Don't understand why I should eat back exercise calories..

Yes, except for the other benefits of exercising ...

MFP approximates your calories burned in a day then subtracts a number to match your goal loss. If you eat below this number, you're creating a bigger deficit which could lead to health problems if you go too far below your BMR. All you are doing by eating back calories is eating the correct amount to maintain a steady weightloss.

That said, you may find you only need half to 3/4 of them to be eaten to maintain the loss.

Yes. If MFP tells you to eat 1500 calories/day in order to lose weight, they have already figured a calorie deficit into that 1500 calories. In other words, you will lose weight even if you don't exercise. Personally, I exercise so that I get to eat more while still losing weight!

The FAQ explains the rationale pretty well. Frankly you don't HAVE to do it their way. There are lots of other people using different systems. The thing is if you use MFP to calculate your BMR it will give you a pretty low number so being very aggressive with a calorie deficit doesn't always work well. IMHO it's impossible to calculate the calories with great precision. I try to eat most of my exercise calories but operate in a calorie range rather than any strict limit. YMMV.

Also, the way I understand it, if you've been doing strength exercises you need nutrients to help build muscle tissue (proteins, I think). Bit weird that MFP doesn't count calories for strength exercises, though.

I didn't understand this either, it seemed crazy to me! Well, I ate 1200 plus some exercise calories for the fist 2 months and only lost 6 lbs. Yes 6lbs is pretty good over that period of time but I wasn't losing consistently and was pretty hungry. Everyone told me to up my calories and eat my exercise calories back because the way to lose weight is to eat and keep your metabolism up. I am now experimenting with my calories. I keep upping them and losing MORE!! I love it. I try to eat every 2-3 hours to keep my metabolism going. Try not to eat after 7. When you exercise and don't eat at least half back you are going to starve your body and make it store fat and fluids (causes 0- minimum weight loss) When you fuel your body with the healthy foods with the right amount of calories your body thinks oh well I'm going to get fed every 2 hours or so , so I don't need this extra weight, and it is going to drop right off of you. You can private message me if you need to! Good luck

If I eat 1500 calories a day, burn 500 calories with exercising, and eat back the exercise calories, aren't I back where I started? I'm kind of confused.

Yeah. Back to the healthy deficit that mfp set you at....

Think of exercise calories as extra calories earned...

If you were supposed to eat 1500 to lose weight, and you earned an extra 500 calories in exercise, now you can eat 2000 calories and still be losing weight. Make sense?

The best way I can explain it is...

You are like a car and you require 8 gallons of gas to get from point a (beginning of day) to point b (end of your day).
if you go straight from point A to point B with no extra turns you won't run out of gas.
But say you take a detour that will require 2 more gallons of gas (exercise). You won't make it unless you fill your tank with those 2 gallons of gas.


The recommendation is that you don't go below 1200 calories, this is a healthy number to live on, however I'm not in the belief that you are going to die off in starvation mode if you don't stick to the 1200 min. I think you need to average over a week, a month a good balanced diet whatever those calories are. I know if I go under my calories for too long I don't feel great.

Nice analogy and way of explaining it. I liked it.