New member, 6 days in.

Hi Tara,

I am by no means a pro at this but I try not to eat back the calories I have earned. But that's because I am trying to loose a lot of weight still. My thought is that number, that is calories earned from exercise, is helpful in that it tells you how many more calories you can eat because you have worked out and stay on track toward your fitness goal.

Jason

Hi Tara -- I think that the reason is that MFP calculates your deficit before you exercise. So if you are trying to lose a pound a week, it's set for -500 calories from maintenance. If you are trying to lose a pound and a half a week, it's set for -750 from maintenance, etc. When you exercise, you deepen that deficit. So it depends partly on whether the net deficit is reasonable and sustainable. I tend to stay set at losing a pound a week, and usually don't eat all of the exercise calories back, in order to try to do a little better than that. That's preferable, for me, to setting a more aggressive target and then struggling or being hungry on rest days.

No!! You SHOULD EAT your exercise calories if you are following the MFP set-up! Your deficit is already calculated into the calories it gives you for the day and it expects you to exercise. You should eat them so that your body has the nutrients it needs to keep giving you energy. Sorry to say, but if you're not fueling your body you're not going to have the energy to want to keep doing the awesome workouts you're doing!

Just to add, I'm 5'4", 135 lbs, exercise almost daily and I eat around 1900 cals/day and I'm still losing weight because I eat right.

You can do this!

Yup -- you should eat them back! I realize in retrospect that my answer was confusing....
Some people eat "most" of them back, or "half" of them back, but the rationale behind that is that they suspect that the exercise calories are overcounting. But you should eat them back.