Eating your calories burned from exercise

I have spent the day trying to figure this out and what i have learned is the days I am excercising I should increase my calories by about 200.

So yes,you need to eat to lose!

Eat them.

I look at it like this: I love food. If I can eat my hard earned exercise cals and still lose...I'm going to do it. I've lost consistently and I eat almost all of them back. I'm not going to give up any of my calories as long as I'm losing

Eat them. MFP gives you a deficit built into your calories goal. If you burn off more your calories net will be too low and you could trigger your metabolism to slow down.....which is NOT what you want. Eat them!

I almost always eat some of them. I generally don't eat all of them. But then again, I have a long way to go. I aim to never go to bed hungry - and I haven't yet!

I have been checking out the "Eat more weigh less" group, because I had the same question. MyFitnessPal figures out how many calories you need to eat to lose weight without exercising, so if you don't eat back at least some of your exercise calories back you could mess up your metabolism and go into starvation mode. I am breastfeeding and I wasn't factoring that in and I wasn't logging exercise and I was always hungry and felt exhausted, so I am going to start logging both and eating back at least some if not all of my calories.

Something that has been working for me is to make a vegetable smoothie in the morning and save about 12 oz for the minute I walk in the door at the end of the work day. It is my worst time and figured it was because I was both thirsty and hungry. It allows me time to get dinner going without picking at the cheese/crackers, nuts, etc.

I eat most of mine back - worked for me!

I do best when I eat about half of the calories I've burned from exercise. If I don't eat any I burn, I feel like I'm starving. If I eat all that I burn, I have to stuff myself. Half seems to work for me, but try all three and see what works for you!

Listen to your body! Some days i eat...somedays i dont...My calories serioulsly range from 1500-3000 depending on the day and the workout! If your hungry EAT!!!

agree, listen to your body and how you feel... a little deficit for me is healthly.. but not eating enough with huge deficits day after day... will stress your body, increase cortisol (along with other hormones) production and decrease weight loss (causing your body to slow down the energy burned by your cells... kinda of a defensive mode to thwart off starvation)

I actually had better success and lost more body fat pounds by increasing my caloric intake while working thru beachbody's Insanity 60 day workout routine....

I eat SOME of them back, but def not all. That just works for me personally....

I eat my exercise calories. I feel much better when I do!

I've tried several variations, and have continued to lose weight at a fairly steady pace of about 1.5 lbs/week regardless of what I was doing. MFP originally had me at 1200 calories, and I ate every exercise calorie I was given because I was feeling deprived at that level. After doing some reading about BMR, I cautiously increased my goal to 1350 and then 1450, eating back some, but not usually all, of my exercise calories. More recently, I'm working with a nutritionist who has me set at 1400 calories per day and advises NOT to eat back exercise calories, so I'm giving that a try, with success so far. I suspect, however, that on my higher calorie burn days, I will allow myself a few extra calories. I think part of the concern about eating back is that people will "reward" themselves for a workout and cancel out the benefit - I've seen articles about how people tend to overcompensate through a combination of rewarding themselves, underestimating their calorie intake, and overestimating their calorie burn.