exercise calories

If you want/ need to you can use your exercise calories but the point is to try not and if you do do not go over whar you have earned. You can still lose weight if you don't use all the exercise calories but not as much as you would if you didnt eat them at all. Hope this makes sense and helps.

To loose two pounds of fat a week, you need to eat 1,000 calories less per day than you burn.
If you eat 500 calories less than you burn on a daily basis, then you'll loose on average 1 pound of fat a week.

Exercising will increase your metabolism, so you'd be able to eat more per day and still loose weight.

If you can afford it, I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend getting a Bodybugg or Bodymedia. You wear it on your left arm and it tells you, with 90% accuracy, how many calories you are burning. You set it to show you your target goal for calories burned, and then use that to figure out if you need to be more active to hit your target. It also helps you keep track of how many calories you are eating.

So at any point during the day you can look at your display and see what your calorie deficit is for the day.

I found that I wasn't burning as many calories as I thought I was, and so I was eating too many calories, and thus, my weight loss slowed to almost nothing. But now I KNOW that on a daily basis I'm burning AT LEAST 2600 calories, and thus know that my calorie intake needs to be around 1600. If I burn more, I eat more. If I burn less, I alter my calorie intake for that day. I don't work out on Sundays, so I burn less, so I eat less on Sundays.

God bless!

Hi, I'm a former WW watcher's too, having lost, and gained it all back. At the end of my WW, I felt so starved! And started gaining right away. But I did not want to pay fees for what I had gained back, and stopped going to meetings.

Then some research came out that said that by dieting, we would go into starvation mode. And then, when the starvation (fasting) stopped, then it was time to FEAST!!!! Built into our systems by our ancestors when game was scarce and when plentiful, it was time to build up the fat reserves again.

This approach is different. I had not been losing weight, so I've stopped eating back my exercise. Not entirely---I'm not a fanatic about it because I don't want ever to be so famished again.

My sense is that if you are at goal weight, you are in that critical period where you don't want to trigger the FEAST imperative, and take back your losses. So I am not sure you should change systems in this critical period until your weight stabilizes. But I don't know enough about the science to give you solid advice. I just speak to my experience, and what I hope to avoid on this diet.

If you want/ need to you can use your exercise calories but the point is to try not and if you do do not go over whar you have earned. You can still lose weight if you don't use all the exercise calories but not as much as you would if you didnt eat them at all. Hope this makes sense and helps.

That's actually not the point of them. The point is to eat them, that's why they add them back into your total. MFP already builds a calorie deficit into your total, you are already eating the right amount of calories to burn a pound a week or whatever your goal is. If you don't eat your E calories back, you may not be getting enough fuel. Yes food can make you fat, but your body also needs it to run properly.

Read the newbie links about this, it's all explained there and very helpful.

This question comes up often. If you don't lose weight when you eat your exercise calories, but you do lose weight when you skip them, something is wrong with the formula you are using.

Two possibilities come to mind. 1) You are using an overestimate of the calories that you burn during exercise. Or 2) you are using an overestimate of the calories that you burn without exercise (BMR).

Try to figure out which and adjust accordingly.

My guess is this: you work out several times each week, so you put yourself as "active" in the MFP calculator. But MFP doesn't count exercise until you do it. Unless you are "active" at your job and don't count it as exercise, you should put "sedentary" as your lifestyle. Working out is separate.

Honestly..to each their own. Some people eat them and some don't. Some people eat just some of them. I think you have to find out what work for you.
I feel that if I'm hungry..then I'll eat. If I'm not...I don't. I'm not going to eat extra calories just because they are there. That's not how I want to live. That's how I got this way. There are a million posts on here about eating extra calories..I read a TON of them and everone is so divided. That's when I decided that everyone uses what they think is right. Again..find out what works for you. It's a learning process, but once you figure it out...you're golden!! :O) Good luck!