Rookie Mistake

I just stick to the safe side of things and dont eat my exercise calories back and i always underestimate my burn, in the end what matters is whether you lose any weight, look and/or feel better for it.

I spend alot of time beating myself up because ive not burnt this or ive overeaten that, i have to keep reminding myself that any effort i take today is more than i was a month ago and the 1 thing i eat that i curse myself for today, i'd have had 10 of them through a day before i started with MFP.

No sage advice, but I loved the "over hill and dale" comment. It made me laugh.

Added a favourite peppercorn chicken meal to my foods. Every time I added it I just plucked the same one from my recent food lists.

Turned out I had added completely the wrong one initially so was adding 200 calories less than I should each time. Thousands of calories over the months!

I've done it to a few foods actually so I'm sure I'm not alone in doing this!

The basic challenge in calorie counting — calories burned or calories consumed — is that it is difficult to arrive at accurate numbers.

If you make your own meals, any estimate on the number of calories they contain is just that — an estimate. And an estimate might be pretty accurate, or it might be significantly off. It is very easy to fool yourself by thinking you have consumed fewer calories than you actually did!

Likewise, estimating the number of calories burned during the course of a day, with or without exercise, can be a challenge. I use a heart-rate monitor (HRM), but have noticed that my HRM always tells me I have burned significantly more calories than the numbers indicated on the gym equipment. I am not sure why, but perhaps it is due to the HRM telling you how many calories you have actually burned during that period, whereas the cardio machines (treadmill, elliptical, etc.) telling you how many extra calories you have burned over your BMR? I don't know... But I also have a Fitbit which gives me a calorie burned reading, and this too tends to be a different number than my HRM and the cardio equipment readings.

Since all calorie numbers are usually imprecise, I try to play it safe by underestimating the number of calories burned, and overestimating the number of calories consumed. Then I just see how it goes... is my weight going down at a rate I am satisfied with, or is it staying the same, or is it going up? And, depending on which of these is my goal, I adjust my goals of calories burned and consumed until I get the results that I want.

For the most part, I have not found that eating back your exercise calories works for me in weight loss, but I have read others on this site who insist that it works for them, so again, I would just try doing it or not doing it to see which works better for you (and which you can actually live with).

One thing I remind myself is that if I am exercising a lot and not losing weight, then I am at least making progress in terms of fitness, so there is no need to be hard on myself if the weight is not going down as quickly as I would like.

Been there, done that! My first few workouts with a HRM was VERY depressing. BUT!!! You get over it.
I never eat back all my calories. I use them as padding. I may dip into them a little bit, but not much.