Do you subtract calories lost during exercise when tracking calories?

[Anonymous]

Just wondering what's the recommended practice here. I just started counting calories and am trying to stay within 1200/day (which is harder than I thought!). I did a 45 min ride this morning (climb ride w/ CDE, if it matters). Do folks generally subtract the calories lost while working out to stay within their daily goal? (I know I'd lose weight faster if I did not subtract them.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just wondering what's the recommended practice here. I just started counting calories and am trying to stay within 1200/day (which is harder than I thought!). I did a 45 min ride this morning (climb ride w/ CDE, if it matters). Do folks generally subtract the calories lost while working out to stay within their daily goal? (I know I'd lose weight faster if I did not subtract them.)

What exactly is your goal here? I don't see any benefit at all, either to your overall health or any fitness goals, to ignoring exercise when counting calories. A 1,200 day limit is low even for a sedentary person; if you are exercising on a regular basis, your body is going to need more nutrition than that. I tracked calories for years, but I always linked my food intake app with my Garmin watch or I manually inputted my exercise to get a rough idea of how much food I needed to take in to maintain some type of balance.

[Anonymous]

OP here - my goal is to lose a bit less than 10lbs based on my current weight. I don't have any particular fitness goals (like running a 10k) at the moment; I've been a daily exerciser since high school (which was a long time ago).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - my goal is to lose a bit less than 10lbs based on my current weight. I don't have any particular fitness goals (like running a 10k) at the moment; I've been a daily exerciser since high school (which was a long time ago).

If your goal is to lose weight, do not subtract those calories.

[Anonymous]

If you want to lose weight and are using a fitness app or some sort of calorie counter, you overestimate how much calories you're eating and you underestimate how much calories you're burning (if you're tracking exercise). I work out almost daily and I will only count calories for something I know is accurate to me, for example, how many calories I burn for my size when I run. Then I also halved what I burn doing weights. I don't count any other activity even though I walk everywhere.

[Anonymous]

No. I have my daily calorie goal, and my macro goals.

And a workout program. A hard workout does not change my calorie/marco targets

[Anonymous]

It depends on how long and hard the work out is, for a 45 minute ride now. For a long run or a long ride day then I fuel the workout

[Anonymous]

No you do not add back in exercise calories burned. There is no accurate way to track calories burned through exercise and you burn far fewer calories through exercise than you think.

[Anonymous]

I’ve lost 15 lbs in 3 months on Noom (goal was 18 lbs total by two weeks from now, so it’s close).

First, 1200 is the bare number of calories recommended for getting all the nutrients. My Noom target starts at 1320 each day and I find tHat fairly maintainable. Second, I like the Noom approach of adding in half your estimated calories that you burned. You need energy to maintain workouts - part of Noom is that it’s important to eat enough both for energy and for being able to maintain the revised eating approach long term. I’m 5’3” and started at 150 lbs. Most days between the app tracking my steps and exercise my target is adjusted to about 1400 calories. Most weekends (when I’m not sitting and walk / play / swim) it’s adjusted to close to 1500 calories. Even with those adjustments I’ve been pleased with the rate of weight loss and it feels more sustainable than if I were trying to stick with 1200 and do exercise.

[Anonymous]

Well firstly, I wouldn’t do rides to lose weight. Those are wonderful for heart health and mental health, but do very little for weight loss. If they cause you to increase calories, try shorter rides. Better yet lift weights!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well firstly, I wouldn’t do rides to lose weight. Those are wonderful for heart health and mental health, but do very little for weight loss. If they cause you to increase calories, try shorter rides. Better yet lift weights!

Everybody is different, but peloton does offer cycling at a high enough volume that doing a lot of it consistently would absolutely help many lose weight if they don’t eat it all back. Do a 1.5 hour power zone class at high enough wattage and you will find that out. Weight lifting is all great, especially as we get older.

The bottom line is people have to learn how to be more responsible with their intake, overall stress, hydration, and sleep hygiene. Intake being the primary problem.

[Anonymous]

I used to eat back the calories and the scale stayed put. When I stopped doing that, it began to move. But: I’m eating 1500 cal/day for slow, sustainable loss. If I have hunger pangs and I’ve done a hard workout, I will eat a bit extra…trying to re-learn how to listen to my body after years of shutting it up!