs that way working out 4-5x per week (took me about 4.5-5months).

I never really got the point of eating back your calories really, I mean I am creating a food deficit to lose weight and I am also working out to create an even bigger deficit to lose weight. Maybe if you burned 800-1000 calories with exercise and were only eating 1400 calories I could see eating them back because that is to few calories, but otherwise I do not see the point!