technical question about calorie goal and how fitness affects that

earningmybeer

So I'm going to ask a fairly obvious question, but I feel there's nuances in there that I just might be missing. Now my daily caloric goal is 1600 (without exercise) — and obviously adding exercise into the mix adds additional calories into the "budget". But my question is this, if I'm basically consuming most of the calories that I earned through exercise (but still staying under my net goal), am I hindering my weight loss progress, or should I resist the temptation to "spend" those calories I earned save for meeting my body's protein needs as a result of exercising?

I'm sure there are a myriad of opinions on the matter, but I'm mostly curious about actual studies done on calorie deficits as they pertain to adding exercise into routine. If you have your own personal experience as anecdotal evidence, what did you do and how did that affect you meeting or exceeding your weight loss goals?

MysticRealm

MFP builds in your deficit off of BMR+daily life (work, driving your car, walking a bit, shopping).
So if it's already creating a 1000 cal deficit to your day, then you exercise and burn 400 cals, you now have a deficit of 1400 cals a day. That is generally seen as too large a deficit to be healthy, as your body needs food as fuel and nutrition.
If you don't want to worry about adding that in, use TDEE- (10-20%) and manually enter that number as your cal goal. Then you don't have to worry about adding in exercise as it's already built in.