Eating back exercise calories questions

ddoeren84

I am pretty new to this so please bear with me. Do you eat back the calories that you burned exercising or do you just aim to eat your recommended calories?

Also, I keep reading that it overestimates how many calories you burned. How much does it overestimate by? If I'm eating back the calories I burned by exercising this would be good to know.

This last one is probably dumb but I'm still curious. I'm sure its good to exercise even if you're eating the calories back but if you eat the calories back will exercising still help you lose weight(more than if you ate your allotted calories and didn't exercise)?

thisismeraw

This last one is probably dumb but I'm still curious. I'm sure its good to exercise even if you're eating the calories back but if you eat the calories back will exercising still help you lose weight(more than if you ate your allotted calories and didn't exercise)?

When you set up your profile here you set a weekly weight loss goal. This site gives you a calorie intake based on that goal. Your deficit is built into that daily calorie amount. If you were to eat that and not exercise you would lose weight. When you exercise you are to eat your exercise calories back so your deficit is not too high. Too large of a deficit will increase the muscle you lose along the way. Whether you exercise and eat those calories back or not exercise and just eat your base amount you will lose the same amount.

Eat your exercise calories back. Try not to have too high of a deficit or a weekly weight loss goal.

ddoeren84

Which brings me back to the question of how accurate are the calories burned estimates that mfp gives?

I've heard it is overestimated so I don't want to exercise and have supposedly burned 300 calories and eat 300 calories back if I have in fact only burned 200 calories leaving me in actuality 100 calories over my calories for the day.