Eating Excercise Calories???

I was a little confused with that also. So I decided to ask someone is a nutritionist and I was told to definitely not eat my exercise calories if my goal is to loose weight. The main thing is to always burn more calories than you eat...and the more you burn the better your weightloss program will be, as long as your calorie intake is not under 1200 calories which is what they say you need to not go into starvation mode...smile:

You haven't explained things correctly to your nutritionist.

MFP automatically sets you at a deficit (unless you've selected to MAINTAIN your weight & have been given calories based on that choice). That deficit is how you lose weight and that deficit will be there even if you eat 100% of the calories your burned through exercise.

HOWEVER, if you were eating calories to maintain your weight, you can use exercise to then create a calorie deficit. If that were the case, the NO, of course you wouldn't want to eat those calories back.

**Examples:**
How MFP works:
Setto lose 1.5 pounds/week, MFP automatically creates a 750 calorie/day deficit and then gives you your base calories:
Maintenance calories - desired calorie deficit = base calories
I weigh 199 and my maintenance calories are right around 2000/per day. This is how much I'd have to eat each day with my current activity level (sedentary) to maintain my current weight.
2000 - 750 (calorie deficit I need each day to lose 1.5lbs/week) = 1250 calories

I'd need to eat 1250 calories each day to lose 1.5 pounds per week.

If I exercise, I'm increasing that 750 calorie deficit by how ever many calories I burn. So, say I exercise and burn 750 calories. That makes my calorie deficit 1500! Well, after 8 months here, I know my body and I know it absolutely HATES calorie deficits over 1000/day at this point. I won't lose weight if my deficit is too high (I have been battling "starvation mode" for months now. Take my word for it -- not fun). So, I need to eat those 750 calories back so my deficit remains 750 calories for the day. So, that means I'm eating 2000 calories for the day. I will still lose 1.5 pounds a week doing this because my calorie deficit hasn't changed.

Now, if it helps you to look at it as though you're creating your calorie deficit with exercise, you need to set your goals on MFP to MAINTAIN your current weight. If I were to do this, MFP would give me about 2000 calories per day as my base calories.

If I wanted to create a 750 calorie deficit each day, in this scenario, I'd need to eat my 2000 maintenance calories and then burn 750 calories through exercise. That puts me at a 750 calorie deficit for the day and doing that will keep me losing at 1.5 pounds/week.
Wait a minute... that exactly the same thing I was doing in the first example, just worded differently.