When I log my exercise should I stay with my daily 1200 cals and not pay attention to calories out?

1200 is your net recommended calories. If you burn additional calories via exercise and "eat back" some* or all of those calories, you will still be at the same deficit as if you didn't exercise at all. But exercise needs to be properly fueled so you don't hurt yourself or get sick.

*Ideally you'd eat them all, but it's hard to judge exactly how many calories exercise burns, thus the "eat back half" standard.

YES! Stick to the 1200 regardless of exercise. However, if you feel like you need more nutrition, fat, protein, etc., then eat up to the calories you burned extra (for that day only). The calories burned are an estimate...meaning they are not very accurate. I have only ever maintained while consuming 1200 + exercise calories. I lost weight by sticking to the calories (without extra exercise calories), and listening to my body.

janejellyroll wrote: »

Rusty740 wrote: »

jasminnatale wrote: »

I'm confused. I feel like I should stay with my 1200 daily calories without the exercise calories out to loose weight. What works best for you guys?

I find it easier to stick with "the program" if I just stay to one number each day regardless of what exercise I do.

This is fine, but most active people do better when they account for the calories burned in some way (higher daily calorie goal, for example). 1,200 is already very low and netting below 1,200 regularly is probably going to catch up with OP at some point.

Bingo.

I'm an endurance/long distance runner. It would be absolutely ludicrous and borderline malnutrition-inducing if I stuck to a 1280 goal, and then *didn't* eat anything back on those long run days. When I plan out my meals, I know I'm going to be doing whatever exercise that day, and I know that I need to actually plan that food in, or else I'll just ... not fuel them. And that leads to an awful restrict->urge-to-binge-and -purge cycle.

Case in point: I'm planning on a 10-mile run tonight (I average about 20 miles a week, and usually do one 10, one five-mile, one 45-minute run, and one 30-minute run). Saturday was a five mile, and yesterday was a "light" day of just a barre session.

I'm cool with seeing a -330 number right now, because eight hours from now, I'll have burned about 800-900 calories. So, I'm not forcing myself to eat all of them, but I'm also not being an idiot and refusing to fuel that long run.

If I didn't plan to fuel that back, I'd be climbing the walls at the end of the night. Or, because I'm type 1 diabetic, the more likely scenario is that I'd be dealing with severe hypoglycemia and having to constantly feed that to treat it. Since you can't just, you know, generate glycogen and carbs on command.

Maybe this whole "oh, don't eat any of them back" thing works for people who just walk, or don't do anything intensive, but for anything resembling endurance exercise, it's ludicrous.

MFP uses the NEAT method, your goal is BEFORE purposeful exercise assuming you've picked the right activity level (most people choose sedentary, even when they have very active jobs for example).

Now I am truly sedentary and yet have always eaten all of my exercise calories and always lose in line with my rolling deficit (I use weekly numbers).

So experiment with the accuracy of your numbers but you should absolutely be eating at least some.