Confused about exercise calories-can you help?

There appears to be a bit of bad info floating about here, and after receiving an angry note to my inbox following my previous post, I figured i'd fix things up a bit.

Anger noted. But sorry, what I wrote was correct, although I made a stupid assumption that ppl are doing things correctly, which I'm sure most aren't.
This is what happens when you omit things because you're in a rush lol.
What was not addressed was that if your food plan is set up for maintenance calories as it should be for someone exercising, [which is what I would advise anyone to start off with], then the cals burned thru your exercise IS/ARE your deficit , and eating them back is wrong.
A problem with basing your meal plan model on BMI and then adding back in calories for exercise is that you aren't using a logical scientific method at the onset of the programme. Starting with a flawed premise will not yield positive results past the short term. BMI IS ABSOLUTE TRASH. Here's a nice summary of it from this website: http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/02/08/the-skinny-on-the-body-mass-index-bmi/ Here's the article:
By M Parrott
Article ID: 137

Round up a group of ten-year-old children. Put each one on a scale. One third of those children are overweight. Expand your view, and you’ll see that 23% of school children are overweight. So says the British government. They also state that within four years, one out of three adults will be overweight. I’m not sure if this scare trend is common across all cultures, but let me tell you now it is bull. The problem here is that to make these weighty judgements, the government uses the Body Mass Index (also known as the BMI) which is so innately flawed that you might as well flip a coin on whether someone is obese or not.

What is the BMI (Body Mass Index)?

Let’s start with the BMI’s origin. A Belgian mathematician and sociologist named Adolphe Quetelet created the Body Mass Index between 1830 and 1850. He did this as a way to compare a person’s height with their weight. This technique was originally meant to aid in social science education, and wasn’t intended to determine obesity levels. BMI was not meant for medical diagnosis. So how can we use it to see if people are obese? If we’re analyzing a specific individual, we can’t! At least, not reliably.

Let’s consider the problem with using weight as an obesity measurement. You might be thinking, “well, of course your weight determines if you’re obese.” Not really. Muscle and bone density play a big part. Compare equal amounts of muscle and fat, and you’ll find the muscle weighs a lot more, at least four times more than fat. So a BMI label for someone with no fat but a lot of muscle will be obese. For example, Michael Jordan is obese according to the BMI and I guarantee he is a lot more fit than anyone reading this. I’m normal weight and Jordan is certainly in better shape than I. So here it is; if athletes are classed as obese then how can we possibly apply this formula to anyone? How can the BMI tell us if we are obese or not? (Yes, we can take additional factors into account like diet and exercise, but the BMI doesn’t do that.)

One of the key measurements of the Body Mass Index is weight. But weight isn’t even an accurate measurement of how healthy you are. Some health fanatics and personal trainers will tell you that there are no genetic factors behind being fat, but this is far from true. Consider the variation in ethnicities. Look at Viking descendents and Greek descendents and you’ll see a vast difference in structure. Those of Viking descendents are often higher than average weight; they have a larger bone structure. Greek descendants have a thinner bone structure and are in comparison generally lighter. So back to the BMI: why is one formula applied to everyone of every ethnicity if different ethnicities are genetically pre-disposed to be different weights?
Diet and exercise are good for you. If you eat right you will be your natural, healthy weight. Yes, the BMI may label you as obese or over-weight. But so what? That’s the weight at which your body is healthiest. END

The second flaw is the "add back the calories" method. When someone[or something] tells you you burned 200 cals doing an exercise based on a table or chart[based upon a math formula] they're inherently wrong. These algorithms are based upon either a singular human model or perhaps a few models. Here we run into the same problem as with BMI; you and your TWIN sister both do an identical activity the algorithms do not take into account intensity or effort of exercise, energy status, kinetics[exercise form], range of motion state of recovery, cardiovascular health, hormonal response,etc ,etc. 2 twins can be doing the exact same exercise with the same reps sets and weight and their energy expenditure will NOT be identical.

Hope that clears things up. I apologize for my hasty response earlier.
If anyone wants me to post the proper, logical, science based way of using MFP, let me know and I will trow a quick post up.
thanx again.

When I was a 20-yr-old losing the "Freshmen 30" by herself with just a calorie-counting book and a Nutrional Almanac, I
"ate" my exercise calories On days when I exercised for an hour, I shot for 1500 calories, on days when I exercised for 2 hours, I ate 1800 calories. I lost 30 lbs in 3 months. On the rare occasions when I didn't exercise, I shot for 1200. Eat your exercise calories.

To above poster:

But MOST people here do not have their calculators set to maintain, but to lose, so eating back the calories is necessary. As I understand it, that's why if I change my weekly goals from 2 lbs to 1 1/2 to 1, it will give me different calorie goals - it is already building in a deficit for me to lose that weight without exercise, so with exercise I need more fuel.

For one explanation see:
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/186814-some-mfp-basics

Please read my entire post[ i know it's long, sorry]. All you are essentially doing is guessing everything, which leaves too much to chance. I look for long term results like 20 yrs. If a person is quite obese then frankly ANYTHING will work for awhile. But People come to me when they are tired of trying,guessing and gimmicking, and I help them. I have 20 years in the industry, and you won't believe the amount of utter crap out there especially from other trainers and nutritionists whose thinking is still based in education 50-100 years old.

It's always going to be estimates. Even with your way of eating the maintenance level and using exercise to create the deficit, which is perfectly legitimate - how would one figure out their maintenance level? They estimate, using a formula or a device.

What about those who want to maintain or gain weight? They need to estimate their exercise burn by some method (HRM, BodyBugg, or formula) and eat those calories.

Yes, it's always an estimate. Even our food logs are all estimates. Not to mention human error, database error, etc. But with a little trial and error, and consistency in habits and behavior, people can eventually get all dialed in.

Using the MFP system to factor in deficit, maintenance, or surplus, then adding back exercise is easy and straightforward. Why make it any more complicated?

Seems you've been a member here since Dec 2009. You realize this is how the system is designed to work, right?

Ok, this is really simple and basic there's no miraculous ingenuity at work here. lol

A new person comes in and I get them to track all food with no eating behaviour changes [ eat the way you always have] for a minimum of 10 days[ the longer the better of course] . If they are truly eating 'normally' [no exercise at this point] they will either maintain their weight or gain a little bit. Either way is fine. You find the average calories per day and that is your base amount. Often I will alter their macros [ a calorie is NOT a calorie after all] but keep the overall calorie count. After this is set, we then start them on a basic exercise programme, and this will create their deficit.
Continuous monitoring is necessary obviously and down the road some guess work starts to come into play, But at least we start with a sound set of base principals, and not guess work off the bat.

Ideally of course you'd want a controlled environment, to measure BMR with O2 consumption and infrared monitoring. Exercise controls of a similar type as well. Unfortunately those types of facilities are very expensive to operate as well as difficult to come by, but they would be the most precise and logical method. My method above is an unfortunately distant second, but still superior to using assumed algorithms for BMR & exercise expenditures along with the farce of BMI.
"You can't build a sturdy house without a solid foundation" as they say.

Hope this all clears up my stupidly short 1st post above. I only wanted to help out.
My apologies again.

I don't know...exercising for 50 minutes is pretty simple...OH and healthier.
Diet + exercise is like 2+2=5 the sum result is more than the parts and def more effective and long-term than just one.