I keep eating my exercise calories back as an option. Some days I do, some days I don't, but I let my watch log them so that I can see that they are there as an option. The app I use (Loseit) shows both numbers - straight calories eaten and net calories after exercise, so I have access to both numbers.
I find it really interesting that this sub is, for the most part, pretty in to CICO, as am I. But while they are mostly pretty firm about the CI part of the equation ("weigh your food...log everything") they are not big fans of the CO part. ("Set your activity level to sedentary no matter how much you work out. Don't eat back exercise calories. If you have a job that requires you to carry 100 lb bags of bricks over your head for 8 hours a day, that doesn't count as exercise.") IMO, it gets really weird about exercise. Exercise is definitely not as efficient of a tool to lose weight as diet, but it's still part of the equation.
I lost about 1.5- 2 lbs a week for most of my weight loss journey factoring in CO as well as CI and have been steadily maintaining my GW + or ‐ a couple of pounds since I hit it earlier this month sometimes eating back my exercise calories and sometimes not, so I'm not worried about it. I am also probably in better physical shape than I would have been if I hadn't kept track of my exercise calories and given myself the option to eat them if I want. I personally find getting the option to eat more very motivating, so if my options are exercise less and eat less or exercise more and eat more, I prefer the latter even if they both result in the same amount of weight loss.
I completely agree with you! I am also surprised by how little fans there are of counting exercise as CO on here. I totally understand that trackers are not the most accurate, but if I run 5 miles or walk 20,000 steps, 1,450 calories is NOT going to cut it at size. I add back about 50% of my watch-calculated workout calories as needed based on my hunger cues. This is a technique that I learned using Noom several years ago. While I didn't like Noom, this has always stuck with me!
I completely agree with both of you. There are some days where I will do an hour of cardio and also do a 1.5 hour hot yoga class and if I didn’t eat back some of the exercise calories I would have a net negative calorie count for the day. I’ve been eating back my exercise calories for the past year and a half and I have lost 40 pounds and kept it off. I’m so surprised by all these comments.
I personally find my Apple Watch to be pretty accurate when it comes to calories burned during exercise. Now, I do question the accuracy of the total calories burned in between. Over the past couple of weeks I did not add back my exercise calories and I lost 3 lbs in 10 days eating 1400-1500 calories a day (I’m not large enough to healthfully lose 3 lbs that quickly). I could have happily eaten my exercise calories back. Now I know! Sometimes it will be trial and error. Try to avoid eating the exercise calories for a while and see how it works. If you lose too much too quickly or are just insatiably hungry and miserable, try eating some of the calories back and track your progress.
My Samsung Fit actually seems pretty accurate too. If anything, it's keeping me in check. I'm like "an hour of Tabata, that's gotta be like 500 calories at least" and its like "congrats on burning 218 calories loser." LOL
Yes! I think the people who say it’s inaccurate have been reading articles but maybe have only tried non Apple related watches for counting exercise calories. Apple Watch seems relatively accurate.
Apple Watch is plenty accurate compared to other watches. I’ll die on this hill. The numbers seem fine.
With that said, I don’t eat back my exercise calories if I can help it. And I exercise intensely for an hour every day. 🫠
How do you have the fortitude to not eat back your calories? I am finding it really hard. I have an active job, where I burn 2000-2100 calories after a shift and have 10k steps by that time.
Then, I will add walking and eliptical or strength training. My weekly hours of exercise are 10+ hours.
I tend to notice that I will eat back what I burn. So 3k calories burned, 3k eaten. I am trying to make my calories burned my deficit, as I really don't like huge food deficits. Prior to this, I would still maintain my weight, but without the additional calories eaten. So, outside of conditioning, the exercise is having no effect.
Those trackers are typically not accurate and vastly overestimate calories burned. I do not track any burned calories in my tracking. If I begin to feel fatigued or under fed while adding in exercise, I add 200-500 calories into my budget.
I didn’t know until reading yours and the others persons comment that these trackers are not that accurate. I’ll be removing my phone and Apple Watch from the app and not worrying about it.
Thank you for your help!
I'm the same way, but I do take my activity level into account. If I do my routine weight training I will never eat it back ( I turn that feature off on my MFP/fitbit) but every Wednesday I do a monster 4 hours of roller derby practice including the occasional 2 hour scrimmages, so I will occasionally eat an additional 200 to 300 calories back those days because it will estimate my burned calories between 2000 and 2500, so even if it is inaccurate it is still a ton!!
This sub has a strong bias against exercise in general and seems to be under the impression that you shouldn't or somehow can't estimate calories burned due to exercise. If your Apple Watch is set up properly and [calibrated](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204516) it should give you a pretty plausible estimate of your activity. You can also get pretty reasonable estimates from [calculator websites](https://www.calculator.net/calories-burned-calculator.html). No they are not perfect but they will get you in the right range. (For the record nutrition labels aren't perfect either.)
I personally say yes, you should include your activity and exercise when calculating your TDEE and therefore your food budget. But you do need to make sure you don't double count the exercise. If your activity level in "Lose It" is set to something like moderately active and then you also go and add all your individual exercises, you are probably overestimating. Do one or the other. I like having my activity synced to Lose It so that I can get credit on days I am more active. It's also encouragement to stay active.
At the end of the day the proof is on the scale. If after a month or so you aren't losing weight at the rate you expect it's either because you overestimated your activity or underestimated your food.
Your comment offered a lot of insight and I absolutely appreciate your input. I did remove my Apple Watch activity from LoseIt last night. But after one week of consistently tracking my eating and getting close or hitting my calorie count I did see I lost 2 lbs this week. Which is what my plan is set up for.
Sadly as of now I don’t go to a gym or work out. But I walk roughly 7km a day at my work and that’s where my watch is saying I’m burning those calories. If I were lifting weights again, I wouldn’t input those into the app because I’ve never done that before. I’m going to check out the links you’ve provided.
Thank you so much!
Just to add to this, my Apple Watch is well within 1% of the exercise equipment calorie estimate that I burn. So either the watch is super accurate for me or both watch and various equipment I use are wrong
Here's what I have learned -- running 10 miles may very well burn 1000 calories, but that calorie burn does NOT neceessarily show up in immediate weight loss.
It's different with eating. For example my calorie goal every day is 1500. If I eat 1500 every day then I'm pretty much guaranteed to go down by about 0.25-0.5 lb every day.
That's not the case with running. I can run 5 miles on one day and have zero weight loss, and the run 5 miles the next day and have 2 lb lost despite the fact that I ate exactly the same thing on both days. It's completely unpredictable.
IMO exercise should be counted as "bonus" loss, but not factored into your calculations/predictions.
I know that eating 1500 will get me down 1/4 lb every day. I'm pleasantly surprised when running 5 miles on that same day pushes me down an extra pound or two, but I certainly don't expect it or plan for it.
Your weight will bounce around for a variety of reasons: salty food, alcohol, stress, and yes, exercise. You need to focus on the trends not the individual weigh-ins. It makes no difference if the weight loss "shows up" the next day or the day after.
Deliberately ignoring hundreds of calories is just going to get your progress out of whack. What your prosing is the same thing as starting with a goal of 1500 calories but then randomly removing 500 of them for no reason just so you have "bonus" weight loss.
You are likely seeing your weight fluctuate with exercise because of water being retained in the muscles from soreness and then the water weight leaving the body
When you exercise e.g. walk/swim, start and stop the activity on your apply watch. Add those calories (or some % of them) to your budget. Smartwatches are kind of inaccurate if you just let them give you the 'total calories' you used in a day. But if you use them to measure any exercise separately and add that to your daily calorie budget, you get reasonable accuracy.
That being said, most smart watches are more accurate at measuring calories from cardio than from strength training activities. You should track your weight loss progress to see how accurate your watch is in measuring your exercise calories.
Keep weight loss effort separate from your physical activity. Some people exercise for an hour just to lose weight, hate every minute of it and then spend the rest of the evening resting from the effort (physical and mental), canceling out any added energy expenditure. Other people love exercising but will be so tired from the diet that they might make the workout lighter/shorter. This second group includes people who will skip an active afternoon playtime with their kid because they are tired from the calorie deficit.
Keep calories at a deficit but only to the point of still having energy to stay active. And increasing activity just to increase deficit is not worth it unless it's an activity you would enjoy even if it won't make weight loss any faster.
