Has anybody ate back their exercise calories consistently and still lost weight?

Yes. MFP is designed for you to eat your exercise calories back. Some choose to eat about 50-70% back, because they've found their exercise calories to be overestimated by MFP. When I was losing weight, I usually ate all them back and still lost at the rate I was expecting.

Sort of. But for best results, I need to slightly undereat the exercise allotment, I've found.

I haven't but I'm at a low weight (and hypothyroidism) just trying to recomp. Also I don't use a food scale so 50% of my exercise cals are buffers. Careful mfp likes to overestimate how much you burn. Try it for a week. If you lose weight eating them back then do it. If not try 50% or less.

I only eat back about 20-30%

I'm eating the full exercise calories and still losing weight. I try not to delay eating them such as exercising in the morning then eating the extra in the evening. I recommend getting a Polar watch like the A360. You can turn on the integration to MFP for either just exercises or also as a step counter. You have to use a heart rate monitor to get calorie burn accuracy during exercising. Logging exercises manually in MFP is a pain. The Polar watch makes it simple.

YES

Yes, but I adjusted the cals given by MFP down by about half. They tend to be overstated.

Nope. Many of the calories burned calculated for exercise other than aerobic workouts (1/2 to 2/3s of mine are weight training and yoga) are over estimated, so I don't eat them back usually and have had much better weight loss success. I will occasionally eat a snack or eat more than my meal calories and go over, but I "listen to my body" for those occasions and don't sweat it if I end up eating up to 1/2 of my exercise calories back. But these are the exception rather than the rule - perhaps 2 to 3 times per month.

sijomial wrote: »

By the way, every person who is successfully maintaining their weight is eating their exercise calories - whether they label them as such or not.

Insightful and true.

sijomial wrote: »

Yes, both when losing weight and long term maintenance.

By the way, every person who is successfully maintaining their weight is eating their exercise calories - whether they label them as such or not.

Exactly!

The accurate portion of them, yes. It's different for everyone, but most apps, machines, devices, even MFP's manual entries are usually over-inflated for most people. So once the exercise calories are added into your diary, choose a percentage (people usually choose 50% to start) and eat back that much. If your weight loss accelerates consistently over the next few weeks, eat back a bit more until you find your happy place. I do about 1100 calories of exercise 5 days a week, but split that up into about 500ish calories a day extra to eat back and I maintain my weight. So 500*7=3500 divide that by those 5 days and that's about 700 calories that are accurate for me out of that 1100 give or take (it really depends on the effort you put into it).

I have my stats set to sedentary so eat back all of my exercise calories (sometimes spread throughout the week) and lose. MFP can sometimes over or under estimate if you don't have a HRM but comparing my HRM with MFPs estimates it seems fairly accurate if not a little conservative so I eat 100% of them and lose as predicted. If you're unsure about MFPs exercise estimates (and more importantly log your food accurately with scales etc) you could eat 75% of them and adjust accordingly to eating more or less of them after a couple of weeks if you're losing too rapidly or slowly.

BCinTOR wrote: »

A lot of people think this, but it's not true at all, it's not even in the same ballpark as true. If you're walking, you'll get better accuracy from a formula that considers your distance, elevation change, and time than from a heart monitor. If you're cycling or rowing, a power meter is night and day more accurate than a heart monitor. For lifting weights, rolling dice is more accurate than using a heart rate monitor.

Can you provide sources for your thoughts?

This MFP article speaks to the accuracy of heart rate monitors. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/the-real-facts-about-hrms-and-calories-what-you-need-to-know-before-purchasing-an-hrm-or-using-one-21472

The accuracy of heart rate monitors is that they can tell you your actual heart rate, not that they can tell you how many calories you've burned or how many miles you drove to work or how old you were when you lost your virginity, or any other thing that's not your heart rate.

The article you linked to says as much and cautions people strongly that heart rate monitors are not calorie monitors, and urges people to recognize their limitations.

BCinTOR wrote: »

Machine based only are generally considered least accurate. Resting HR, Max HR, and VO2 Max are important factors in addition to actual HR that the purely weight, age, gender machine calculations are missing.

Think about this: your VO2max is essentially your fitness level, it changes constantly. It's not common for people to get it medically tested, but it's very rare for people to get it tested repeatedly, even though a stale value is inaccurate.

The most accurate way to measure your energy use on a bike is with a power meter. This is a machine that measures torque and RPMs and uses that information to measure how much energy went from your body into the bike. It doesn't know your sex or your age or your HR or anything else about you, and it's more accurate than any HRM system for determining calorie use on a bike. Sadly that doesn't exist for most types of exercise, but the point is that heart rate is not the key to unlocking the mysteries of energy use.