success not eating back exercise calories

I (almost) always eat back my exercise calories. I have it set to lose 1/2 pound per week, so I already have a 250 calorie deficit. I like food, and I'm breastfeeding (which I log as well) so I don't want to deprive myself too much because I don't want to compromise my supply. It's working for me, I'm losing at least 1/2 pound a week. It works for some people to eat them back. For others, it works to not.

I started on my new lifestyle a couple of months ago, I cut out all unhealthy food and all fizzy drinks (even though I only ever drank diet stuff)
I made sure that as soon as I woke up I had a glass of water and a healthy breakfast, which is normally a bowl of healthy cereal (like puffed wheat or high fibre bran sticks) with skimmed milk. I always weigh how much much goes into the bowl and follow the serving suggestion amount.
I also tend to have a good size lunch, such as 2 lettuce, extra light mayo and wafer thin sliced chicken sandwiches for lunch.
In the evening I have a good sized healthy dinner, never anything fried, plenty of fresh vegetables and meat etc.

In addition to this I started running to work and back, it's about a mile and it takes me about 10 minutes. I've also taken up a little weight training and was using the wii fit for 45 minutes a night (though for the past week I've been doing the 30 day shred instead of the wii)

Everyone I have spoken to has been amazed by the difference, my belly has decreased dramatically, my jeans size has already dropped by 2 and I have much better definition to my muscles and body in general.

Recently I started logging my calories and exercise on here. It turns out that what everyone else (bar mfp) finds as healthy eating is actually really under what I should be eating! I'm consuming on average between 1200 and 1500 calories a day and burning off around 550 through exercise.

Doing this though I have dropped from 242lbs to 210lbs in 2 months.

Maybe when I have dropped another 30lbs I'll re-evaluate my intake, especially if I plateau or my muscles start to decrease, but all the time that I'm seeing such vast improvements I shall stick with what I'm doing.
Those people who say that it'll all come back etc, this might be true if you are just dieting, for those of us who have made this our new lifestyles it won't come back unless we let it.

Good luck to everyone out there and keep with it, what ever works for you.

I don't force myself to eat them. But sometimes on the weekends I tend to eat more (out to lunch/dinner). A few years ago when I lost a bunch I did the same way I am now and did well. I figure the same will work now. I find if I stress myself out about then I don't lose as well.

While losing, some days I ate the calories back and some days I didn't. It evened out. Now that I'm on maintenance and working on building strength and muscle tone, I try to stay close to the recommended calories, including eating back my calories burned. I feel I have to give my body something to work with.

Both my wife and I eat back a portion of our exercise calories. You must remain healthy and support muscle growth. You have to feed the muscles if you work them, can't starve them. If you do yes, you will lose the fat then you will have lose skin over light muscle and bone.

I burn roughly 1000 cals per exercise day using my Polar FT40 and chest strap as my guide. My trainer has me at a goal of roughly 1900 cals. I use MFP to log my food and exercise but I use the calorie goal he's given me based on our calculations, and told me to ignore the gained calories. So if i get 1900 cal and burn 1000 i don't have enough time in my day to eat 2900 cal. If I'm not hungry I don't eat. I'm already eating 6 times a day. I happen to think that "rewarding" yourself sets you up for more cheat days but that is just me

Sorry, that's just not true. MFP gave me the same number of calories that every professional has ever given me: 1200. MFP is NOT setting calories much lower. They are right on the money as far as how many calories I need to eat to lose weight.

I don't know why a couple of social-weight-loss-oriented web sites decided that this is the way to go. The only reason I can think of is that they 1. didn't want people to go "anorexic" on them and eat a LCD + do a lot of exercise on top of that and/or 2. they thought it was a cool concept that would somehow set them apart from other weight loss plans.

To my way of thinking it is much more likely that people will eat badly and then think to themselves, "well, I'll just burn this off later". This concept of "eating back your calories" does nothing to help people establish healthy eating habits, it just gives them the idea that they can eat whatever they want as long as they burn it off.

If I nourish my body at 1200 calories, and then burn 500, I AM STILL NOURISHED. Unless I am some kind of olympic athlete or body builder, then the only thing that eating those calories back will accomplish is to slow my progress.

No disrespect to you or anyone, but again I say: until or unless I see empirical evidence showing otherwise, this is an unproven idea that will merely lead people to a slower weight loss and NOT teach them the healthy eating habits they need to learn.

Peace out.

No, you're really not well nourished at that level. The World Health Organization came up with the 1200 calorie amount when researching the MINIMUM number of calories that could be given to starving people to help keep them from starving. It's the MINIMUM for nominal health for a relatively INACTIVE person.

When you think about it, that makes sense.

If you put your activity level at senditary (sp) then you get lower cals recommended, but then you can exercise to allow you more.

I have to say that, in my opinion, if someone is attempting to routinely exercise away their food intake, then yes, they will loose weight, but it is unlikely to be a permenant achievement.

I personally and set at 1650cals a day, with a weightloss goal of 2lbs a week, which IS aggressive. I tend to hit around the 1600 mark net, day in, day out, WITH exercise, so in total I consume around 2200cals a day, so you can calculate that I do about 600cals a day of cardio.

Guess what, I am loosing around 2lbs a week... That tells me that the MFP system is working correctly.

I eat back most of my calories from working out, especially on a strong day ( 600burn) i try eat atleast half of that back. Works for me

I never knew you were supposed to eat back exercise calories before I started using MFP. I have been trying to get used to eating more calories that I ever have, by adding more everyday but it's been really hard because I'm usually not hungry, especially when the only time I can go to the gym is at the end of the day. Yesterday I was the closest to my goal calories I have been since using this and I felt so ill and sluggish by bedtime.

Try adding things like avo and olive oil that are "light" but high cal and healthy. or nuts

I use mine asa cushion when I am cheating !