Eating Calories?

You do not want to eat the calories burned from working out.

I do! I get shaky and dizzy if I don't.

You're probably going to get quite a few different answers, but I think there probably is no "right" answer for everyone. I tend to not all of eat my exercise calories back, but I've read posts on here from people who plateaued or even gained when they avoided eating back their exercise calories. I think the best answer is try it each way for a week, see what the result is on weigh-in day, and do what works best for you until it stop working best, and then shake it up a bit.

Good luck!

You do not want to eat the calories burned from working out.

Yes you do, this is actually fundamental to the way MFP is set up. The reason you eat them is MFP sets your calorie goal assuming you will not do any exercise. Once you exercise you burn more calories than MFP though when giving you your caloric intake to lose your goal amount of weight and as such you must eat them back or you risk burning lean muscle, not just fat.

Professionals (trainers, doctors, etc) will take into account exercise when giving you a caloric intake, and will always give you more than the base MFP caloric intake.

As an example say MFP gives you 1450 calories to lose 1 lb/week, and you plan on exercising 5x/week for an average of 400 cals per workout. well MFP will tell you to eat 1450 on the days you don't workout and 1850 on the days you do whereas a "professional" may tell you to eat 1750 everyday regardless if you workout.

So for the week MFP will have you eat 12,150 (1450*2+1850*5) whereas doing it the other way will have you eat 12,250 (1750*7) almost the same number of cals for the week. The issue in not following MFP is if you don't workout the full 5 days or burn more or less than planned. If that is the case you may lose more or less than your goal, whereas MFP will have you lose your goal amount regardless how much you actually workout.

What many MFP do is take the low 1450 and not eat back exercise calories which is wrong, if you are not eating them back then your daily activity level should reflect the higher burn with would be covered in the 1750/day above.

You do not want to eat the calories burned from working out.

Think of your body like a Car. You start with a full tank of gas and go for a long drive. You have to put gas back in the tank in order to keep the car running effectively.

Your body is the same way. You exercise (burn fuel) you need to put gas back in the tank in order to keep your body running effectively.

MFP already gives you a deficit in your daily intake, so eating less than that only hinders your progress

Whatever, then eat them.

MFP creates a calorie deficit based on no exercise. Theoretically you could lose your weekly goal weight by eating what MFP tells you to and not exercising.

When you exercise you increase that deficit so you need to eat back those calories in order to return to the original deficit. Having "too big" of a deficit MAY have negative effects like increased hunger, decreased energy, slow and or completely stalled weight loss.

And honestly, I like to eat. Food is yummy.

I tried this for a few weeks based on a recommendation on MFP and gained 12lbs in the process that I had to lose again. I think it depends a lot on how much you have to lose and your own body chemistry. People warned me that if I didn't eat back my calories I would have less energy and my body would seize up and stop burning. Less than 3 months later, sticking to a restrictive diet of 1500 calories/day and sometimes dipping into my exercise calories, but not always, I've dropped almost 45lbs, consistently losing 2-4lbs every week. Plus I have twice as much energy as I had when I started, so I guess so far that hasn't panned out either.

Everybody's a bit different, and what true for one isn't going to be true for the next guy. Trying to plug everyone into the same hole is almost always a bad idea in my opinion.

Haven't agreed with a post this much for a long time. :drinker: