Day 43 - Eating Back Exercise Calories

First off, my weigh-in yesterday was great! 150.4 lbs, down almost 2 lbs from last week. A miracle considering the 4200 calories I accidentally ate last Monday!! Just goes to show, a splurge every once in a while isn't the end of the world!

I am never sure exactly what to do with respect to eating back the calories that I burn through exercise. I have always in the past considered the calories that I burn through exercise to be "bonus calories"... I think that eating them back can be a slippery slope. Especially if you over-estimate how much you burned, or go by the numbers that the exercise equipment provide. But, in the past I have never really burned so many calories that this would be an issue. For example 30 minutes of speed walking on the treadmill or 30 minutes on the elliptical just doesn't burn THAT MANY calories (about 250 for my height and weight).

But, now that I have started running, I wonder if I should pay more attention to this. For example, yesterday I pretty much went through the day eating my normal meals - aiming for 1200-1300 calories. Then after dinner I went for a run. I ran 9.5km, in about 1 hour 10 minutes. I estimated that I burned about 650 calories. Went I got home, I was feeling light headed... probably because my body was trying to function on about 600 calories for the day (after you subtract the calories I burned)... so I had a snack, a little bigger than my normal snack, but not huge. The snack I had satisfied me...(2 ryvita crispbreads with 2 laughing cow cheese wedges and strawberry jam spread on them, and a peach for about 200 calories)... but it still didn't bring my calories up for the day enough to make a big difference. But frankly, I just didn't feel like having a heavy snack at 9:00pm...

Here's what I ate... my dinner was very small, but I just can't eat a big meal before I go running (unless I want to keep tasting it the whole way through my run - ICK):