eating your exercise calories

I usually eat all of it, depending on the workout. Sometimes, I am not hungry so I dont eat it back. I just eat the minimum.

There have been a lot of discussions on this. Technically, you are supposed to eat all your exercise calories. Sometimes I do eat all of them, most of the time I do not though.

I don't see the point in eating those calories after you worked so hard to burn them. It makes me wonder why even bother exercising at all.

Are the reasons that exercise allows you to be strong, feel good, sleep well, and lower your risk of some diseases enough?

I understand why they say to eat your exercise cals, and I normally eat a good portion of them, but my loss has stalled for so long now that I think this week I'm going to stick to my 1400 cal allowance and not eat the addition cals when I earn them from exercise. I'm hoping that this will help me get back on track and start losing again. Of course it could completely back fire on me. We shall see

"... The important thing to understand is (and this is REALLY important) the closer you are to your overall healthy weight (again, your metabolism views this a a range, not a specific number) the more prominant the survival mode becomes (remember, we talked about efficiency). This is because as fat becomes scarce, muscle is easier to break down and transport. And thus, the reason why it's harder to lose that "Last 10 pounds". ..."

I followed and read the link from a previous post and I feel this says it all. IMO if you're trying to lose weight, especially a significant amount, you don't eat what you just burnt off. That defeats the purpose. And you more than likely have plenty more stored for future use. But by the same token you still want to eat at least the minimum 1200 calories. I'm a believer that the calories consumed vs burnt is not to be judged daily just as you shouldn't be weighing yourself daily. I would love to see a weekly running total for calories, etc because when the 7 days are up and you step on that scale, you should already have an idea if you lost or not.

On the other hand, if you're using this website primarily to gauge your intake of nutritional values other than calories (ie sodium, cholesterol,calcium,etc) and weight loss is not as important, then by all means you should treat yourself to something high in calories...............

Please look here:

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

This is a good place to start

Thanks for the link !! Very informative !! NOW I KNOW!!!

Please thanks goes to Banks. You would do well to look him up on MFP, there are a few people on MFP who have provided the basic information that you need. Banks is one of those people. Look for his original posts (in the sticky posts) they are that good....