Do I eat the calories that I have burned?

Seems to me, most of the advocates of this have lost 30 pounds or less.

I find it interesting that the people who say, "You don't have to eat your exercise cals back," often cite someone's weightloss ticker number as a reference to how much the person knows about weightloss. I lost 45 pounds BEFORE I joined MFP. I hit a plateau b/c just watching portion size only gets someone so far. I started running and started losing again. I had a couple of overuse injuries and while researching running and weightloss, I found out that it was important to "count calories". Calories in/calories out is a basic concept that works for NEARLY everyone. I started out eating my exercise cals and was losing 2 pounds per week. I added calisthentics and was not eating all of my exercise cals as it is tough to eat back 1900 cals on top of my daily goal of 1620. I plateuaed for the first three weeks of Feb. I knew what needed to happen. I cut out the extra exercise, kept running and did a "spike" day. My weight went up a total of 6 pounds, dropped 3 the next day, 3 the following day and yesterday, I weighed 1.7 pounds below my plateau weight from the beginning of the month!! Eating the exercise cals is ABSOLUTELY essential ..... that is IF YOU BREAK A SWEAT when you exercise. Getting your heartrate up into FAT BURNING levels and MAINTAINING IT THERE is what burns fat. I run 7 miles a day and walk 2 miles cooldown to extend the burn a little and to soften up my calves. My clothes are literallly dripping when I get done. So, I guess the thing to consider here isn't necessarily whether to eat/not eat your exercise cals, but rather to eat the exercise cals that = the time that you were really BURNING calories.

I'm still up in the air on this issue. When I first started MFP, I did not eat back my burned calories because I wasn't aware of the "rule". And I was losing 2 lbs per week for 3 weeks doing that. Then I heard about the rule and started eating back my calories. It was actually hard to do because I wasn't hungry enough to eat that much. And then I ended up gaining 2 lbs back again. Then I read a news article stating that you just need to eat your goal calories but you don't need to eat extra calories if you work out and burn some off.

When you take a portion of what I say out of context I can see how someone would take it wrong. The amount of weight you have lost DOES indeed have a lot to do with what I am saying in my particular point as you wouldn't have had the exprience of if no longer working after 20-30 pounds if you haven't even lost that much.What I am explaining does not apply to everyone and I think I stated that pretty clearly, if it does not apply to you or you don ot agree, more power to you? I am offering my opinion, my experience. I have no problem agreeing to disagree as I am very confident in my view and am not in any way saying that the opposite view is untrue, just that it is not true for everyone. Sinple as that.

When you take a portion of what I say out of context I can see how someone would take it wrong. The amount of weight you have lost DOES indeed have a lot to do with what I am saying in my particular point as you wouldn't have had the exprience of if no longer working after 20-30 pounds if you haven't even lost that much.What I am explaining does not apply to everyone and I think I stated that pretty clearly, if it does not apply to you or you don ot agree, more power to you? I am offering my opinion, my experience. I have no problem agreeing to disagree as I am very confident in my view and am not in any way saying that the opposite view is untrue, just that it is not true for everyone. Sinple as that.

What I am saying is that if you hit a plateau at 20 or 30 lbs (which is common, and happens to almost everyone), it doesn't mean that you need to stop eating exercise cals - it means that some other factor is off. Either you haven't recalculated your goals/settings, you haven't adjusted your intake to account for the weight lost, you have kept a static exercise routine and need to switch it up, etc.

I understand what your stance is - and I do disagree, but that wasn't what I found irrelevant. Starting out saying that only people who haven't lost much advocate eating exercise cals (which is untrue), and implying they don't know what they're talking about wasn't a good way to begin - and still wasn't relevant or necessary in voicing your opinion about the topic at hand. Just my opinion.

At any rate, congrats on your loss and good luck to you!

Glad that you asked this question as well! My husband and I were just having this conversation the other day. Thanks for all of the Great Information!!