Should I eat all calories burned?

You are going to get a lot of answers. My short answer is, you need to eat more, your net calories shouldn't be below 1200. Some people will say eat all your exercise calories back, some will say you don't have to. I eat most of mine back, but as long as my net is over 1200 then I don't worry TOO much about getting ALL my calories in for the day if I'm no longer hungry.

If you are hungry eat.

Remember that your body needs a certain amount of calories to function properly, so don't restrict yourself because you think you will lose faster. You could eat ALLLLL your exercise calories back and still lose weight because MFP has already built in the deficit you need to lose .5/1/1.5/2 lbs a week (whatever you chose).

If you set MFP to a 2lb loss then 1350 already has that 1000 deficit built in.
So if you eat 1350, then you exercise and burn 500 cals your net is now 850. That means you are giving your body 850 to operate on, it's not enough.

That is ALOT of exercise, and if your calorie burn is that high then it is very intense exercise for you, this is a lifestyle change, you want to make sure it's something you can sustain and that you can enjoy otherwise there is a higher chance that you will not continue. There is no need to workout 3 hours a day (in my opinion anyways) you are creating this HUGE deficit in calories. If your goal is 1350 and you burned 2500 calories, you'd need to eat 2500 calories just to get your net calories back up to 0.

I agree with the post above. You might want to be careful about the amount of calories you are burning in a workout. I don't know where you get the calories, but some machines are inflated I think. I usually under judge my calorie burn to be on the safe side.

Depends on how sure you are that your calorie burn is correct.

4500 burned on a single day is a hell of a lot and I'd hate to eat that much and then discover the numbers were wrong. Some people say MFP's estimates go high for exercise.

Definitely! I bought a HRM so that I'd have a better estimate as I didn't trust the MFP estimates. The elliptical on MFP for my height and weight was way over stated

I work out 3 - 1 hr long workouts & daily activities burning about 4000 calories, this is just the last couple of weeks I have been working up to these workouts.

Do not factor your daily activities in as "exercise calories" - that is just for your workout.


So you will eat your 1350, plus what you log for JUST those one-hour workouts. But I would suggest to you that the 1350 is too low... in your case I'd be more inclined toward 1600 per day, plus exercise calories on the days you work out.

Thank you all for your advice!
A lot to consider for sure.
I don't use the MFP numbers.- I do an intense step aerobics where my feet & arms NEVER stop moving. And I do a high energy Dance. On top of everything else I do in a day - I am the mother of 4 very active children.
Upon reading & advice I think I will try to decrease my exercise b'c I don't want to up my calories b'c I am just not hungry. I was loosing weight steadily until this week so I wonder if maybe I am building muscle?

I would like to know that too, If you have been steadily been losing weight and then you stop for a week or two to drop a pound is it posible that it is because you are gaining muscle if you have been strength training?

heres the way i do it,,,

i only input cardio because i get a reading on the equipment, i never input my resistance training because it would be pure guess work.

i work on a 40/40/20 percentage split in my calories. that is i aim to get 40% protien, 40% carbs and 20% fats in my daily diet.

i also know i need to get around 170g of protien a day to maintain my muscle whilst dieting (1g per lb of lean body wieght).

so using the pie chart (iphone app) i can judge what i need to be eating to get this balance.

sometimes im under my goal (1700), sometimes im over by a bit, but im still losing weight steadily and keeping my strength and tone.

if i got a load of calories left at the end of the week according to the app, then ill have a treat day on saturday or sunday to use some up which gives me something to look forward too .

hope this helps people.

If your calories eaten and burned are recorded accurately, then you would eat every single "exercise calorie". If there are inaccuracies, then you compensate by eating more or less.

This, but think in terms of weekly. Any given day can be +/- a few hundred calories of your daily net goal. But try and keep your weekly average as close as possible to your net calorie goal.

For accuracy, you may need to use a food scale and an HRM. If you are estimating one or both sides of the equation, you may have to adjust your net goal to account for your inaccuracy, whether too few or too many.

I do not have a HRM. I should look into one. The ones I have seen are pretty expensive. But I do measure almost every meal I eat to ensure accuracy when I put it in my food journal as well reading labels.

That's great. You don't strictly need an HRM. Just be consistent with everything you do. If there's some error, over time you will discover it and you should be able to compensate.

Well I started here at about the same stats as you. I eat back most of my exercise cals and i lose about 1-1.5 a week. If that helps at all

Get a heart rate monitor to verify your exercise calories burned numbers are correct. With relatively small numbers, the MFP approximation is close enough to not worry. With lots of exercise however, being off by even 10% (which honestly tends to be a little low) of 4000 daily calories comes out to nearly a pound a week in unexplained weight gain/lack of weight loss.

Then read the stickies at the top of the General forums, particularly the one titled "Newbies Please READ ME (2nd edition)". It will answer all your questions and tell you exactly why you should do it that way.

"Estimate how many calories you’re burning per mile of running by multiplying your weight by 0.75. Multiply your weight by 0.53 for an estimate of calories burned per mile of walking." I found that in a website (can't even remember where- but I copy/pasted it to a note).
My point is: be careful on how you count the burned calories. In 70 min of exercise my treadmill says I burn 600 calories and MFP says I burn 450- I trust MFP because it knows my weight and height. Do I explain myself? It's not the same for everybody. And I agree with the comments that remind you this is a LIFESTYLE change. You can't be unrealistic because then you won't keep it up.