5 Reasons to Stop Counting Exercise Calories.
Break-up with the idea that calories need to be earned.
It’s standing in the way of your physique goals.
A client recently asked me if she should add the calories burned on long bike rides to her regular macro targets. It’s a fair question, considering how we’ve been taught to think about the relationship between food and exercise.
The idea that calories need to be “earned” is both psychologically damaging and standing in the way of your physique goals. MyFitnessPal’s standard settings worsen the situation: the app literally tells people “You’ve earned 300 more calories through workouts today” and unless you pay for Premium, you can’t change that setting.
Here are 5 reasons to break up with tracking workout calories, stat, either by changing your MFP settings or disconnecting your activity tracker from MFP entirely.
Want a coach to walk you through this? Book a free call with us.
1. Exercise Is About Strength & Autonomy - Not Disappearing
Tracking workout calories in MyFitnessPal reinforces the idea that our workouts are fundamentally about burning calories and losing weight. This does a giant disservice to the role movement actually plays (or could play) in your life. Your workouts are about building muscle, improving cardiovascular health, increasing mobility, feeling like a badass, looking like an idiot in tap class, bonding with your kids, and moving your body exactly how and where and when and why you want to, asking permission from no one. Exercise - be it strength training, playing a sport, or performing on stage - is about appearing in the world.
“Exercise is not about disappearing. strength training, playing a sport, and performing on stage are all about appearing in the world.”
Appearing in the world is still a radical thing for women, queer people, and people of color to decide to do. Burning calories, (the way we were taught to think about it), often comes down to making us disappear. We move to cultivate strength, well-being, and autonomy in our bodies and lives. On rest days, your body still needs baseline calories for muscle repair and overall health. By keeping food and movement distinct, you honor your body’s needs and align them with your long-term goals.
2. You. Do. Not. Need. To. Earn. Your. Food.
Food fuels your body’s basic functions, supports your activities, and sustains your well-being. It’s not a currency you need to “earn” or justify. Exercise, on the other hand, is something you do for joy, strength, mobility, or simply to carve out time for yourself in a busy life. It’s not a transaction to “pay for” food you ate or “earn” more for later. It’s movement, not money.
Food and exercise are, of course, linked, but we’re breaking up with the outdated idea that they exist in a transactional relationship. You don’t need to “earn” your food by working out, and exercise isn’t about “undoing” what you ate. Instead, the goal is to fuel your workouts, your life, and your recovery days in ways that support your body and mind.
3. Exercise Calorie trackers are up to 93% Inaccurate
For those not convinced by my first two points, I’ll hit you with some science: calorie burn estimates from fitness trackers are extremely inaccurate. A Stanford University study found that even the most accurate tracker was off by 27%, while the least accurate was off by 93%. Relying on these estimates to adjust your food intake is a fast track to disappointment and confusion.
It’s important to note that the same Stanford study found that six out of seven devices measured heart rate within 5 percent accuracy. Fitness trackers are great for goals related to endurance, cardiovascular health, timing your rests between sets, and step counts. If your current goal is fat loss, a step goal is critical. Many people naturally begin to move less and less as calories are scaled back; a step goal ensures you maintain your current movement levels. (To see quicker results or if fat loss stalls, your coach may raise your step goal. This, again, is a much more specific and accurate approach to fat loss because your watch can be used to track steps.)
4. Your macros already include movement
Your macros aren’t random—they’re tailored to you and the life you actually live. Whether you’re doing regular strength training, weekend bike rides, or get loads of steps in chasing your kids around the house, we factored your activity level into your macros plan. Your plan is designed to reach your goals and support your body’s needs on a week to week basis. That means there’s no need to adjust your calories every time you move a little more or less.
When calculating your macros, we take your average steps, exercise, and other daily movement into account. Adding exercise calories back into the mix effectively double-counts the energy you expended working out, because we already factored that in. If you were a less active person, we would have given you lower targets.
If your current goal is fat loss, this is especially important. Here’s why:
Your body learned how to exist at maintenance and live an active life. You probably sought out a coach because despite your active life style, you weren’t losing weight.
In the case of our client above, her body knew how to maintain her current weight and go on long bike rides.
To trigger fat loss, we need to create a deficit that takes this into account.
Since we know exercise trackers can be so inaccurate (see point 3 above) we create that deficit using the two factors we can control and track much more accurately: macros + steps.
Don’t have custom macros, but like the sound of nutrition tailored to you? Book a free call with us.
5. the All-or-Nothing Mindset is killing your progress
Counting exercise calories can trap you in an all-or-nothing mindset—the belief that missing a workout ruins your day or that skipping the gym means you don’t “deserve” a post-workout meal. This thinking is a fast track to frustration and keeps you stuck for months, or years, without progress.
Even on rest days or when you miss a workout, your body needs consistent fueling. By providing that consistency, you signal to your body that it’s safe to release fat and burn energy efficiently because it can rely on you. Letting go of the all-or-nothing mindset isn’t just emotionally freeing—it’s also critical for making progress.
