To Eat Or Not To Eat Back Your Exercise Calories.

"Listen to your body. If you are hungry, eat. If you aren't hungry, don't eat. It's as simple as that."

It's not that simple. If that we're the case, when you get that 10 o'clock food craving, it would be perfectly okay to eat it, but the problem is when you go to sleep an hour later it's not burning off because you're sleeping and your metabolism is lowered. Another poster talked about how if you don't eat after awhile and you're not hungry then does that mean you're not hungry and shouldn't eat.

Food is fuel. Everything you do or not doing makes it react differently. Some of the points here are not made to be judgmental. Some people can take them that way, I'm sure. But for the most part everyone here is trying to encourage each other for the same goal. But if you don't learn everything about how it works, you can risk gaining it all back. It's just not about eating less and working out more. That works for awhile, but its not good for the long term. It's also about knowing what to eat, how to exercise and more importantly doing it in a way that feels right for you and you can see yourself doing for a lifetime.

1. Eating back your exercise calories DOES NOT make you maintain your weight, and you're not "just eating back what you burned off". MFP already sets you up with a calorie deficit, meaning you're already eating less than you were before, you're already eating the right amount to make you lose weight, so if you don't eat them back, your depriving your body of even more fuel, thus you may not end up netting enough.

2. Not being hungry is not always a sign to go by. Sometimes we don't feel hungry when our body is actually lacking enough fuel. If you feel hungry and you ignore it long enough it goes away for a while right? Does that mean you don't still need food?

3. Telling people to eat their exercise calories isn't being judgmental, it's providing education. We're all here because we weren't doing something right and needed to learn the right way. Educating people on what they should be doing is not being judgmental, it's helping them. I agree that not eating back say, 50 calories is not going to kill you. I don't ALWAYS eat back every last EC, but eating 1200 calories and then burning off 500 and not eating them back is NOT healthy.

I completely agree with you, i think in order to be able to mainatin this as a life long goal we need to take this into account. One thing however i would keep and eye on is the exercise calories as they arnt allways right they give you to many and some of the foods in the data base are logged in as the kj amount rather than the calorie value wich makes them wrong and way more than they should be.

yes, eat back your exercise calories. if 1200 is your number, you aren't supposed to just eat 1200 calories per day, you are supposed to *NET* 1200 calories per day, which means you always need a minimum of 1200 over what you burn off. this helps your body do it's job, process foods, raise your metablolism, burn fat, build muscle.

you can either starve your way to losing weight, or you can do it in a way that builds a lifetime of healthy habits. MFP helps you do the latter, but you need to trust the system. if you are worried about eating back your exercise calories, then eat healthier foods to make up the difference.

and also remember that getting fit isn't always about the number on the scale. truly working your body builds muscle and that will stall the scale for a while until the new muscle helps boost your metabolism and burn fat even more, as muscle weighs more than fat.

just stick with the system - stick with exercising, stick to your calorie goals, and you will lose weight over time. it takes patience, perseverence, and trusting that each day you have done something to help you reach your goal.

Sometimes I eat them back and sometimes I don't - it depends on how I'm feeling that day.

I am with you. Most days that I workout I hover around 1200 but somedays I just can' t imagine eating anything more. Under once in a while won't kill ya.

I sometimes eat some of them but try not to eat all because at the weekend I might drink wine and eat a nicer meal than during the week so I end up usually averaging 1400 per day for the week looking at the iphone app with the weekly summary. Not sure if this is a good way to do it but it works for me as I don't feel like I'm totally on a diet forever! I am also trying to weigh myself and record it only once a week on a Friday morning (before the unhealthy food and wine at the weekend kicks in!). I have lost 11lbs so far and it's been 4 weeks so I'm pleased. I have been running more than usual and I think that's down to MFP and trying to make up for the bad things I eat now I can see them all so clearly in my diary! Jo

If you have a lot of weight to lose, you can probably get away with not eating back your exercise cals. But, if you're getting close to your goal weight, you're not eating back your exercise cals, and you've stopped losing weight -- then I have a pretty good idea of why you've stopped.