I'm confused...why eat back burned calories???

Other calorie counters ask you how much you're going to exercise and then set a calorie goal based on that amount of exercise.

MFP doesn't count how much you're going to exercise until you actually DO it (assuming you use an activity multiplier based on your job), so the calorie goal will be a bit lower because they're assuming you're going to eat your exercise calories.

Either will work.

Exercise has a lot of benefits besides just increasing your deficit.

Because a deficit should be calculated from a real life scenario and if that includes exercise that needs to be accounted for.......what's the point of calculating a deficit and leave out pertinent information that is required to create that deficit.....being in a bigger deficit and achieving more weight loss is generally the carrot to not counting back calories, but really why even go through the math and just pick the magical 1200 calorie diet. j/k

Well, you're an adult and you get to choose, but here's the way the site is intended to work (you may use it that way, or any way you want!)

- When you signed up, you gave the site your statistics (height, age, weight, and "lifestyle", which us desk-jobbers set at "sedentary").

- The site calculated the number of calories needed to maintain your weight as it stands. This includes the amount of exercise factored in the lifestyle you chose (for desk-jobbers like me, that's basically walking around at work a bit and the usual necessities of life).

- The site then then asked you how many pounds a week you wanted to lose, and set up the number of calories you should eat every day to lose that amount of weight (1 pound a week = 500 calorie deficit a day).

So let's take a theoretical guy like me. I signed up, told it I was a 30-pound overweight middle-aged office worker who wanted to lose 2 pounds a week. It did some magic and came up with 2500 calories as my "maintenance" calories and subtracted 1000 calories a day from that and told me to eat 1500 calories a day.

Yesterday, I got on my bicycle and rode 50 miles in hilly terrain. It took me 3 hours and 45 minutes, and I rode it nonstop. I burned 3000 calories, give or take. I couldn't manage to eat more than 2,850 calories, so I ended up eating a "net" -150 calories for the day (I did make those calories protein-heavy and drank lots of water, at least, to feed the muscles I had just worked out). But if I did that every day, my body would start using up internal resources (fat and muscle) at an unsustainable rate, and I'd probably start feeling fatigued and sick pretty fast.

What you really "should" do depends on the amount of exercise you are doing, how overweight you are, and how much pain you want to tolerate to lose weight faster. If I did 300 calories of exercise a day and didn't eat it back, I'd be running on a "net" caloric intake of 1200 calories. If those are well-balanced calories and I'm drinking plenty of water, it's probably harmless. I'd lose an "extra" 3/5 of a pound a week.

If I did 3,000 calories of exercise a day and managed to eat only 1,500 calories, my body would be attempting to make up a deficit of 1,500 calories a day just for the exercise alone, plus what it needs for its daily survival. The fat-to-energy conversion simply can't sustain that, so I'd start burning up the very muscle I need to exercise (not to mention other important muscles like the heart), and the lack of energy would make me miserable to boot.

Running at severe deficits introduces discomfort, fatigue, inability to build calorie-burning muscle, and risks to muscular and organ health. You'd have to be pretty severe for a little while to get to that point, but the whole point of this site is so that you can learn to CONTROL your weight, and that means understanding the calories you take in and the calories you burn, and the importance of keeping them in equilibrium (or deficit if you're trying to lose weight, or excess if you're trying to gain weight). And also to allow you to assert that newfound control to lose weight at a safe pace, without discomfort or risk.

When you've lost or gained the weight you wish to, you simply go to maintenance mode and learn the diet that will keep your weight where you want it to be, and you've worked so hard to get it to.

Believe me, I've used severe calorie deficits as a weight loss method before. It doesn't work for me, and the end result might have been a lighter person, but he wasn't any healthier.

*Sigh*
I still don't get it. So I had my dinner which was lets say 600 calories and previously at the gym I burnt 700 calories. Why is it telling me this *You've earned 785 extra calories from exercise today*
I apologies for sounding a tad thick....

So say mfp has you losing a pound a week (1lb=3500calories) so you would have to burn 500 calories in addition to the amount of calories your body naturally burns. When you sign up for mfp it asks you about your age, height, weight, and lifestyle. It then takes that data and translates it into the amount of calories your body will burn by simply living (let's say you need to consume 1900 just to keep your body chugging along and maintaining it's current state). Mfp isn't going to show you that 1900cals, it's going to subtract your goal of a 500cal deficit and give you 1400 cals to eat every day. Then, if you go to the gym and burn, say 600 calories on the elliptical you will want to eat a portion of those calories back because that would only give your body 800 calories to survive (1900 cals your body needs to maintain your current state - the 500cal deficit mfp gave you to lose that 1lb a week - 600cals from work ing out = 800cals for your body to take care of itself. While this might sound like it would get you to your goal weight faster it will likely cause your metabolism to slow and your body to burn muscle, rather than fat stores.

It is not a sustainable way to live and it won't likely lead to a healthy, strong body.

Simply- Keep your NET calories to no less than 1200 (or what MFP recommends your minimum)

So you may be on 1400kcal, do 500kcal of exercise, you now net at 900 calories. You would need to eat 300 calories to get you back to your minimum

When you tell the website how much weight you want to lose a week, it gives you the amount of calories you should eat (or cut back to) in order to lose that weight WITHOUT exercise. When you exercise, you eat them back because the deficit is already planned out in the amount of calories you should eat a day.

For example, I have mine set to lose 1 pound a week. Based on my weight, age, sex, and lifestyle, it tells me to eat 1400 calories a day. That means to STAY AT THE SAME WEIGHT, I'd need to eat 1900 calories. 1400 gives me the 500 calorie/day deficit to lose one pound a week. This morning, I did a 30 minute exercise program and burned about 250 calories. If I didn't eat those back, my deficit for today would be at 750. Since that is a larger deficit than what it deemed appropriate to lose 1 pound a week, it has me eat them back.

Basically, the program is such that you lose weight on DIET ALONE. If you exercise (which you should), it brings you back up to where you should be to lose the amount of weight you want to lose each week.

I'll be honest with you...I do not eat back my calories. I have hypothyroidism and I know from past experience, if I want to lose weight, I have to cut my calories to a bare minimum. I have an allowance of 1240 calories and do an average of about 500 or more calories a day in exercise. I rarely eat much over 1200-1300. If I am wrong about this, someone please tell me what I should be doing. I have lost around 2 pounds a week since I started with MFP.

Another thing you need to think about when only watching the numbers on the scale. Scales measure total body weight. For the most accurate results you will need to get your body fat percentage measured. This will show you if the weight you are loosing is from fat or from lean muscle. If you eat a negative calorie diet (normal for weight loss) and then do not eat back the calories you have burned you will loose fat weight, but you can also loose a considerable amount of lean muscle mass. This is because your body will breakdown its own tissue in order to replenish itself. You DON'T want this to happen.