Can someone please tell me??

i swear this question gets asked a few times every week

search for these things people, it gets repetitive saying the same things over and over and over

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be repetitive.. I've been surching forums for the past 2 days that I have been here and have NOT seen anyone ask this question.. Hence the reason I asked.. I don't ask for special attention when it's not needed..

If you search "exercise calories" or "eating exercise calories" you will find TONS of stuff, to the point where you might read some of it and be more confused than ever. Don't worry about asking.

MFP sets things up in a way that is different from the norm, so people have a hard time wrapping their head around the whole "eat your exercise calories" thing. I know I did when I first started, but I was silent for a long time and read a lot of threads and then asked a few questions here and there, and used my head to actually *understand* it (some people stubbornly refuse to even *try* to think about it and understand it - they just think that you exercise to create a deficit, and that's it, period). I had never heard of TDEE and BMR and all this stuff (you don't need to worry about all that right now, you can learn as you go and change the way you do things later if you need to). But I educated myself, and there wasn't a lot of snark back then, so I have learned a lot. At least you came back to the thread to read it all, and seem to be thinking about it. I would suggest perhaps starting with eating around 75% of the exercise calories, especially if you are using MFP's numbers. Some people have found them to be a high estimate. Good luck.

Oh - and as for does it matter, I believe it does. Someone with more knowledge than me can tell you about the importance of eating for reasons outside just weight loss (I think it's important, I just have not researched some of it enough myself so I don't think I should be making statements about it). But from a pure weight loss standpoint, the first weight I lost came off fairly easily while I was undereating (unintentionally, I wasn't counting calories then but I ate the same things most days, seriously, I pretty much just changed some of the types of veggies I ate). Then it stalled. I came to MFP, learned I was undereating, upped my calories, lost a bit, then stalled again. Read, and read some more, tried various things, and started losing again partially due to upping calories. I am obviously still eating at a deficit, but I had to eat more than what I was in order to keep losing. There are a lot of people here with similar experiences. So I would suggest starting with the numbers MFP gives you, including eating back a good portion of your exercise calories, and go from there. And don't be afraid to try something else if what you're doing isn't working (after giving it a reasonable amount of time, around here a lot of people tend to recommend about a month).

The specific reason is as follows:

When MFP calculates your intake recommendation, it asks you some questions about your activity and it asks you how much you want to lose per week. It then calculates an intake to lose that much per week BEFORE EXERCISE is factored in.

When you exercise, you create a larger calorie deficit than MFP originally assumed you would create, so it asks you to eat back the calories you burned to bring you back to the goal weightloss that you specified.


External TDEE calculators will typically assume that you are factoring in an aggregate of exercise expenditure when you tell it your activity level.

Thank you so much for your explination as you made me see what I wasn't seeing :-) The main reason I was asking is because when I consulted my Dr. about losing weight, all he said was cut calories to between 1200-1500 and walk.. Nothing more, nothing less lol..

I would take your doctor's advice. The 'eating back' thing is kind of stupid. People overestimate what IS exercise and what they burn. Walking around the grocery store perimeter... not. 1000 calories in 45 mins of Zumba... not.

Plus MFP limits your losses to whatever keeps you eating at least 1200/day. There's no reason you can't eat 1200 and walk to 'earn' more of a deficit, up to 2 lbs/week, according to any other plan.

General doctor isnt a nutritionist and are not specialist in weight loss so doctors tend to give bad advice!
I agree A LOT of people over estimate there exercise! Get a heart rate monitor to get a more accurate calories burned during exercise.
It is unfair to compare MFP to other plans. They are all different and a lot of plans that tell you not to eat your calories is because they account for your exercise and then subtract your deficit so the work is already done for you. There are A LOT of reasons as to why not to eat under 1200 calories a day!! 1200 is the number that research has shown to be the amount of calories needed by a adult human body (with out any serious illness) just to function (breath, swallow, walk from here and there, ect) so if you eat 1200 calories and then work out and burn 400 ( do the math 1200-400=800) you leave your body with 800 calories to do its daily functions while completely neglecting to fuel it for all the extra energy you exerted while exercising -___-