Calories gained by exercising.

Some people do, some people don't. It depends how fast you want to lose weight, how hungry you are and how much willpower you have.

The idea of a diet is simple - eat less than you burn.

You gave MFP an idea of what you burn with NO exercise included or accounted for by selecting daily activity level - probably sedentary even if not true, make it true though.

They take a deficit off that value by your selection of weight loss goal amount.

Then when you exercise, you just burned more than they accounted for.

So if you burn 2000 calories on rest day, your goal is say 500 less, or 1500.

But if you exercised, you just burned say 2600 calories for that whole day, your goal is still 500 less, or 2100 now.

The idea is to keep a reasonable deficit so you don't burn off too much muscle mass, which can start a lifetime of yo-yo dieting.

So yes you eat back exercise calories.

Thee are two common methods for calorie counting...the NEAT method and TDEE method. The NEAT method (MFP) you do NOT include exercise in your daily activity...just your normal daily hum drum. Therefore exercise becomes extra activity that needs to be fueled...you've exceeded your NEAT and you need more fuel.

The other method is the TDEE method which does include your exercise in your activity level...therefore, your exercise is included in your TDEE cut.

Also keep in mind that your calorie GOAL (look up the word goal in your dictionary) has a weight loss deficit built in based on your NEAT. Also, here's another way to look at it using myself for an example...

When I did MFP my NET calorie goal to lose 1 Lb per week was 1850 calories...with exercise that came out to about 2100-2200 gross calories depending on the exercise of the day. I eventually switched to the TDEE method due to my exercise was very consistent and I wasn't missing workouts, etc...I did TDEE - 20% to lose roughly 1 Lb per week..my TDEE with exercise included is roughly 2650 calories...2650 - 20% cut = 2,120 gross calories. You see, if you're doing it right it comes out pretty much 6 of 1.

When you fail to regularly eat back your exercise with the NEAT method, you end up with too large a calorie deficit and that can be counterproductive. Especially if you're already going very aggressive with 1200 calories per day, if you exercise at all you're netting below 1000 calories...that's pretty much ED territory there.

When the deficit is too large, you burn a lot of muscle as well as the fat...you can only oxidize so much fat in a 24 hour period for energy...after that, your body will burn your muscle for fuel. People also end up with all kinds of other complications like vitamin and mineral deficiency, hair loss, loss of period, hormonal imbalance, and the list goes on (plenty of threads here..just use the search function) with VLCDs.

You do have to be careful not to overestimate burn, which is a common problem. Databases are notoriously inaccurate...machines are a bit better...HRMs are even better, but still an estimate. I always ate back 70% of my exercise calories per my HRM to account for estimation error and lost about 1 Lb per week as per my stated goal.

My struggle is that I am supposed to eat 2060 calories right now to lose 2 pounds per week. I am using a Bodybugg (more accurate calorie burning device) that tells me I burn anywhere from 4200-5200 calories per day depending on how much exercise I do. So should I really be eating 3360-4160 calories per day? That seems like a LOT

I generally have a tough time getting to 2060 calories per day right now. (I know, I know... how did I get fat in the first place. Over a VERY long period of time and by eating like crap, I'm not doing that now). For example, right now I have my diary filled out and will be at 2026 calories today... and I haven't done my hour long workout yet. Meaning if I burn 800-1000 calories during that time (typical day for me) then I will have to eat another 800-1000 calories to get to my "goal"...

It just seems like too much food