Should I stop eating my exercise calories?

I've had this conversation with several people in the gym, and all of them gave me the same piece of advice; "Don't eat back the calories, it's counter productive". =\ For as much as I'd love to take advantage of om nom noming the extra 500 calories or so that I burned, I'm sticking with the advice I was given. I'll probably up my calorie intake a bit more if/when I start working out harder!

It's only counter productive if you are using exercise to create your deficit. MFP already sets up your *healthy* deficit without exercise. By exercising while using MFP's settings, you are creating a larger deficit which may be unhealthy, depending on how much weight you have to lose and how big your pre-exercise deficit is, and could actually hinder weight loss. Most trainers are not thinking of deficits the way MFP has them set up, so they are giving advice based on insufficient understanding of the program.

OP - if I were you I would try lowering your weekly weight loss goal, as you mentioned and see how that goes for at least a month (while eating at least half your exercise cals). This will increase your calories. But as loads of people on here will tell you, the solution to a plateau is not to eat less (particularly if you are already at 1200) but to eat more. The closer you get to goal, the closer to maintenance you have to eat in order for the weight to come off. A person shouldn't go from eating 1200 (as an example) during their entire weight loss, then jump to 1600 for maintenance, it should be a gradual increase as you change your goal from 1lb/wk to .5lb/wk to maintenance.

You have to find what works for you...I eat if Im hungry regardless of calories consumed via workout...but I try to stay within a range and stick with my workout routines

Well said girl!!

As long as you won't be hungry, try dropping your daily calories a little and see if it helps. If not, try something switching something else. Maybe a different type of workout or eating your exercise calories one day and not the next. Different things work for different people.