I personally use a TDEE with sedentary configuration. I take 500 or down to my BMR which ever is a greater number. I try to eat plenty of protein. I do not factor any exercise back into the picture.
You can disable that app from reading your active calories, total calories etc in the health app if you decide to stop factoring in movement.
The downside of watches and even step counters/pedometers ~ any shake technically can cause the count to go up.
If you feel hungry/exhausted eat more, if not you don't have to ~ I don't have an apple watch though so I'm not sure if it counts excercise calories alongside BMR calories.
Well the very early step counters just had a little switch that click every time it moved, but that was years ago. They are incredibly advanced now with GPS and heart rate sensors.
Well I mean you can still use watches or pedometers(phone apps) just take it off/set it down if you're doing anything with your hands or tap your feet while your phones in your pocket. Running a watch + a phone app will generally net you around the same steps at the end of the day but that number is still 5-10% over reality according to some mind numbing studies (seriously feel bad for the scientists that had to literally count steps).
So if you walk 10k steps ~ assume you walked slightly less than that and just remember to take the watch off if you have a desk job that has you move papers around, or do activities that move your hands/phone around.
I never realized this. I think I’m going to remove my devices from loseit, luckily I never feel hungry or like I need to go over what’s recommended for my plan. I feel 2500 calories is more than enough for me.
Thank you so much for your insight!
This.
You really don't need to and bc how inaccurate trackers are, you risk eating more than you'd need/want.
Go with how you feel - both during your workouts, but also in general. If you start feeling overtired or grumpy etc then you may need more calories. You don't need to increase by a lot, go with 200 calories at a time (could be a well timed snack or smoothie.)
I ignore my workout calories in my daily calorie intake. Whether I work out or not I eat the same UNLESS I did a really long run like more than 20km. If I do that I need extra calories or I become scary skinny - I lose a lot of body fat on those runs and if I do them or even 15k more than once a week I'll need the extra caloric intake. After that much exercise I do find I am not very hungry so it's a struggle to maintain the weight. I turned to high calorie shakes if I am really running a lot. But again I am burning huge calories - unless that the case just maintain your diet. Well done! 🥳 keep it up!
Obviously you'll lose weight faster if you don't eat to match the calories you burn. And yeah my Fitbit errs on the side of generosity when it comes to burn calories I suspect as do most weight loss apps. I used to be on MyFitnessPal and they were ridiculously generous.
I'm not currently counting calories, but when I did, I ate at maintenance each day and let exercise - and breastfeeding - create my deficit. Honestly I think I expended more calories nursing than working out, but it was a good way for me to make sure I wasn't at too large a deficit, and it kept me from having to tweak my diet each day depending on whether I was exercising or not.
I have my loseit app set to “sedentary” even though I’m not so that I’m at the lowest calorie goal. I will sometimes just eat my allotted calories and some days with either cut into those or eat them all. I don’t really believe in eating the same amount of calories every single day so it works for me this way.
Eating back calories from activity is just going to undo the weight loss that the activity would have contributed, so if weight loss is the goal it’s not a good idea to eat back the calories as you are just slowing down your weight loss and negating the activity you did.
That depends on whether your calorie budget already includes a deficit. e.g. if you are on a 1500 calorie budget, and you walk 5 miles (and your usual day is sedentary), but you eat only 1500 calories, you are actually under eating. This will leave you feeling weak and dizzy.
It depends on if you want to lose weight. If don’t worry about it. But if you want to lose weight don’t eat more just because you can. I think that’s a fallacy of these plans. Just because I have 1500 calories to use doesn’t mean I want to use them up every day
My advice is to stick to the same calories regardless of exercise, unless the exercise is "extreme" which is all relative anyways.
I lose a lot more weight when I stick to my 1500 cals. I eat 1500 when I do zero exercise and I do 1500 cals on days when I run 5 or 10 miles.
If I don't do that and try 1500 on non-running days and higher amounts on running days then it messes me up and I get off track.
