do you eat your exercise calories?

Yes, you are supposed to eat those calories.

Me? If I have exercised 300-ish calories or less, that's usually not a problem.... when I exercise in excess of 500 calories I'll often end up only eating some of them back because I'm just not hungry enough for them all.

You have to play with it and find out what works best for you. The MFP guidelines are just suggestions and won't work the same for all people. I would suggest eating the activity calories periodically, not every day. That will vary your caloric intake and keep your body from becoming accustomed to the same number of calories each day. Good Luck!

I don't eat all of them back, and sometimes I don't eat any. If I'm not hungry, I don't eat them. If I am, I do. It's working for me and I feel good about the way I do it. You just have to find what works for you (without being crazy).

I'm in the minority around here and do not eat them back. My RD says eat 1600 (mpf wants me to eat 1380 - ha!) calories a day, so for now, that's what I'm doing. I've asked her about this eating your exercise calories business and she's going to look into it (and get good science and research to back up her conclusions), but thought for now, I'm fine doing what I'm doing. And I've lost 11 pounds since the beginning of January. Now I know the weight wont' continue to fall off in several pounds per week and when that happens I may look into eating like 150 extra calories from exercise. But I'll burn that bridge when I get to eat. So in the end, I think you are going to experiment and see what works for you.

Okay, just want to make sure I understand this correctly. This site tells me to eat 1250 calories a day. It sounds like nobody should go below 1200 calories, so if my exercise calories are 300 then technically I've only consumed 950 calories and should eat back 250 to get back to 1250 calories per day? Thanks in advance for any advice :flowerforyou:

Yes, exactly

not always. It really depends on if I get hungry and want to eat them. Often the meals I have planned for my day are filling and have lots of fiber to keep me full. some times I plan in advance to eat them, like if going out for a sinful dinner or dessert. mostly I stick to my daily calories since I am trying to take weight off.

I found that I needed to be around 1400 a day for consistent weight loss if I exercise or not. I only enter half my exercise time because I don't think MFP's database is quite accurate. I would rather be a little under than over on the extra cals.

replying just to bump up this thread.

this could be why i stopped losing weight, and indeed, have been gaining. i have been eating around 1250 cals a day and doing some intense workouts. can anyone explain the science behind this? if i burn 700 calories when i've only eaten 1250, why does this mean no weight loss? why doesn't the body use the calories i've just eaten to burn, creating a deficit, so fat gets burned?

confused,
epona

The links I posted above (previous post) explain very well, in simple terms, why not eating enough slows the metabolism down. In short, if you burn 700, and eat 1250, your body is trying to survive on 550 cals - obviously not enough. While eating this way will make you lose in the short term, your body will adapt and start trying to hold on to every cal, in an effort to conserve. Thus, you won't burn as much (or sometimes any) fat, but rather a bad ratio of fat AND muscle. And it's very detrimental to many of the body system to restrict cals that far; and because you can't eat that way long term, you will likely regain the weight (and usually a few more lbs for good measure) when you return to eating normally. Also, this type of cal restriction often leads to periodic binges (for this, especially read the "700 cals" thread) in which you overload and it all goes straight to fat. Anyway, read through those threads - based on very sound research. Good luck to you!

I eat 1200 to 1400 calories a day and burn 300 to 500 calories a day taking at least one day of rest. I don't eat extra to make up for the calories burned. If I eat more or don't exercise I don't loose weight. I have been counting calories off and on sense 2001 and know how my body works. I have lost 9 lbs sense Christmas. The one thing I have found that helps is mixing it up not doing the eliptical everyday switching to the treadmill or doing both.
Steph