Does anyone NOT count their Exercise calories??

Our bodies need fuel... if you're eating, for instance, 1200 calories a day (which isn't enough for me as it is) and then you burn 400 calories through exercise your net calories would be 800 calories.

The recommended daily intake for a 1 year old baby is 900 calories. So eating 800 calories is really unhealthy.

Your body needs fuel and it needs to repair. Even if you eat back all your exercise calories there is still a serious POINT to exercising...:

1) Exercise builds up your lean muscle. Lean muscle burns more calories per day than fat does. The more lean muscle you have the more calories you'll be burning just by being alive

2) An exercised body is a healthy body. For now and for the future. Do you want to be the old lady that's stuck at home or do you want to be the old lady who still gets out and about when she's 85?

3) Being fit is awesome. Muscle is awesome. Not only will you FEEL great, but you'll LOOK great.

4) Following on from 3.... FIT is the new skinny.

The main 'trick' to losing weight is to eat less than your body uses. There are a lot of variable , but eating ways less the your body needs isn't a good idea. Neither is losing weight too fast. For me the purpose of exercise is to get fit, strong, maintain muscle and bone density and look better. When you use the mfp method and tell it how much you want to lose,it takes what you would burn in everyday life (from what activity setting you pick) and takes a number of calories from that to help you lose weight. I believe it's 250 calories less a day to lose 1/2 a pound and so on. When you add exercise into that you increase the deficit. This can be a good thing, but not so good if you don't have much to lose, are on really low base calories, or workout a lot. It's hard to maintain muscle and get enough nutrients if you eat too few calories. So using the mfp method it's better to eat more when you work out. I've heard that the online calculator over estimates burns and even with a hrm it's not always perfect, so you might need to play with it a bit. I generally always try to at back exercise calories unless I truly am not hungry. After those days, I find I am hungry the next day. Even now I am on maintenance if I am hungry I will eat more.

The main 'trick' to losing weight is to eat less than your body uses. There are a lot of variable , but eating ways less the your body needs isn't a good idea.

Exactly. You have to find a medium ground.

I did some trial and error... I now have a diet (and by diet I mean what I eat as opposed to a fad) that I'm never hungry on (if I am hungry I EAT MORE) and yet I'm still losing weight and my body is toning up gradually.

Dear OP... you can, of course, do whatever you wish. But I recommend you eat back as many of those exercise calories as you can stomach. Listen to your body - if you're hungry, eat. Just keep the foods healthy!

Sort of. I'm using the TDEE activity method- I amend the calories to 1=100, 2=200, so I can track how much I have done, and I watch my net calorie level for the week.

TDEE is your total daily energy expenditure- and it includes your exercise cals... enter in your info here http://iifym.com/tdee-calculator/ --and then subtract no more than 20% to find the amount u should eat for weight loss, which will no doubt be much higher than 1200, but then u dont eat your exercise cals. if u use what MFP says, eat them back. make sense?

I don't count them BUT i count the exercise to my general activity level in the formula increasing it from very light activity to moderate activity. This only makes sense because i do exactly the same program every week.

I do this. I wanted a flat number of calories per day rather than calories that fluctuate depending on what I logged as exercise.

TDEE method? What is that?

MFP put me on 1200 calories/day... what should I be on then?

Thank you all!

MFP only "puts you on" 1200 if you choose "lose 2lbs per week" and sedentary, especially if you have quite a lot to lose.
Go to http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/ and find out your BMR/TDEE and eat between those numbers. I have a lot of MFP friends who lose weight steadily on 2000 calories and they are very close to their goal. It's not a race or Biggest Loser. It's supposed to be a healthy, sustainable lifestyle change

I believe it is extremely counterproductive to automatically eat back your exercise calories. Most people are eating more than they think and not burning as many calories as they believe through exercise. The calculations (BMR, TDEE, calorie burn) are often inaccurate. If you're working out very hard and are hungry, then sure, eat a small but filling snack, say, a handful of nuts, and keep track of your weight on the scale to make sure that you still are creating an appropriate deficit and losing.

i go on an abwave and exercise bike daily and it counts my clories for me i don't until the end of the day how many calories i have left

i found when exercising and not eating the calories back i didn't loose weight. so i always have them now its and incentive to move about more and i can eat more. you still have the deficit. Eat them up.

did you read any of the many posts about WHY you need to eat those calories? didn't think so. creating too big a deficit is NOT a good thing, unless what you want is to damage your metabolism and probably regain the weight within a year or so. If that's what you have in mind, have at it.

All the positive support here just gets me teary eyed sometimes. This isn't one of those times. Both ways have worked for people and both ways could work for you; it depends on your situation and approach.

While I realize that it is important to eat enought to fuel your exercise ... I don't like the mindset that "eating back your calories" can lead to. It's too much like "rewarding yourself with food" becaue you exercised. Some of us with weight problems have those problems because of unhealthy relationships with food and I don't think that using it as a reward is a good idea. I know that is NOT what the "eating it back" philosophy is actually about, but I think it might be risky for people who already have problems with their relationship with food.

I prefer to think in terms of weeks rather than individual days and being sure that I am getting enough nutrition on a regular basis to provide the fuel for the lifestyle I want to lead (that includes exercise on most days). As long as I get enough fuel over the course of a couple of days, it doesn't matter if the intake and output matches up perfectly every day. If I exercise that day, great ... but I'm not going to turn around and reward myself with a food treat -- I will have my sensible meal as I would on any other day and let it "average out over time."

I believe it is extremely counterproductive to automatically eat back your exercise calories. Most people are eating more than they think and not burning as many calories as they believe through exercise. The calculations (BMR, TDEE, calorie burn) are often inaccurate. If you're working out very hard and are hungry, then sure, eat a small but filling snack, say, a handful of nuts, and keep track of your weight on the scale to make sure that you still are creating an appropriate deficit and losing.

The scale can be a fairly bad indicator of whether or not your diet is working when you consider all the different variables that can affect it. I would never use scale weight as the only indicator to determine an appropriate deficit.