Eat less, Exercise more????

Have you looked to see what your basal metabolic rate is, and what your daily energy expenditure is?

Here's my real life example. My BMR is 1957. That is how many calories I would need to maintain my current weight in a coma. I have a sedentary job, so using the Harris benedict equation, I need 2348 calories to sustain my weight just due to day-to-day activities. (waking up, going to work, doing household chores, etc).

MFP calculates your weight loss off of your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) . MFP says I need to eat 1410 calories as a minimum. That works out to roughly 2 pounds/week (which is the high end of safe, sustainable weight loss)

Now let's say I go work out and burn 450 calories during a workout. That dips me down to only 960 calories consumed for the day. You do too much of that and your body says "hey, I'm not getting food here", your metabolism slows, and your body shifts into starvation/sustenance mode.

Even if you "eat back" your exercise calories, your are still running a deficit that will allow you to lose the weight you set as your goal loss per week.

The base calorie limit set for you takes into account the type of lifestyle you entered. For example if you said sedentary because you have a desk job, the base calories MFP gives to you will still cause you to lose weight if all you do is sit at your desk all day. But if you do more than sit all day - you have extra calories to eat and in the long run if you are not eating them your body will slow down the metabolism to hold onto what it has and you won't lose weight.

At least that's what I've learned from this site.

You can lose weight by eating less. Or you can lose weight by moving more. When you set up your MFP account, the calculate the number of calories you'll need to eat to lose however many lbs a week. IF you exercise on top of that, that's even MORE of a calorie deficit. So, people on here encourage other to eat back some, if not all of their exercise calories to make sure you have enough food (energy) in your body to fuel your workouts, yet you'll still lose weight.

Really it is all about calories in/calories out. If you eat less and exercise more you could be doing too much. You eat the same and exercise more then you lose weight, if you eat less and exercise none you lose. You don't NEED to do both to lose weight. Exercise has a smaller impact though because it is really difficult to burn calories.

Say you work out for an hour and burn 400 calories, that is the same as eating two donuts... So if you don't want to work out for an hour, just don't eat the two donuts. If you want them, and to still lose weight, then get moving :-)

I do try nor to eat 100% of my exercise calories back, mostly because calories burned is way more of an estimate than the calories in food. Also, I have my weight loss set at the slow and steady 1 lb/week level, so if I come under a couple hundred calories on some days, it's not a big deal.

When you input your info accurately. (age, height, age, activity level) MFP calculates how many calories the average person needs to maintain that weight.

When you select LOSE 1 LB/WEEK then MFP subtracts 500 calories from your current weight maintenance calories.
So this is the "DEFICIT" that MFP builds into your TARGET calories. If you exercise you use more enegry/calories and need more nutrition to fuel your body. If you eat them back there is still the 500 calorie deficit that MFP built into your TARGET. If you don't eat any or all of them back your deficit will be larger. Which may or may not be a good thing depending on your goals and how far you are from them.

As long as you are eating reasonable healthy foods and meeting that magic guideline of 1200 NET calories a day. You'll probably get enough nutrition in and don't have to worry about eating every last exercise calorie.

I'm not a very consistent person so I was much more success when I gave myself a range.

BOTTOM: 1200 calories net.
TARGET: MFP lose 1 lb/week (when my target calories got to 1200 I switched to lose 1/2 lb/wk)
TOP: Maintain my goal weight.
(Safety Valve: Maintain my current weight (remember to recalculate this as your weight changes)

As long as I stayed within my range i would continue to lose.
As long as I didn't shoot past my safety valve I shouldn't gain.
I found this was a good way to gauge just how bad a day

eat regularly. every 3 hours but make sure ur calorie intake is less than your exercise + basal metabolic thingy.

Dude that's solid advice. Anyone who uses technical terms like "thingy" are clearly well versed on the subject.