Dieting and exercise

It kind of depends. If the 2000 goal is what you need to average 1 pound per week, and you feel satisfied/full on that with the exercise you're doing: I'd say to not eat extra in general for exercise. But to allow yourself the room to choose on a day to day basis if you feel you need more.

I say this because it is generally accepted to aim for a 2 pound weight weekly loss overall - and if you're eating for 1 pound loss and exercising for the other - you should be ok. As long as you pay attention to body signals. THat, and its possible that you think you're burning 500 but its actually less. We rarely burn as much as we think.

On the other hand if 2000 is your goal for losing 2 per week, then you probably should eat some portion of exercise calories back as you're already aiming for a serious deficit before exercise.

Bosatch87 wrote: »

Indoors on a exercise bike

Don't use speed related calorie estimates as they are meaningless when you aren't actually moving (no wind resistance or rolling resistance).
If your bike displays watts then average watts per hour X 3.6 gives a very accurate net calorie estimate.

For lifting simply log the entire duration of your workout under the Cardio section of your diary and search for "strength training" for a modest estimate.

lorrpb wrote: »

How did you arrive at the 2000? Was this a number MFP gave you after setting up your stats and goals, or did you obtain it from another source?
If from MPF, then as stated above you should eat back about half your exercise calories. If from another source, then it depends how that source arrived at your number because there are several methods use, some include exercise and others do not.

Not for good estimates, it would be a way to turn an accurate estimate into an inaccurate estimate.

As said above, yes you should eat your exercise calories. How long ago did you set up on MFP / how long have you been eating around 2000 cals and doing that amount of exercise? If there's any doubt about the accuracy of cals given for your cycling, the usual suggestion on here is to eat and exercise at that level for 6 weeks and then work out how how much weight you're actually losing per week. If it's faster /slower than it should be, up your calories / adjust accordingly. It's common to over-estimate exercise calories, especially if you're using the MFP database. It's also common to underestimate what you're actually eating, unless you weigh absolutely everything that you eat / measure every liquid.