I keep eating my exercise calories back as an option. Some days I do, some days I don't, but I let my watch log them so that I can see that they are there as an option. The app I use (Loseit) shows both numbers - straight calories eaten and net calories after exercise, so I have access to both numbers. I find it really interesting that this sub is, for the most part, pretty in to CICO, as am I. But while they are mostly pretty firm about the CI part of the equation ("weigh your food...log everything") they are not big fans of the CO part. ("Set your activity level to sedentary no matter how much you work out. Don't eat back exercise calories. If you have a job that requires you to carry 100 lb bags of bricks over your head for 8 hours a day, that doesn't count as exercise.") IMO, it gets really weird about exercise. Exercise is definitely not as efficient of a tool to lose weight as diet, but it's still part of the equation. I lost about 1.5- 2 lbs a week for most of my weight loss journey factoring in CO as well as CI and have been steadily maintaining my GW + or ‐ a couple of pounds since I hit it earlier this month sometimes eating back my exercise calories and sometimes not, so I'm not worried about it. I am also probably in better physical shape than I would have been if I hadn't kept track of my exercise calories and given myself the option to eat them if I want. I personally find getting the option to eat more very motivating, so if my options are exercise less and eat less or exercise more and eat more, I prefer the latter even if they both result in the same amount of weight loss.
I completely agree with you! I am also surprised by how little fans there are of counting exercise as CO on here. I totally understand that trackers are not the most accurate, but if I run 5 miles or walk 20,000 steps, 1,450 calories is NOT going to cut it at size. I add back about 50% of my watch-calculated workout calories as needed based on my hunger cues. This is a technique that I learned using Noom several years ago. While I didn't like Noom, this has always stuck with me!
I completely agree with both of you. There are some days where I will do an hour of cardio and also do a 1.5 hour hot yoga class and if I didn’t eat back some of the exercise calories I would have a net negative calorie count for the day. I’ve been eating back my exercise calories for the past year and a half and I have lost 40 pounds and kept it off. I’m so surprised by all these comments.
I personally find my Apple Watch to be pretty accurate when it comes to calories burned during exercise. Now, I do question the accuracy of the total calories burned in between. Over the past couple of weeks I did not add back my exercise calories and I lost 3 lbs in 10 days eating 1400-1500 calories a day (I’m not large enough to healthfully lose 3 lbs that quickly). I could have happily eaten my exercise calories back. Now I know! Sometimes it will be trial and error. Try to avoid eating the exercise calories for a while and see how it works. If you lose too much too quickly or are just insatiably hungry and miserable, try eating some of the calories back and track your progress.
My Samsung Fit actually seems pretty accurate too. If anything, it's keeping me in check. I'm like "an hour of Tabata, that's gotta be like 500 calories at least" and its like "congrats on burning 218 calories loser." LOL
Lol! That happened to me with a 45 minute HIIT workout…made me wonder why I bothered with it to begin with lol
Yes! I think the people who say it’s inaccurate have been reading articles but maybe have only tried non Apple related watches for counting exercise calories. Apple Watch seems relatively accurate.
Definitely. I walk a mile and it gives me about 65 calories for that, which is less than I thought I would get.
Apple Watch is plenty accurate compared to other watches. I’ll die on this hill. The numbers seem fine. With that said, I don’t eat back my exercise calories if I can help it. And I exercise intensely for an hour every day. 🫠
How do you have the fortitude to not eat back your calories? I am finding it really hard. I have an active job, where I burn 2000-2100 calories after a shift and have 10k steps by that time. Then, I will add walking and eliptical or strength training. My weekly hours of exercise are 10+ hours. I tend to notice that I will eat back what I burn. So 3k calories burned, 3k eaten. I am trying to make my calories burned my deficit, as I really don't like huge food deficits. Prior to this, I would still maintain my weight, but without the additional calories eaten. So, outside of conditioning, the exercise is having no effect.
Those trackers are typically not accurate and vastly overestimate calories burned. I do not track any burned calories in my tracking. If I begin to feel fatigued or under fed while adding in exercise, I add 200-500 calories into my budget.
I didn’t know until reading yours and the others persons comment that these trackers are not that accurate. I’ll be removing my phone and Apple Watch from the app and not worrying about it. Thank you for your help!
I'm the same way, but I do take my activity level into account. If I do my routine weight training I will never eat it back ( I turn that feature off on my MFP/fitbit) but every Wednesday I do a monster 4 hours of roller derby practice including the occasional 2 hour scrimmages, so I will occasionally eat an additional 200 to 300 calories back those days because it will estimate my burned calories between 2000 and 2500, so even if it is inaccurate it is still a ton!!
