Reluctant to Eat Exercise Calories Back

Bump! I'm like you too, I think! I wanna know more

I don't know your stats, so I can't say how much you should eat. But me? I need about 1800 plus whatever I burn.
If I were to eat 1,200 and not what I burn, I'd only be eating about half of what I need.

I'm going to assume you're set to lose 2 lbs a week.

Here's what happens most of the time. You feel pretty good, you lose a lot of weight, it doesn't bug you that you're not eating so much. In the beginning. After a while, your body is going to have a hard time keeping up with about half of what it needs. You might feel tired, dizzy, maybe hungry. You might lose your hair, get dry skin, brittle nails, possibly permanently damage your metabolism. It's all might, symptoms are different for different people, but chances are you'll get AT LEAST one.

What you're doing isn't healthy, I'm sorry to say Slower is MUCH MUCH better, you'll feel much better if you change your goal to just one lb a week, and eat back your exercise calories

now for the actual explanation
Your body is a car, the food is fuel.
Lets say you can go one mile, every gallon (calorie)
Everyday you need to go 1800 miles
Any exercise you do, each calorie burned is a mile off track having fun
So you eat 1,200, burn 300, now you're left with enough fuel to go 900 miles.

Not enough, is it? You body needs calories for other things in your body. It's not all fat. It's muscles and breathing and moving. Even if you were comatose, I have a feeling you'd need more than 1,200 calories to stay alive.
And you're probably not feeling hungry, because you're use to eating so little. You body does that sometimes,

So please, eat more and go slower

If you excersise late at night forget about eating, even if your hungry. Ive learned my lesson from that.

Regarding MFP and exercise calories

MFP is designed for people to be able to lose fat without exercise. In other words, it treats everyone as a non-exerciser and does not include the calories you burn from exercise in its formulation to maintain weight. Thus, exercisers start with an exercise-induced calorie deficit before they even enter any information. Let's say you chose a 0.5 lb weekly weight loss goal. MFP will tell you to eat 250 calories less than what's needed to maintain your weight based on your stats and what you entered as your non-exercise activity level. If you burn 200-400 calories in exercise, you are likely exceeding the 250 calorie deficit set by MFP and maybe looking at a larger 450-650 calorie deficit.

But you should view this from a fat loss (with minimal lean mass loss) perspective rather than weight loss. The less fat mass you have to lose, the less fat can be burned in a 24 hour period. This is why very fat people can burn significantly more calories from fat than leaner persons. Furthermore, this means the less fat mass you have to lose, the smaller the calorie deficit you should chose. A more appropriate deficit based on total fat mass will yield a greater preservation of lean mass which results in a more favorable body composition once you reach your goal.

I disagree with 87 monkey, eating less is better if your trying to lose weight. Its that simple, if your really worried about "unhealthy' take supplements. Protein, multivitamin, etc. Maybe one day you can eat more, but dont eat when your not hungry, cuz your going to have days where your ravenous all day. Use those days to eat a little extra.

I looked through you're diary and I suggest you up your intake. You've rarely eaten more than 1,200. in the past few days. It's very very unhealthy. Just because you have the right nutrients, doesn't mean you have enough calories. Calories are important, they do not just feed fat, they feed everything else your body does too.

How sure are you that you are actually eating 1200 kcals? Are you weighing and measuring your food? MFP is designed for you to eat back your exercise calories; however, it is also designed for you to be accurate when logging ... If you are accurate in your logging, yes, eat your exercise calories back ...

Also, some people say that MFP overestimates calories burned from exercise ... I personally have not found this to be the case ... I log my exercise accurately (example: when I run, I calculate the MPH and find the corresponding entry I the database) and weigh all my food (so, I know the number of kcals going in) ... I have been maintaining my weight (which was my goal, while lowering body fat) ... The key is being accurate and honest with yourself ...

ETA: MFP actually underestimated the calorie burn on the elliptical for me and I was losing weight (went down to 102 over 2 1/2 - 3 weeks), I found a few other online calculators and took an average of the results I got and upped it to the average I got, 88kcals per 10 mins instead of 70ish that MFP was giving me and I got back to 104 and have stayed steady ...

I'll be the example here of the what eating back exercise calories actually does.

For my last few pounds left until my goal I am set to lose .5 pounds per week. My calories without exercise comes to 1630. Depending on what my exercise is, I can burn anywhere from 300-500 calories exercising each day (strength training, running, elliptical, spinning/stationary bike), and sometimes, like today, I just go for a hike and burn a little over a hundred calories.

So, my calorie intake includes exercise, which generally allows me to eat between 1,900-2,100 calories per day.

Look at my ticker. I have only 3 pounds of 33 left to lose.

Eating back at least a portion of your exercise calories is necessary to fuel your body. If I didn't eat most of my exercise calories back I eventually would not be able to exercise at the intensity that I do now.

The main issue is you're going to get very tired, have no energy and might lose your hair if you don't eat them back. If that doesn't bother you, *shrug*.