Food Calories and workout burn calories

carleyfunk

Am I just supposed to eat my calories or am I supposed to eat the calories I burn too?

Bells5001

Eat both:-)

crawpapa

Do not eat the calories you burned. Stick with your set calories.

ladybug1951

Still do not understand why as it seems that those extra calories would convert to weigh loss. Can understand eating calories that you are told to eat but still makes little sense why I should eat up calories obtained while exercising unless I know that whatever I eat that day will go over my 1200 limit and then I feel good as I have covered the extra calories eaten.

cassblue21

For me it depends on the day. I will eat back half or all. Sometimes I am ok not eating back any of them. It really just depends on how hungry I am that day!

abraam

you should check out this post! I have found it very helpful in answering this question for myself

http://shouldieatmyexercisecalories.com/index2.html

MaximalLife

Am I just supposed to eat my calories or am I supposed to eat the calories I burn too?

Yes, eat them both.
Simply stated MFP has already figured out your total calories you need to eat per day to lose 1lb etc. a week.
That's WITHOUT exercise. You'll notice that when you actually add exercise in, the calorie limit goes up.
Why? Because it's telling you to eat your exercise calories.
Large deficits aren't really good to do because while you will lose weight, what kind of weight will it be?
In many cases you'll lose lean muscle tissue which LOWERS your metabolic rate even more.
Then you have to eat even less to compensate for less of a calorie burn to continue to lose the same amount of weight each week.

Be efficient.
Exercise hard and eat back the calories. The hard exercise will RAISE your metabolic rate and burn more fat at rest.

Idbigjohn63

You should eat them, That's why it says calories earned. If you don't and have to many extra calories it warns you that you didn't have enough calories.

vguynes

I think you should eat them if you are feeling hungry. You earned them, so why not use them?

mevers1

You burn a certain amount of calories just being, it varies from person to person, an average woman burns 1600-1800cal a day. It's called your basal metobolic rate. If you eat your exercise calories plus your set calories you are still minus calories for the day.