eating all your calories?

so far ive been eating all the calories i burn from exercise, since thats basically what myfitnesspal says to do. but ive noticed that a lot of people im friends with on here come in under their calorie goal.

im confused because i used to just eat a set amount of calories for the day and then whatever i burned i just left alone, but one of the reasons i switched to myfitnesspal was an article i saw that said you should be eating what you burn for optimum weight loss.

thoughts? what's more conducive to weight loss? im just confused...

There's a lot of discussion out there about what you should do. Ultimately, it's up to you and how your body handles and processes the calories and how intense your workouts are. Go for awhile eating them, try eating some, try eating none. See what makes your body feel and perform its best, and how they affect your weight loss. It's kind of fun to experiment. I eat some of them sometimes, other days I eat them all. For *me*, I have to eat at least 1200 net (1200 consumed calories after I exercise) or I feel gross and lack energy in the following days.

I know that it says I came in under my calorie goal but its usually 100 calories or less under, depending on the amount of exercise I do. I try to eat back all of my calories but sometimes, I'm just too full, so I get as close as I can! And sometimes, I just have a couple Hershey's special dark chocolate chips for a snack after dinner to get closer to eating all my calories!

I do not eat the calories burned while exercising...i look at it this way, you are supposed to burn so many calories just to lose a pound if you eat the burned calories what is the point of working out....IDK its my train of thought and its working for me so far. Hope you figure out what works for you.

so far ive been eating all the calories i burn from exercise, since thats basically what myfitnesspal says to do. but ive noticed that a lot of people im friends with on here come in under their calorie goal.

im confused because i used to just eat a set amount of calories for the day and then whatever i burned i just left alone, but one of the reasons i switched to myfitnesspal was an article i saw that said you should be eating what you burn for optimum weight loss.

thoughts? what's more conducive to weight loss? im just confused...

I eat about half of mine (because I'm not sure that the MFP estimate of what I've burned is accurate) and it has in no way slowed me down.

As you get closer to goal weight, it's important to have smaller deficits as more of your body is theoretically comprised of lean body mass that you'd like to keep. Your body just can't safely manage really large deficits within the healthy weight range and will cannibalize muscle and bone to get what it needs if you try to force it to work with large deficits.

Yes, for a time you can still drop weight very quickly by severely underfueling your body. However, if you'd like to look better (not just smaller) and MAINTAIN your loss, then you should not be going for a super-large calorie deficit so that you can keep as much of your muscle as possible. Obese people, who have very high body fat percentages, can manage a very large deficit because they have so much extra fat hanging around, but the relatively leaner shouldn't try that.

I have been eating roughly all the calories I burn from exercise. This doesn't always seem practical for me though because there are some days that I just end up burning too many calories for me to consume in a day. I think that it might be best to eat about half of your exercise calories. This way you have plenty of room for mistakes in food calories calculations and exercise calculations.

My net calorie goal is just under 2000, which just seems high to me.

That's not right. Ignore this goober. My net is 1440. The 2000 I got from what I'm supposed to eat if I count the exercise.