Do you eat your fitness calories?

No

Short answer, yes, you eat your exercise calories.

Long answer:

http://myfitnesspal.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/410332-how-does-myfitnesspal-calculate-my-initial-goals-

"How does MyFitnessPal calculate my initial goals?

When you create your profile, we ask you for your age, height, weight, gender, and normal daily activity level. We use these factors to determine the calories required to maintain your current weight. We also ask how much weight you would like to lose or gain per week, and with this goal in mind we subtract calories (for weight loss) or add calories (for weight gain) to determine your daily calorie and nutrient goals.

We ask for your goal weight when you create your profile, but this is only for purposes of reporting how many pounds remain until you meet your goal. Your goal weight does not affect our initial calorie calculations.

We also ask you for your weekly exercise goals (which should not be included in your initial activity level), in order to provide an incentive for you to reach. However, we do not account for additional exercise outside of your reported daily activity level, until you actually perform and log exercise to your diary under the "Cardiovascular" section. Please see this article to understand why we do not currently calculate calories burned via strength exercises.
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Because your daily calorie goal already accounts for your intent to gain or lose weight at a particular rate, you can achieve your goal by eating the specified number of calories per day, with no additional exercise required. If you do exercise, your daily calorie goal will then increase for the day, to stabilize your weight loss or weight gain at the rate you initially specified.

We set your daily calorie goal in Net Calories which we define as:

Calories Consumed (Food) - Calories Burned (Exercise) = Net Calories

This means if you exercise, you will be able to eat more for that day. For example, if your Net Calorie goal is 2000 calories, one way to meet that goal is to eat 2,500 calories of food, but then burn 500 calories through exercise.

Think of your Net Calories like a daily budget of calories to spend. You spend them by eating, and you earn more calories to eat by exercising. We do not recommend women consume fewer than 1200 calories per day, or men fewer than 1500 calories per day. Eating too little can produce negative health effects."

Yes, or I'd be so hungry all the time.

Since I've been following the IIFYM program I have not been eating back my exercise calories and, honestly, I prefer it that way. When I was eating back my calories I found myself overdoing it on days I worked out and feeling very guilty about eating at all on days I didn't work out. Now that I am consistently eating the same calories and macros every day I'm feeling better and losing weight.

BootyEvolve wrote: »

Do you eat your fitness/workout calories? I'm set at 1200 calories but on a good workout I can burn 500. I'm not sure if eating those calories can inhibit my weightloss.

It will slow your weight loss, but so does eating 1200 calories a day instead of 700 a day, which is basically what you're doing if you don't eat back those exercise calories.

I think a lot of the caution around exercise calories is the knowledge that it's easy to overestimate how many calories you're actually burning, which is why people say they eat back half or two thirds or whatever. The thing is, this is *all* guesswork to an extent. You need to pay attention to your body and your rate of weight loss and adjust as needed. 1200 is the estimate of what women need to keep our bodies running healthy. It's better to lose weight a little bit more slowly than to risk health problems by starving yourself.

you are given a total amount of calories you are SUPPOSED to eat daily in order to lose your preset amount of weight per week. you are supposed to REACH that goal every day not eat less. if you exercise and that drops you under that goal you are allowed and supposed to eat back up to that goal. mfp sets the per week weight goals to keep you healthy and try and stop rebound. if you drop 5 to 10lbs a week you are going to rebound. use the math they give you and drop the weight slow and steady. you will get there. I did.

RuNaRoUnDaFiEld wrote: »

Yes, I eat all of mine. I earned them.

Just an observation but the posters saying they don't eat them have very few posts. Interesting as I believe people not eating them back is one of the main reasons people quit. They try to live on such a small amount of calories that is becomes unsustainable.

Or they just don't spend much time on the forum

Yes, of course. I'm in this dirt my health and looks, and I can understand basic math.

I do bc I'm on 1200 so try to stay above that for my net

Yes you should, especially see once you're only at 1200. Eat back half to 2/3 because they can be overstated.

Yes I eat them. If I didn't I wouldn't be able to support my workouts properly and would risk excessive muscle loss.

I eat most or all of mine and always have. It always worked fine for me in terms of maintaining my weight and/or reducing body fat. I see no point in joining a site then ignoring the way in which it is meant to work. This 1200 is not some sort of magic number. Eating the bare minimum IF you have another option is not an achievement. It is a needless punishment judging from the number of people who post about how hungry they are and how hard they are finding it. How is that sustainable for any length of time ? If you can eat back your exercise calories and still lose weight then I strongly suggest doing it.