Eat back ALL my exercise calories????

MFP already has calculated the deficit for you.
You want to have your net calories be "0"

I have tried not eating my caloroes and eating them. I lose inches more than weight when I eat them back...I love the results I am getting. BUT, what works for me may not work for you. You will need to use trail & error to see what your body responds to. See the link in my signature, maybe it will help. Good Luck!

I don't know why you should have a "0" at the end of the day. Isn't the point of losing weight to burn more calories than you consume?

I try to eat mine but since the bulk of my workouts are in the evenings I never know what my totals are gonna be. I can't always eat all of them so I try to eat back as many as I can that late in the day!

Barb

I guess it is what works for you.

MFP tells me to eat 1200 calories a day for my weight loss. I do not eat my exercise calories at all. I been losing and feel fine as well.

I don't know why you should have a "0" at the end of the day. Isn't the point of losing weight to burn more calories than you consume?

I think I may have confused things. Your goal - your net should = 0
Your goal will increase when you add calories to compensate for what you burned.

Absolutely the goal is to consume less than you expend, but MFP has already done that calculation for you in creating your calorie goals based on the information you input when you started.

I don't know why you should have a "0" at the end of the day. Isn't the point of losing weight to burn more calories than you consume?

The point of losing weight is to be healthy and look good. You do that in one of two ways, or a combination of the two: eat less, burn calories. MFP builds in a deficit for you, so this program is designed to have you eat back your exercise calories. As such, you could do no exercise whatsoever and lose weight following the MFP guidelines. I know this is true, for I lost my first 30 doing just that. Once I started exercise, I ate back my calories burned, and my rate of weight loss has been relatively unchanged.

That being said, EVERYTHING involved is an estimate, and as such, there is lots of room for error. If you mis-estimate your daily activity level, mis-estimate the calories you consume, and mis-estimate your calories burned working out, you will not be very successful. Thus, if you are finding you are not being successful, tweak something and give it a couple of weeks to see if things improve.

I questioned the exact same thing when started, but I have actually lost more weight by eating my exercise calories rather than not! It’s easier to stay on track because I can eat more! If I know I will be going out to dinner, I simply spend more time at the gym! The average person generally eats somewhere between 1800-2200 a day (depending on height, weight, age, sex, etc). Which means MFP has already factored in your weight loss goals when they suggested 1200 cals a day. All those calories you are burning are just icing on the cake… literally!

The working out increases your metabolism so that you burn at a higher rate for several hours. You activate muscles which burn more calories than fat does or dormant muscles do. And you keep (or get) your body in tip top condition so that once you've lost the weight you desire, your form is good, not just the same as when you were fat, but smaller (ie: skinny-fat).

You all said pretty much the same thing, but it still sounds like you're eating all the calories you worked so hard to burn off. That still doesn't make sense to me.

I guess I use MFP a different way. I don't count the exercise as more food I can eat, just more calories that I burn.

Here's a reply I wrote on another thread addressing that question....

It does make sense ladyhawk but it makes me wonder what the point of exercising for weight loss is at all. I mean I know all the health benefits and stuff but, let's be honest, that is not the primary reason for exercise for many many people. Is MFP not including exercise as a weight loss factor at all? It seems like you should lose the same amount of weight whether you exercise or not according to that explanation.

Well, clearly the main reasons are for the overall health benefits. Yes, MFP is designed for you to lose with or without exercise. And part of the reason for that is that most of us, at some point, fall off the exercise wagon - whether for a few days or a few months. Also, some people are quite limited in the amount of exercise they can do (because of physical limitations, time limitations, whatever.)

But if you want to look at it solely from a weight loss standpoint, there are two main reasons you still want to exercise at least some. First is that by exercising (especially strength/resistance training) you help to maintain the muscle mass. You won't generally increase your muscle mass (VERY difficult to do while in a caloric deficit), but it can decrease the percentage of muscle lost. And the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism. And obviously, when trying to lose weight you want your metabolism at an optimal level.

Second, is that by maintaining that muscle mass you also help to avoid the dreaded "skinny fat". If you do no exercise, you will tend to lose more muscle mass. And frankly, skinny but flabby isn't a particularly attractive look. We want lean and strong.

Two smaller reasons: By maintaining the muscle mass you also help to decrease the risk of excess loose skin. Not as much of an issue for people trying to lose just a little bit, but very important for those with a lot to lose.

And...let's be honest here. We all like to eat. That's the major reason most of us are here. And burning more cals allows us to eat more, while maintaining the deficit that allows for weight loss. I don't know about you, but sometimes I'm pretty darn hungry and wouldn't make it through the day on my initial daily goal. So it allows me to handle weight loss better psychologically, because I don't feel deprived. I get plenty to eat and never feel starved. And I can have my little indulgences, because by burning more cals they fit into my daily goals AFTER I've met my nutritional needs for the day. And I don't have to feel guilty about having them. And when I get to maintenance levels, I'll be ready for them, without having to make a huge adjustment to my eating habits.

Remember, a whole lot of weight loss is about the mental game and doing it in a way that you can continue long term. Yeah, most of us can (and have) try the route of eating very little, exercising a ton and losing weight quick. But that doesn't change the reasons why you were overweight in the first place - it doesn't change your eating habits and help you learn balance. Losing slowly and steadily, while developing healthy eating habits AND good exercise habits mean you're much more likely to keep the weight off. If it's not habits you can maintain long term, you'll end up back where you started (or worse.) Which is why extreme diets rarely work for long term weight loss.


Also I would add: I know it sounds great, but a larger deficit (which is what happens if you don't eat any of the exercise cals) isn't necessarily a good thing -

If you don't eat the extra cals once in a while (or if you have a large amount to lose, 100 lbs or more), it's not a huge issue. But if done on a consistent basis (3-4 days/week or more) over weeks, your body begins to adjust your metabolism to deal with what it considers to be too little fuel to support your organ functions and activity level. It figures there isn't enough fuel coming in, so it needs to conserve where possible. So your metabolism begins to drop. The larger the deficit, and the lower the Net intake, the slower your metabolism gets. So this means that you begin burning less calories.

If done for a long enough period, this will also change the ratio at which your body burns fat and muscle. Again, someone with larger fat stores will always burn a large amount of fat and just a tiny bit of muscle. But as you get leaner, even if you are eating enough, you will burn a little bit more muscle along with the fat. Each person's body has a range of deficit in which the body feels comfortable accessing fat stores, without using too much muscle for fuel and the range is dependent on the amount of body fat (and some other factors).

The body (especially for women) prefers to have a cushion of fat. So when you make the deficit higher than that "comfort zone", the body starts to compensate, trying to preserve the fat stores. It lowers metabolism and eventually starts using more muscle as fuel (because it is easier to access than fat). So instead of burning 80% fat and 20% muscle, you start burning 60% fat and 40% muscle (just an example). And the more your muscle mass decreases, the lower your metabolism goes... It creates a vicious cycle where you can eat less and less, and still maintain weight. And it results in being "skinny fat" - being thin but having little muscle mass and a high body fat percentage.