confused on how much I should be eating..

Warning: you are going to get a TON of differing opinions on this and some will be quite emphatic about their position!

I didn't log or eat my exercise calories for the first 5 months I was on here. And I have no regrets. I was enjoying a steady 1-2 pound a week loss and didn't feel deprived or anything, though my calories were set at 1450.

A couple weeks ago, I got a heart rate monitor and began to really track my calorie burn. The calories MFP estimates for calories burned is much higher than my HRM says, so I'm going with the HRM. I now allow myself to eat anything over and above a 200 calorie burn. In other words, if I burn 380, I'll eat back 180 of it.

Still losing 1-2 pounds per week and still not feeling deprived. And when I know I'm going out and will be eating more, it makes me work out that much harder. It's working for me. And that's what you will need to figure out...what works for YOU.

I am so confused.. i think i am not understanding the information given to me via mfp.. above the newsfeed today it says:

My goal is 1200

My food today is 1277

My exercise is -1073

My net is 204

My current weight is 188.. Im 5'5''.. My loss is set at 1.5lbs per week.. in order to obtain that - should I eat "my net" BACK to 1200 (where as right now it says 204)?? When I looked at my goals section it showed a bunch of calculations that confused me.. and being stuck without losing weight with all the exercise I do (about 2 hrs per day - 6 days a week) - I am trying to figure out what's up and would like to be properly feed my body..

So you would then have to eat another 1000 calories. I would just make it easier on myself and just eat about 1500 calories regardless. Keep doing exercises and see how weight loss goes.

Thank you for the answers.. I have done the route where I didn't track food - and did well, but wanted to "fine tune" my eating.. it does work, but i needed some tweaking.. so I started tracking ..

Vitaminddd - that's what I was suspecting.. I saw so many different numbers and starting realizing that I had to be misunderstanding somewhere along the line.. on the goal page I saw something about a deficit of 1000 calories and thought that meant I needed to have a 1000 deficit per day below my calorie goal to lose 2lbs a week.. then i realized how starving I am and thought perhaps i needed to ask for help.. I manage to stay upright but have been tired and not clear thinking lately.. and frankly quite *****y... gonna see to it that i eat up to my 1200.. I would love to lose 10 lbs a week but I know 1-2 is the best long term.. and that means i get to feed my face some more!! yay!!!!

Yeah, no, deficit does not mean "fewer calories than your goal." Here's a few vocabulary words for you:

BMR - How many calories your body needs to simply stay alive, even if all you did was lie in bed all day long. This is the energy your body uses to keep your heart beating, etc. This varies based on your age, gender, weight, and % body fat.

TDEE - Your BMR + the calories you burn during your normal daily activities. This is going to be lower if you are sedentary, higher if you are very active.

Deficit - The difference between your TDEE and your daily goal. So if your TDEE is, say, 1700, and your daily goal is 1300, then your deficit is 400. That's energy your body is using, but you are not eating back.

Some people account for their exercise when they set their daily goal, so they always eat the same no matter what -- they don't eat back exercise calories. Some people have a set amount that they eat on exercise days, and another for non-exercise days. And other people keep track of how many calories they burned that day, and adjust their goal based on that (which MFP does automatically for you).

Whichever way you do it, if you are burning 1000 calories in exercise each day you definitely need to provide your body with enough fuel to do that!

For the love of God, please eat back at least half of those exercise calories.

I'd say to eat back at least half too. On heavy burn days you'll be weakening your body unnecessarily otherwise and your muscles will need the extra protein.

i am a new member and took it to mean that the base calorie total i am allowed is the number i use to hit the weekly weight loss goal, the additional calories are what my excerise has allowed me extra to take in for that day and still be in line with my goal. My intention would never be to eat that entire extra allowance but i certianly might have a little of it, maybe a treat as a reward. The biggest thing i see as a new member is that the calores that they give for certain excersizes seems to be overly generous and could trick you into taking in more calories than you should, my thought is to manually adjust downward by 1/3 the excercize calories