To eat excercise calories or NOT to eat...

Have you calculated your BMR? or TDEE? These should give you a better idea of the calories you should be consuming on a daily basis. As for the exercise calories, I always eat mine back unless it just feels like too much. Listen to your body, it knows what's up! Good luck:)

To lose weight, you have to be in a calorie deficit. It doesn't much matter what that is or how you accomplish it, but it has to happen.

1200 cals per day is probably a big deficit - you'll lose faster, but like you said, it's harder to sustain.
1500 cals is probably a smaller deficit - slower loss, but more sustainable.

If you aren't losing, you aren't in a deficit. That's either because you are eating more than you think, or because you don't burn as many cals throughout the day as you think. Either way, you need to eat less.

So with all that said, 1500 cals is fairly low, and will be a moderate deficit for MOST people. Are you certain you are eating 1500 cals? Are you measuring/weighing your food? Do you eat out a lot? I'd start there... make sure you are eating what you think you are eating.

I haven't calculated my BMR. There are so many calculators out there. Do you know of a good website for that? What is a TDEE? Thanks for your help.

Start here:
http://iifym.com/iifym-calculator/


BMR is your base metabolic rate - how many cals your body burns simply sustaining itself - breathing, pumping blood, etc (NOT things like going to work, running errands, doing housework, exercising).

TDEE is total daily energy expenditure - how many cals you burn in total for the day doing everything you ask your body to do - breath, digest food, chase around after the kids, workout, etc.

You want to be eating between these 2 numbers. Eating less than your BMR for any extended period of time will likely have negative side effects as you aren't giving your body enough cals to sustain itself. Eating over TDEE will cause you to gain weight because you are giving your body more cals than it can use.

When I started around the beginning of February, I struggled big time for the first week maintaining my calorie intake of 1280. It was a huge shock to me, and I did feel starved and grumpy for the first 4-5 days. But after that it was a breeze to me. I started pre-planning my meals if I wanted to go out, or have a glass of wine. I did not stop eating things I loved like pasta and other carbs.. because I knew when I lost what I wanted, I would go back to eating them and gain it all back.

MFP suggest you DO eat your exercise calories. In the beginning, I used my exercise calories to compensate for what I wanted to eat.. or my extra snacks. I learned to snack much less often then I had previously been.

I also suggest you do not weigh yourself every day. I became fixated on the number instead of what I wanted which was to look and feel better. Especially in the beginning because if you're new to working out you will be losing weight but gaining muscle which weighs more then fat. I was so discouraged after the first 3 weeks when I had gained weight.

Start weighing your portions. You will realize what you can eat with what calories, and you will actually be surprised when you weigh out your portions how much you can actually eat.. eat more veggies, drink tea and water (no calories), I stopped wasting mine on things like juice.

SInce Feb 1st I have lost 16 pounds, and 6 weeks of that was trying to 'maintain' weight to be able to fit in my wedding dress. Two weeks after the wedding, I ate whatever the hell I wanted. Now I'm back on the band wagon, still at 16 pounds down and trying to lose another 9 before September!