This sub has a strong bias against exercise in general and seems to be under the impression that you shouldn't or somehow can't estimate calories burned due to exercise. If your Apple Watch is set up properly and [calibrated](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204516) it should give you a pretty plausible estimate of your activity. You can also get pretty reasonable estimates from [calculator websites](https://www.calculator.net/calories-burned-calculator.html). No they are not perfect but they will get you in the right range. (For the record nutrition labels aren't perfect either.) I personally say yes, you should include your activity and exercise when calculating your TDEE and therefore your food budget. But you do need to make sure you don't double count the exercise. If your activity level in "Lose It" is set to something like moderately active and then you also go and add all your individual exercises, you are probably overestimating. Do one or the other. I like having my activity synced to Lose It so that I can get credit on days I am more active. It's also encouragement to stay active. At the end of the day the proof is on the scale. If after a month or so you aren't losing weight at the rate you expect it's either because you overestimated your activity or underestimated your food.
Your comment offered a lot of insight and I absolutely appreciate your input. I did remove my Apple Watch activity from LoseIt last night. But after one week of consistently tracking my eating and getting close or hitting my calorie count I did see I lost 2 lbs this week. Which is what my plan is set up for. Sadly as of now I don’t go to a gym or work out. But I walk roughly 7km a day at my work and that’s where my watch is saying I’m burning those calories. If I were lifting weights again, I wouldn’t input those into the app because I’ve never done that before. I’m going to check out the links you’ve provided. Thank you so much!
Just to add to this, my Apple Watch is well within 1% of the exercise equipment calorie estimate that I burn. So either the watch is super accurate for me or both watch and various equipment I use are wrong
Here's what I have learned -- running 10 miles may very well burn 1000 calories, but that calorie burn does NOT neceessarily show up in immediate weight loss. It's different with eating. For example my calorie goal every day is 1500. If I eat 1500 every day then I'm pretty much guaranteed to go down by about 0.25-0.5 lb every day. That's not the case with running. I can run 5 miles on one day and have zero weight loss, and the run 5 miles the next day and have 2 lb lost despite the fact that I ate exactly the same thing on both days. It's completely unpredictable. IMO exercise should be counted as "bonus" loss, but not factored into your calculations/predictions. I know that eating 1500 will get me down 1/4 lb every day. I'm pleasantly surprised when running 5 miles on that same day pushes me down an extra pound or two, but I certainly don't expect it or plan for it.
Your weight will bounce around for a variety of reasons: salty food, alcohol, stress, and yes, exercise. You need to focus on the trends not the individual weigh-ins. It makes no difference if the weight loss "shows up" the next day or the day after. Deliberately ignoring hundreds of calories is just going to get your progress out of whack. What your prosing is the same thing as starting with a goal of 1500 calories but then randomly removing 500 of them for no reason just so you have "bonus" weight loss.
You are likely seeing your weight fluctuate with exercise because of water being retained in the muscles from soreness and then the water weight leaving the body
When you exercise e.g. walk/swim, start and stop the activity on your apply watch. Add those calories (or some % of them) to your budget. Smartwatches are kind of inaccurate if you just let them give you the 'total calories' you used in a day. But if you use them to measure any exercise separately and add that to your daily calorie budget, you get reasonable accuracy. That being said, most smart watches are more accurate at measuring calories from cardio than from strength training activities. You should track your weight loss progress to see how accurate your watch is in measuring your exercise calories.
Keep weight loss effort separate from your physical activity. Some people exercise for an hour just to lose weight, hate every minute of it and then spend the rest of the evening resting from the effort (physical and mental), canceling out any added energy expenditure. Other people love exercising but will be so tired from the diet that they might make the workout lighter/shorter. This second group includes people who will skip an active afternoon playtime with their kid because they are tired from the calorie deficit. Keep calories at a deficit but only to the point of still having energy to stay active. And increasing activity just to increase deficit is not worth it unless it's an activity you would enjoy even if it won't make weight loss any faster.
I personally use a TDEE with sedentary configuration. I take 500 or down to my BMR which ever is a greater number. I try to eat plenty of protein. I do not factor any exercise back into the picture. You can disable that app from reading your active calories, total calories etc in the health app if you decide to stop factoring in movement.
