Consuming exercise calories burned..

I eat mine and I am losing! Before starting MFP, I was working out hardcore and limiting calories to 1200 calories per day. That's what I thought I was supposed to do. I was having such a hard time losing. I actually went to my doctor and had him check my thyroid. Then I went to a naturopath. Then a dietician. I got great advice from all of them. Still...the scale was barely moving. Fastforward to finding MFP...working out way less, eating way more and pounds are FINALLY coming off. I cannot stress it enough - eat those calories back!!! My case might be extreme...I was working out hard...intense workouts 5 or 6 days a week...literally up to 3 times a day. I had a baby in May and was 110 percent committed to losing the baby weight... I obviously had my body convinced that I was starving and my body fought back by holding on to every blessed fat cell. Finally letting them go and couldn't be happier!!!!

MFP already has a deficit built in to the calories you're given. But everyone is different. I almost always eat my exercise calories because I'm hungry. If I'm not hungry and have 200 calories left, it's not like I'm going to go eat just to meet my calorie goal. I've always lost when keeping my net calories at around 1200.

Some people don't lose if they eat back their calories, and you just have to find out what works for you. Now that you're almost to your goal, the weight is going to come off slower. And even if you do eat back your exercise calories, you're doing other things that you're probably not recording. Cleaning, walking around the store, chasing the kids... that all burns calories, too!

The answer is a big maybe, a lot of it depends on how you calculated your daily allowance.

MFP gives you a calorie count for day to day life NOT counting in exercise. This means it includes the small burn you got walking outside to your car, but not the one from running on a treadmill for 45 minutes. When you tell MFP you want to lose 1 lb per week, it figures out how many calories you would need to eat per day to maintain, and then chops 500 from that total (500 cals * 7 days = 3500 cals or ~1 lb). If you do not eat back your exercise calories, you are essentially eating at a greater deficit than what MFP setup for you. There is nutritional merit to foods beyond calories, but at the end of the day for energy, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. If you've burned up your allotment from food, it will resort to other means of obtaining energy. Some of this will be from fat (which is a good thing) and some from lean body mass (muscles, which is a bad thing). The greater or more extreme the deficit and the worse your nutritional intake/workout regime, the worse the ratio of fat loss to muscle loss (there is quite a bit more to this, but that's the general gist of it). That being said, a larger deficit may be bad or good depending, but in general losing weight more gradually is the "better" way to do things and is more likely to stay off for good. (Read this article, it's good: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/setting-the-deficit-small-moderate-or-large.html)

MFP's style isn't the only way to do things. Certain algorithms calculate a daily caloric intake that includes exercise in the equation. This may be better or worse for you depending on your preferences. I like this way better because for me personally planning each day out when the calorie count is the same is much more practical. I also think a lot of calorie estimates for exercise wildly exaggerate the actual burn. Some people find MFP's style better though, because on days when they really work they get more food, and they are able to increase exercise to make sure they stay within their targets.

I'm not sure how WW sets things up, but it's important to understand how the algorithm works in order to answer questions like this.

Hello everyone! let me start by saying that you "should" be able to eat you exercise calories. The thing is that if you are and you are not loosing weight, then your daily allowance is incorrect. Let me explain. If the apps tells you that you could have 1500 calories a day and you burn lets say 300 doing exercise then you should be able to eat 1800 and lose weight. the thing is that if you body is just burning the 1800 that you are putting in then you are breaking even. The 1500 calories that the apps give you is not a solid enough number for you to live by. If after a week of doing everything by the book. you are not loosing weight, then you need to lower your calories intake or you need to increase you calories burned. Its as simple as that. It happened to me. The app gave me 1650 for daily and with exercise I was to 1850 and i was stuck at my weight. I changed the intake at 1500 and started to lose weight. I hope this helps.