ok...just to clear this up once more.

laurahbass

Some confusion.
I thought that in order to lose weight that you had to eat less calories than you are burning to create a deficit. I understand that you need to account for calories burned when exercising, but do you have to eat back all of the calories you burned? This does not register with me for some reason. It seems as if you are not maintaining a calorie deficit if you are eating your exercise calories to lose weight. Can anyone comment on this?

laurahbass

Some confusion.
I thought that in order to lose weight that you had to eat less calories than you are burning to create a deficit. I understand that you need to account for calories burned when exercising, but do you have to eat back all of the calories you burned? This does not register with me for some reason. It seems as if you are not maintaining a calorie deficit if you are eating your exercise calories to lose weight. Can anyone comment on this?

Laeci

The calories that you burn (your exercise calories) are in addition to the calorie deficit that MyFitnessPal already sets up for you, depending how much weight you want to lose each week (for instance, mine is about 450 so I can lose a pound a week.) So when you don't eat your exercise calories you're actually creating too large of a deficit, which makes losing weight difficult!

cmriverside

Read these:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/6556-the-answers-to-the-questions?page=1

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/10665-newbies-please-read-me-2nd-edition

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/10589-for-those-confused-or-questioning-eating-your-exercise-calo

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/6832-eating-all-of-your-calories-bmr?page=1#posts-47129

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/9433-expectations

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/20343-how-i-have-avoided-plateauing-length-warning

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/777-why-is-starvation-mode-so-bad

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/3047-700-calories-a-day-and-not-losing?page=1#posts-19051

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/6159-this-1200-calorie-thing-is-driving-me-up-a-wall

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/12250-1000-calorie-deficit-not-for-people-with-healthy-bmi

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/20035-just-because-you-can-have-a-2-pound-per-week-goal

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/8141-fuzzy-logic



Hope it helps. :flowerforyou: Welcome to MFP! Good luck!

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laurahbass

thanks guys!