I'm confused..

AMANDAJOY1104

What is the point of "eating back" the calories that you burn while exercising?

AmyRhubarb

That is how MFP works. Your daily goal already has a calorie deficit built in - meaning if you did no exercise and ate to your goal every day, you would lose weight. When you exercise and log the burn, MFP adds those calories back into your goal and expects you to eat them to bring yourself up to the original goal number - otherwise you are creating too large of a deficit, which can cause you more problems in the long run.

AMANDAJOY1104

That makes perfect sense. Thank You!

bizco

Adding to what Amy said....

To maintain the same daily calorie deficit.

demorelli

While not everyone eats back their calories, if you are already limiting your caloric intake, you're already going to lose weight so anything extra that you burn exercising creates an additional defecit. Eating back calories is honestly more important if you're burning say 1000 calories every day than if you're burning 100 because while your body may not miss the extra 100 calories a day, it could freak out if you're burning too many more calories than you are eating. Keep in mind that you are already eating (depending on your exact calculations) probably somewhere around 500-700 calories less than your body burns just by being alive and going about your life. Then you burn an extra 1000 calories on top of that through exercise. You are now eating roughly 1600 calories less per day than you are burning which would mean losing almost a pound every two days. While doing the math on that seems great (let's see, it would take about 7 months to lose 100 lb), the weight loss is far to fast to be healthy and could give you many health problems. It could also wreck your metabolism, lowering the total number of calories you burn.

AMANDAJOY1104

Thanks Demorelli! Good info to know!