Hi! Am i suppose to be eating the calories i burn off?

amymeenieminymo

The site in my understanding is not adding the calories so you should eat them. ( you can if you wish) it is simply showing you your energy balance. so if at the end of the day you have a large balance either because you ATE LESS or YOU DID MORE your body will mobilise stored energy( from your bum) to cover the deficit hence the weight loss. I can promise you if you stopped eating to day you would loose heaps of weight but you woould not be healthy and you body will start using even you body protein to maintain life ( known as starvation)

[/quote]

Lol, I can honestly say that I have no clue what you are saying. The average person is not a scientist, so why on earth would this free weight loss site operate in a way that would expect the average person to understand energy balances and stored energy? At the bottom of the food diary it says my daily goal is 1460, if I work out and burn 200 calories, it say my daily goal is now 1660. It does not say that my balance of energy is 200 calories, it says my goal is to eat those 1660 calories.

I think you're over thinking it all. MFP automatically builds in a calorie deficit in order to lose weight so you're already eating less. So you're telling me that if I were to eat 1200 calories, and then work out and burn 700 calories and not eat it back, that it would be ok long term to only net 500 calories?

If I am already eating 500 calories less a day, I will lose weight, plain and simple, without doing any exercise. I exercise to improve my overall health, stamina, strength but I need to eat those back so that my body is getting enough food. That's all there is to it (and by the way I lost 50 pounds doing this, felt and looked great and had great muscle tone and no sagging skin, I must have been doing something right).