workout calories..to eat or not to eat?

I try not to eat them back, but I do use them as a cushion once in a while for situations like: having dessert or ordering a margarita with dinner.

When you first set up your goals, MFP sets your daily calorie goal based on diet ONLY, no exercise. It creates a diet-only deficient.

When you exercise, you may create a larger calorie deficient than is considered healthy for steady weight loss. MFP wants you to eat back those exercise calories because you need to stay in a proper deficient range. Enough fuel for your workouts, but an overall deficient to lose weight (fat).

As long as you set your MFP goal to some sort of loss a week, you already have a deficient. That's how you'll lose weight. Eating your exercise calories keeps you at a deficient MFP considers best for weight loss.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/390145-should-i-eat-my-exercise-calories

bump

I don't know...I started with a goal of 1200 calories a day and I was not exercising. One thing at a time was my thinking. So now that I feel that I have more of a handle on my food intake and getting used to eating reasonable portions (I lost 18 lbs that way), I have introduced exercise. I'm currently swimming for an hour a day. It's not vigorous, I'm working up to that but it is a solid hour. According to MFP I can have about 800 more calories. I feel like I'm just pigging out, and I haven't lost any weight now for 2 weeks. I'm not even eating all the calories, only about a half or maybe two thirds. So it doesn't seem to be working so well at the moment. Is my body adjusting to this? I just feel like I'm eating too much, (and, no, it's not junk food). I had almost 100 pounds to lose so we're not talking about trying to shed a small amount, I know it gets slower as one gets closer to ones goal. So what is the answer? Anybody with any insight to this scenario? Thanksalot.

i started with a goal of 1200 my first time around - i didnt exercise much, and when i did i didnt eat my exercise calories, at the time i had over 100 lbs to lose. i gave up not long into it because i was always starving and felt like a failure.
next time around i upped my calories to 1400 and still felt hungry a lot, so i upped to 1550. i also started eating my exercise calories.. i bought a HRM to be more accurate and ate every single one of them. i was losing 2 lbs a week or so but then i wanted to start adding strength training to make sure i was losing fat and not muscle..so i went to once a month weigh ins and bumped my calories up to my BMR. so i eat 1845 + exercise cals... in feb i lost about a pound a week, and i actually did a crappy job with my diet and exercise.
i would say your body is still adjusting - it can take a month for it to figure things out. try getting a hrm - i know there are some that work well in water..even though youre not eating all of your exercise calories right now, it wouldnt hurt to be ore accurate.