Is it important to eat calories you burn when doing sport?

[Anonymous]

I understand generally it isn't that much but when you go on day trips hiking, skiing, snowborading ... you workout long hours. Like yesterday I went hiking, we went about 4 hours uphill and 2 hours downhill and my calories calcular estimates that burned about 2000cal plus the 1300 BMR

I sitll only ate about 1700 cal that day, I didn't feel hungry afterward. So is it bad that I only ate so little? Is it unhealthy, should I eat more?

[Distant]

If you are in a calorie deficit for a particular day, your body will eat your own muscle or stored fat to metabolize the amount needed to survive. You should eat the amount of calories needed to survive per day. Too much more and your body will store it. Too much less and your body will enter starvation mode and your metabolism will slow down.

[Asker]

really? even if I'm not hungry at all?

[Distant]

You were fine on this day in particular. But going too far under your calorie intake for too many days in a row can become a problem.

[Asker]

ok cool. Obviously I only do this once a week. I burned roughly 3300 cal and ate 1700 I know it doesn't seem like but I just wasn't hungry. If that is fine, what would be too much?

[Distant]

Well that's ~1,600 down on that day so it may be considered too much and your body will eat some fat/muscle. Though, if it's only once per week, your metabolism most likely won't slow down because of it.

[Anonymous]

doing it once in a while isn't bad since your body will just convert the fat in your body to energy so you can keep moving. Doing it consistently if you are very petite/anorexic would be bad since you don't have fat in your body so you will start losing muscle mass and suffer other major problems as well.

[madmisskelly]

Calories burned estimators are only an average, and can at times, be much much higher than what you actually burned.

I would still continue to eat your 1700. Unless you are doing vigorous training, it isn't necessary to eat much extra.

[Asker]

wll mountaineering is retty vigourous

[madmisskelly]

It depends on how high your heart rate was getting.

[Asker]

well I would think about 160 on average, with some points at 180/190 and other more at 130/140

[madmisskelly]

Was your heart pounding that fast or were you just out of breath? A heart rate monitor in these situations helps.

[Asker]

I did have a heart rate monitor only because I have asthma, not really to count calories. Some parts of going up were very intense, ever climbed up a mountain? 180/190 is def reasonable. I think all our heart rates were like that. And climbing down was obviously less intense so, when I checked there it was about 140.

Your heart beating fast and being out of breath strongly corelates though, so I'm not quite sure where you are getting with this?

[madmisskelly]

All I was getting at was that some people equate certain things with higher calorie burn when they are not-such as sweating (some people think the more you sweat the more calories you are burning), I didn't know you had a heart rate monitor, I thought you were guessing/estimating your heart rate.

[xzinax2]

well if you keep doing it,you'll lose weight,which can lead to being unhealthy- make sure to eat more calorie dense foods the next time you go.

[nancyjune561]

yeah,of course.