But, should you be eating back your calories that you have burned from a workout or should you stick to the calories which were initially given?

Eating back your burned calories could actually be the reason you're not making progress, and here's why...

I had a client pretty recently start with me as she wanted help with her fitness goals. Her main problem was the nutrition side of things as she thought that she was doing everything right such as tracking calories, training consistently, and sticking to a plan

I looked through her food diary and realised that on an average day, she was consuming approximately 2500 calories

The only reason this was a warning sign was that I knew that although she trained 3-4 times per week, she had a sedentary job in which she didn't burn many calories outside of training, meaning that 2500 calories are were a high target.

I asked her why she was eating 2500 calories and asked if she had used a calorie calculator to get this target...

"On training days I eat back my burned calories from the workout which is usually between 2500-2800 calories" she replied

The consequence of eating this many calories and "eating back burned calories" meant that she was essentially putting herself into a calorie surplus without knowing it

This wasn't her fault as this was what she was told to do and what she thought was correct

I then went away and recalculated her daily calorie target (1800 calories)

After just 6 weeks of hitting this new target, she successfully began to drop body fat again at a steady rate of 1 pound per week, putting her right back on track

1) The calorie burn feature on your Fitbit or Apple Watch isn't as accurate as you may think. Studies have shown that activity trackers could overestimate your calorie burn by up to 93%! This means that if you burned 350 calories during a workout for example (according to your watch), a 93% overestimation means that you would be eating 326 calories more than you needed.

Although that being said, I do think many people can benefit from activity trackers as they promote NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) such as step count as well as reminding you to get up more and do some exercise.

2) Have you ever suffered through a long workout and thought "I've earned this pizza"?... yes I've done it too. Some studies show that some people may be prone to eating more after exercise because they're hungrier, and think they burned more calories than they actually did... leading to over-consumption.

3) Your daily calorie target should already include your exercise burned calories. Just like my client earlier, I set her a new target of 1800 calories which already took into account the training she was doing.