Cardio Calories in Your Day: Should You Eat Back What You Burned?

In Luntrack, the calories from your runs, walks and rides do not live in a separate app. They join the same daily total as your food, so you see what went in and what went out in one place. That raises a common question: should you eat those calories back?

It depends on your goal

• Losing fat: eat back some, not all. Calorie estimates for exercise, in any app or watch, tend to run high. Eating back around half is a common, safe rule of thumb.
• Maintaining: eat back most of it, and watch your weight trend over a few weeks. If it drifts down, eat a bit more.
• Building muscle or training for performance: eat it back. Under-fuelling hard training slows recovery and progress.

Why estimates are rough

Calories burned depend on body weight, fitness, terrain, wind and more. Any number is an estimate. That is why your weight trend over several weeks is the final judge, not one day's arithmetic.

Don't forget water and salt

Luntrack also raises your water and sodium targets after cardio, based on the effort. Hunger after a long run is sometimes thirst too.

A simple approach

Pick a rule, for example eating back half on fat-loss weeks, follow it for three or four weeks and look at the trend on your progress screen. Adjust from there. Work out your baseline with the free calorie calculator.

Luntrack is free to download on the App Store.