If I exercise should I eat the burned calories?

The way MFP is set you’re you’re expected to eat them back. https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10503681/exercise-calories-do-i-eat-these-a-video-explanation

Interesting. I have always not eaten back those additional calories since I am trying to lose weight. A good approach might be to see how much you are losing per week. Most experts recommend losing no more than 2lbs per week, so if you are losing more than that, you may want to eat back some of those calories.

My doctor told me that losing too much more than 2lbs per week can cause health issues like fatty liver, excess skin after weight loss, etc.

Think of it as earning more calories.

JamiBarrett wrote: »

If you are looking to lose weight, don’t eat them back. Usually maintainers will eat them back. It’s very hard to count the calories burned, all machines are drastically different with their counts! Especially MFP exercise estimators. But if you are doing strenuous workouts make sure you are getting plenty of calories overall for your energy levels.

MFP doesn't take exercise into account when giving the initial calorie goal so you're already in a deficit before exercising. But, because exercise calories are an estimate, it's recommended to eat 50 to 75% back and see how the rate of loss goes.

Yes, eat some of them back at least. I ate back most of my exercise calories, and so far have lost 32 lbs in 16 weeks.

JamiBarrett wrote: »

If you are looking to lose weight, don’t eat them back. Usually maintainers will eat them back. It’s very hard to count the calories burned, all machines are drastically different with their counts! Especially MFP exercise estimators. But if you are doing strenuous workouts make sure you are getting plenty of calories overall for your energy levels.

Your weight loss goal assumes you will eat them back. Everyone is intended to eat them back whether losing, maintaining or gaining.
Sometimes it's very easy to work out calories burned with adequate accuracy.
Not all exercise is done on machines, some machines are also plenty accurate.


Yes a lot of MFP exercise estimates are high (but I've never thought of them as being on average anywhere near double so I take issue with common advice of eating half).
Yes you should fuel your exercise properly to get the most out of it and avoid too much stress on your body - it's also good practice for maintenance when you must account for your exercise.

bikecheryl wrote: »

xvolution wrote: »

I used to not eat back my burned calories, at least until a certain event on Thanksgiving. On that day I splurged a bit and went over my calorie limit a bit (only 500 over) but somehow I lost a lot of weight afterwards (dropped 4 pounds). Since then I've tried to at least eat back most of my burned calories and get as close to my calorie goal as possible.

I'm assuming what happened is I wasn't eating nearly enough so I was in starvation mode, and going over a bit on my limit helped push me out of it.

I will let others explain - but there is no such thing as "starvation mode". Thought I'd seen the last of that idea.

Then my assumptions were wrong, but it's the only reason I could think of as to why I would lose that much weight after going over my caloric limit. Main point of that post was that eating at too much of a deficit seems to halt weight loss, as I've frequently been over 1000 calories in deficit and been stuck at 267-268 until I went over that limit.