Should You Eat Back the Calories You Burn From Exercise?

By Adrian| March 12th, 2023

How Many Calories Should You Eat?

“Should I eat back my exercise calories?” a great question I got from one of cliemts.

This concept is coupled with the rise in popularity of fitness trackers like FitBit, Polar, Garmin & of course Apple Watches!

With these devices informing you how many calories you burn during a strength, cardio or any form of training session, the assumption in, the more calories you burn, the more calories you should eat – right?

Let’s dive into this topic in more detail!

Should I Eat Back my Exercise Calories?

Firstly, let’s briefly address the basic law of thermodynamics – energy in vs energy out.

If we take in more energy than we use, we gain weight (calorie surplus).

If we take in less energy than we use, we lose weight (calorie deficit).

If we take in the same amount of energy than we use, our weight stays the same (maintenance calories).

Depending on your overall goal, your caloric intake is going to vary depending on whether you want to gain, maintain or lose weight.

Why Your Fitness Tracker is Lying:

We’ve all done it before – we complete a workout, press the stop button on the fitness tracker and the first thing we check is how many calories we burned.

Is it more or less than last time? To our delight we’ve burned over 500 calories in just 45 minutes and this makes us feel proud and accomplished.

Why wouldn’t it? The higher the calorie burn, the more effective the session and the more gains that were made right?

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Have you ever felt this way too?

I Was Wrong in the Past:

When I first invested in a fitness watch years ago, I attached a lot of meaning to the calorie burn during each session.

I roped myself into the danger of believing that I needed to burn more calories to make more progress.

It got to a point where I’d almost feel disappointed or that I didn’t work hard enough if I hadn’t burned at least 700 calories per session.

However, I have learned & research heavily backs up that most fitness trackers drastically over estimate the number of calories burned during a session.

The estimate can be off by up to 100% meaning if your tracker tells you that your burned 500 calories in a session, the real figure might be closer to 250!

On top of this, imagine there are two twins who both weigh the same and are the same height. Except one twin has 10% bodyfat and the other has 20% bodyfat.

If they did the EXACT same session and their watches read the same, the twin with the lower body fat percentage would have a different calorie burn than the twin with 20% bodyfat.

Why? Muscle is more metabolically active than fat meaning the more muscle you have, the more calories your burn while resting.

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This means, the twin with 10% bodyfat percentage would burn more calories after the workout than his counterpart.

Unfortunately, your lean muscle mass and total bodyfat percentage is not accounted for nor is the after burn of strength training on most fitness trackers.

How Does Your Body Burn Calories?

If you really want to know a breakdown of how your body burns calories during the day, a more accurate assessment is:

BMR (Basic Metabolic Rate) – The number of calories you burn while resting. 50-70% of total calories

TEF (Thermic Effect of Food) – You burn calories while eating calories! 10% of total Calories

NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) - The amount of calories you burn while doing everyday activities – fidgeting etc.

A construction worker will burn much more calories than a desk job worker so this number will vary a lot. 5-20% of total calories

Exercise: While this again is dependent on the length, duration and intensity of exercise, most of my clients (myself included) want to look, feel and perform good and are what I call Lifestyle Lifters.

We go to the gym and lift weights for about an hour a couple of times a week. 10% of total calories.

That’s right – on average about 10% of your total calories come from exercising!

Suppose your maintenance calories are 2,500 a day to maintain your weight.

But you want to lose weight so you set your calories to 2,000 a day. Then, you go and train and your fitness tracker tells you that your burned 750 calories.

You eat your 2,000 calories and the additional 750 that you think you burned giving you a total of 2,750 calories.

All of a sudden you went from being in a calorie deficit to a calorie surplus. And then you wonder why you’re not toning up or losing weight!

Point being – your fitness tracker is wildly inaccurate and this is a big reason why people think they need to eat back their calories.

So worrying about whether or not to eat back that extra 10% of calories is not going to have as big of an impact as you think!

Do This Instead of Eating Back Calories:

Regarding calorie intake, what I like to do with my clients is to give them calorie targets for rest days and training days.

Why do this approach work well?

We’ve all done a hard leg session and despite eating a good post-workout meal, felt hungrier than normal a few hours later.

On those days, rather than ignoring your hunger cues, I always find it works well to have a slightly higher calorie day so you can recover faster, build lean muscle and are able to walk the next day!

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On the flip side, on rest days when your output isn’t as high, it’s normal to not feel the need to eat as much because of your reduced energy expenditure.

That’s why on rest days, I like to opt for a slightly lower calorie intake because I don’t feel I need those additional calories.

The Takeaway:

. Fitness trackers drastically over estimate the number of calories your burn in a session.

. The more muscle you have, the more calories your burn while resting – something which is often not accounted for on fitness trackers.

. Only about 10% of your total calories are burned during exercise.

.Set yourself a slightly higher calorie target on training days and slightly lower calorie target on rest days.

Reference: Roberts. E; 2021: “Should I Eat Back My Exercise Calories? The Hard Truth."

Free 3-Day Total Body Training Program

Depending on your goal, I have some free resources which might be of benefit to you.

If you’d like a copy of my free, 3-day Total Body Transformation Program click HERE! (Enjoy the core finisher!).

If you’d like a copy of my Free Living Lean Cookbook to prove to you that it’s possible to eat foods you enjoy and get results, click

HERE (Try out some EPIC protein pancakes!).

And if you’d like access to my Free 7 Day Fat Loss Accelerator (which has helped some members drop up to 7lbs inside 7 days),

click HERE and it will be sent straight to your email.

I hope these free resources help you!

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About Adrian McDonnell & McLifestyle Fitness:

IAdrian McDonnell is a highly specialised Personal Trainer & Online Fitness Coach from outside of Tuam, Co.Galway, Ireland.

Previously a primary school teacher for almost 5 years, Adrian followed his passion and pursued a career in fitness after seeing first hands the results he could achieve with himself.

Although Adrian is a Personal Trainer & now Full-Time Online Transformation Fitness Coach from outside of Tuam, Co.Galway – he not only coaches clients locally, but also nationally and internationally.

Adrian specialises in helping working professionals:


- Be confident in themselves·
- Feel more comfortable in their clothes·
- Look better in the mirror·
- Increase their energy and go for more promotions at work·
- Get fitter, leaner & stronger without following rigid meal plans·
- Go on more dates (this is a common one)·
- And feel proud of themselves for doing something they never thought was possible!

To date he has helped Transform over 500 Clients into fitter, more toned & confident individuals.

Transforming people’s lives through proper fitness, sustainable & enjoyable nutrition practices & mindset mentoring is something Adrian is truly passionate about and this is his mission in life.

Want to find out more? Contact me today & I’ll answer any questions you have.

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