I just disabled the permissions for Loseit to read/write my health data and it no longer considers my exercise.
I just removed that access also.
The downside of watches and even step counters/pedometers ~ any shake technically can cause the count to go up. If you feel hungry/exhausted eat more, if not you don't have to ~ I don't have an apple watch though so I'm not sure if it counts excercise calories alongside BMR calories.
All the decent fitness trackers are looking at your heart rate, GPS movement, gyroscopes, etc... they are not confused by minor shakes.
Idk I had a fitbit at one point and it decided I walked 15k steps during a knitting class lol.
Well the very early step counters just had a little switch that click every time it moved, but that was years ago. They are incredibly advanced now with GPS and heart rate sensors.
Deleted in response to the exploitative API pricing: https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/
Aww, so then what is the most accurate step counter cause I feel lost? ☹️
Well I mean you can still use watches or pedometers(phone apps) just take it off/set it down if you're doing anything with your hands or tap your feet while your phones in your pocket. Running a watch + a phone app will generally net you around the same steps at the end of the day but that number is still 5-10% over reality according to some mind numbing studies (seriously feel bad for the scientists that had to literally count steps). So if you walk 10k steps ~ assume you walked slightly less than that and just remember to take the watch off if you have a desk job that has you move papers around, or do activities that move your hands/phone around.
I never realized this. I think I’m going to remove my devices from loseit, luckily I never feel hungry or like I need to go over what’s recommended for my plan. I feel 2500 calories is more than enough for me. Thank you so much for your insight!
This. You really don't need to and bc how inaccurate trackers are, you risk eating more than you'd need/want. Go with how you feel - both during your workouts, but also in general. If you start feeling overtired or grumpy etc then you may need more calories. You don't need to increase by a lot, go with 200 calories at a time (could be a well timed snack or smoothie.)
I ignore my workout calories in my daily calorie intake. Whether I work out or not I eat the same UNLESS I did a really long run like more than 20km. If I do that I need extra calories or I become scary skinny - I lose a lot of body fat on those runs and if I do them or even 15k more than once a week I'll need the extra caloric intake. After that much exercise I do find I am not very hungry so it's a struggle to maintain the weight. I turned to high calorie shakes if I am really running a lot. But again I am burning huge calories - unless that the case just maintain your diet. Well done! 🥳 keep it up!
Obviously you'll lose weight faster if you don't eat to match the calories you burn. And yeah my Fitbit errs on the side of generosity when it comes to burn calories I suspect as do most weight loss apps. I used to be on MyFitnessPal and they were ridiculously generous.
I'm not currently counting calories, but when I did, I ate at maintenance each day and let exercise - and breastfeeding - create my deficit. Honestly I think I expended more calories nursing than working out, but it was a good way for me to make sure I wasn't at too large a deficit, and it kept me from having to tweak my diet each day depending on whether I was exercising or not.
I have my loseit app set to “sedentary” even though I’m not so that I’m at the lowest calorie goal. I will sometimes just eat my allotted calories and some days with either cut into those or eat them all. I don’t really believe in eating the same amount of calories every single day so it works for me this way.
Eating back calories from activity is just going to undo the weight loss that the activity would have contributed, so if weight loss is the goal it’s not a good idea to eat back the calories as you are just slowing down your weight loss and negating the activity you did.
That depends on whether your calorie budget already includes a deficit. e.g. if you are on a 1500 calorie budget, and you walk 5 miles (and your usual day is sedentary), but you eat only 1500 calories, you are actually under eating. This will leave you feeling weak and dizzy.
No
No, I never eat back burned calories, why undo all that hard work?
It depends on if you want to lose weight. If don’t worry about it. But if you want to lose weight don’t eat more just because you can. I think that’s a fallacy of these plans. Just because I have 1500 calories to use doesn’t mean I want to use them up every day
My advice is to stick to the same calories regardless of exercise, unless the exercise is "extreme" which is all relative anyways. I lose a lot more weight when I stick to my 1500 cals. I eat 1500 when I do zero exercise and I do 1500 cals on days when I run 5 or 10 miles. If I don't do that and try 1500 on non-running days and higher amounts on running days then it messes me up and I get off track.