Explain to a clueless person? How does it work?

You don't need to eat back exercise calories to lose weight. In the short term, the more you eat, the less you'll lose. You may need to do so to maintain your health, have energy, avoid muscle loss and sustain your weight loss (i.e., if you re constantly hungry and tired, you're unlikely to stick with it).

Calories in, calories out. The amount of calories you eat and burn are directly related to your weight.

-Eat more than you burn, you gain weight.

-Eat exactly what you burn, you stay the same.

-Eat less than you burn, you lose weight.

You're going to burn some calories just by being alive. Your heart pumps blood, your lungs exchange gas, your eyes blink...all your cells perform their little jobs. All of it requires energy. Bigger activity, like walking, cooking, vacuuming, running, bike riding and swimming - that all takes even more effort and requires more energy. So you burn more calories.

Fueling all that activity is done with energy that you get from calories ("energy") in food. So, the more you do, the more food you'll need.

You need enough food to fuel your body. If you don't get enough energy, vitamins and minerals from your food, your body will start breaking itself down to get what it needs and that, obviously, isn't good. It's especially bad if you don't have fat to lose. The effects of starvation are devastating and sometimes fatal.

So, eat what you need to remain strong and healthy. You want to power through your workouts.

But don't eat more food because you think it will help you lose more weight.

Just plug your info into the MFP and follow the directions.

Your body needs a certain amount of calories in to keep your metabolism working.
If youre burn burn burning and starving yourself it will screw your body up and not be conductive to healthy weight loss.

when i started this program, i heard a lot about "starvation mode" from other folks...essentially referring to the notion that your body will react adversely if you shut down your calorie intake too much, because it senses the need to conserve its resources...thus slowing your metabolism down and leaving you with less energy, lethargic, etc. - i wouldn't presume to speak for her, but there may be an element of that to her question?

The "If every day were like today" message is garbage. Ignore it.

For how long have you been trying to lose weight but not succeeded?

A week is not enough time to make an informed decision, especially if you're doing the same things you were doing before, just documenting them. Weight loss is not linear.

I think she is referring to the message that pops up about eating less than 1200 calories. If you read it... it says "EAT MORE!!"

In other words, OP, you are not eating enough. Make sure to always NET above 1200 (so food - exercise) and it will stop giving you that message.

Honestly, since your exercise is fairly constant on a daily basis, I would change my activity level to active or very active if I were you and then stop entering in exercise. That way you eat the same thing everyday. Always more than 1200.