So confused about eating back your burn off calories

I would consider eating back at least a portion of your calories. You want to maintain your health and vitality while losing weight and you need some extra calories to do the things you do. Your calories already seems like it is near the low end of a healthy daily intake.

I NEVER eat back my exercise calories unless it is a treat night.

I normally will eat what my net goal is and stick to it.

You need to refuel if you're exercising,so if you're hungry , then eat at least half of those extra calories, listen to your body, plus you are losing, and at a steady rate anyway. If you lose too quickly then it won't be mainly fat but muscle loss too. Are you including strength/ weight training?

This is why you need to not just "follow the masses" and learn and understand how the body works. There are some great threads that explain, in pretty simple terms, how metabolism works and why eating too little will slow it down. Really MUST READS, so that you understand how to come to your own conclusions. Good luck to you!

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/61706-guide-to-calorie-deficits

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/3047-700-calories-a-day-and-not-losing

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/10589-for-those-confused-or-questioning-eating-your-exercise-calo

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/153704-myth-or-fact-simple-math-3500-calories-one-pound-eat

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/158203-why-aren-t-i-losing-anything?page=1%23posts-2138274
(read the whole thread)

I thought the idea was to burn more than you are taking in for the weight to come off so I guess I'm just as confused as you are.

Yes, that is the idea. That is why MFP has a built in calorie deficit, to allow for your chosen loss goal, regardless of exercise. When you add in exercise, it adds in cals to keep that deficit the same, to allow for a healthy rate of weight loss.

What you have to understand is your goal of 1250 is already substantially less then you burn daily. When you set up your goals and entered your activity level then your weight loss goals the site determined that to meet your goal that 1250 a day was your target. For example my goal is to lose 2# a week based on light activity. so my goal is 1350. My Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is probably around 2000 calories a day. So 1350 is 650 under my BMR. 650 x 7 = 4550 or approx 1.5 pounds a week. So if I exercise and eat the calories I burn I will still be at a 650 a day deficit.

If you are 100% sure of the calories you're burning, yes, eat them all back.

If you're not, like anyone who is not wearing a body bugg and even then it isn't 100%, eat back a portion, like say 50% of the estimated calorie burn.

If you burn 200 on the elliptical trainer, eat 100 back, and eat protein if you can. The macro ratios on MFP are not that great IMO. If you're working out a lot you should be eating approximately 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body weight.

I haven't been eating them back but I also haven't been lossing weight. I decided to eat them back this week and see what happens. Everyone is different and there's no one right answer. I am just going to experiment a little to see what works. Good luck on your Journey!

I eat when I'm hungry, not really following the MFP "rules" too closely. The days that I exercise I'll be more hungry than the days that I don't. The food diary is a great guideline, though. I use it daily. But, on days where I do my spin class in the morning and my 30 Day Shred DVD at night, MFP would have me eating an insane amount of food. Pretty much double what they suggest I eat on a no exercise day. I'm not going to eat just ot meet that quota. I eat a lot on those days anyway, I'm not looking to starve myself, but I'm not going to eat if I'm not hungry.

If that's working for you, that's wonderful. But for a lot of people, eating based on "hunger" backfires. One of the biggest reasons for the existence of a site such as MFP is that the majority of people who are overweight are not able to recognize the true feelings of hunger. Saying "trust your body" just isn't a useful thing in the beginning. Most overeaters have established habits over many years that contradict the body's normal hunger cues - and thus they can no longer distinguish between real hunger and other feelings or mental cues. It's a classic case of Pavlov's dog - over time, associating something with food brings the same response whether the food is there or not. Overeaters will feel hungry when they are not, and not feel hungry when they need fuel, because they are mentally and physically trained to have the inappropriate assocations/responses with food that caused their overeating.

This is one reason why MFP (or any calorie counting) is so useful. One of its best applications as a weight loss tool is to help retrain the body AND mind to recognize the cues a HEALTHY body gives us. The way it does this is it says "You need to eat this many calories today. Don't go too far over or under - try to meet this goal." By doing that over the first few weeks or months, it helps us recognize healthy portions, and a healthy schedule, and a healthy amount of total calories - based on fairly accurate estimates of what a person this size/age/activity level needs.

The idea is this: MFP already calculates a cal deficit that allows for a certain amount of HEALTHY weight loss per week. Exercise over and above that number of calories needs to be replaced to some extent or the deficit is larger than what you (presumably) intended, and probably not a sustainable rate of weight loss, and probably a high amount of muscle loss in addition to fat loss. Which leads to being "skinny fat" - being skinny, but not having good muscle mass or an optimum metabolism to help maintain that weight loss.