Why can’t you “eat” the calories you burn?

[Anonymous]

This may be a dumb question... I’m new to tracking my food in MyFitnessPal. I have it connected to my Fitbit, and I would say I’m a pretty active person (average 12-15k steps per day). I get the sense that people think it’s bad (or unadvisable) to eat the calories you burn... so for example, my daily allotment of calories is 1300. If I do cardio that burns 500 calories, why can’t I eat 1800 calories then?

[Anonymous]

If you're just interested in maintaining weight, then absolutely you can eat those calories back.

If you're interested in losing, then don't - or eat fewer (not the whole 500).

It depends entirely on what your goal is.

[Anonymous]

What is your goal? Are you trying to lose weight, maintain, gain weight?

Most exercise calculators wildly overestimate how many calories you've burned. If you walk 15k steps every day, your body is probably pretty efficient at walking and you're probably not burning very many calories at all.

[Anonymous]

I also think people tend to over estimate what they have burnt and under estimate what they eat.

But like PP said - it depends what your aim is.

[Anonymous]

MyFitnessPal suggests I can eat an extra 1030 calories today because of the calories I burnt walking and at the gym.

I walked 6537 steps (including what I did at the gym and then just walking around my office and house throughout the day), use a stationary bike for a 7 minute warm up, did 20 minutes of strength training, and 30 minutes on the elliptical.

There is absolutely no way I burned 1030 calories doing those things, and I would absolutely not lose weight if I ate that on top of my daily allotment of calories.

If I know I will be going over my calories, I will work out earlier in the day to try and make up for some of the extra calories, but I still consider that a cheat day and don't do it on a regular basis.

[Anonymous]

All calorie counters have huge margins of error, even ones based on heart rate monitors. A lot of the time they overestimate.

Conversely, people are terrible at estimating how many calories they consume and typically massively underestimate. I guarantee that a bunch of posters on the previous thread about eating 1200 calories a day eat way more than that. 1200-1500 calories isn't much at all, and I'm small woman. Calories are also off by as much as 20% on nutrition labels, and the amount of calories in, say, a small apple can vary from 55-80 calories depending on the exact size of the apple.

Then of course, there's stuff that isn't well captured by a fitbit, like how many calories you burned fidgeting or using for muscle repair from strength training or from being cold.

Counting calories and calories in vs. calories out clearly helps people lose weight, but as estimating it isn't an exact science.

I think not eating back all your exercise calories just gives you a margin of error for undercounting calories.

[Anonymous]

I lost almost twenty pounds after my second child with a 1450 budget and eating back exercise calories on top of that. I am short, too. But it can be done if you are super accurate with counting and underestimate exercise calories burned ...so for me, I either researched what a small person like me was reasonably burning vs what my LoseIt App said or just kept it under 200 to be safe. I lost a lb a week at first, then a bit less per week as I got closer to goal weight.

[Anonymous]

PP here...I also weighed and measured all food while calorie counting. I also exercise pretty intensely...

[Anonymous]

Here is what I would do if you have the Fitbit. Ditch My Fitness Pal and track your calories through the Fitbit app instead.

It asjusts yiur allotment more realistically during the day to your burn. Make sure to set your real weight as about ten pounds lighter than you are and your age little higher.

This will give you a really accurate view of what you burn.

I usually eat 1800 calories a day with a 2500 calories burn. I have lost about a pound a week

I am a 45 year old short woman (5'1).

You can

[Anonymous]

The calories burned also can include your basal metabolic rate calories (what you would have burned anyway just sitting around doing nothing) which is already captured by your total allotment of calories for the day. That accounts for at least some of the overestimation.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks for all your replies. This all makes sense - the overestimation of burn and underestimation of intake. My goal is to lose the last 10 lbs of baby weight. Sounds like if I’m super careful, I CAN eat back some exercise calories within moderation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks for all your replies. This all makes sense - the overestimation of burn and underestimation of intake. My goal is to lose the last 10 lbs of baby weight. Sounds like if I’m super careful, I CAN eat back some exercise calories within moderation.

The last 10 pounds are the hardest to lose. It’s a very small margin for error. Eat back a few calories if you need to, but your best off not. If you keep a 500 calorie deficit per day, you should be losing a pound per week (3,500 calories=1lb). That would be 2.5 months. If you only had a 250 calorie deficit, you’d need at minimum 5 months, BUT the longer you diet, the slower your metabolism becomes as it adapts to running on less. Most people are successful at dieting for 3 months, maintaining weight for 6 weeks, then dieting another 3 months (repeat as necessary).

[Anonymous]

Some of us can! I exercise daily, and I'm active in other ways. So I can eat more than a lot of folks can without gaining. (age 45, 5'8", 150 lbs.) I aim for at least 1,500 plus whatever I'm burning off in actual exercise, otherwise I can feel dizzy. So some days that's 2,000ish and on big exercise days it might be 2,500. (during marathon training, I could hit 3,000 or more and not gain.)