Since I only eat about 1000 calories a day to begin with, I try to eat back the calories I burn when I exercise as much as possible. Otherwise, I feel like I'd be in starvation mode. It only amount to an extra 150 calories a day (I usually burn at least 200 but it's hard to eat all those extra calories!), but will this sabotage my weight loss? Thanks!

For the first 8 months I did not eat them. Then my weight loss plateaued. After talking with people I started upping my calories until I was eating mostly all of them. I gained like a lb at first then stayed plateaued for 6 weeks then it started coming off again. I workout 6 days a week and burn 500-800 calories or more (per my bmf) per session and per my bmf burn over 3000 calories per day 1200 calories was just not sustaining me anymore.

Well, this is a very good point that indicates that you do have to eat enough to sustain yourself to lose weight, but I still dont believe its anything to do with "starvation mode". Here's why: there is ony so much you can restrict your calories and be able to hack it. Even WITH a lapband quelling actual hunger, i find I can only cut back so far before cravings (particularly for sugar) set in. And when I've thought I'd be clever and done a gargantuan day of body pump, a spin class AND a run, I tend to spend three days binging afterwards. I tend to lose when I decide I"m going to eat bigger meals - not because I'm putting in more calories but because it cuts back remarkably on the grazing. I'm very bad at skipping meals and eating sugar and caffeine all day long, way way more calories doing that than eating sensibly. So it feels like I"m eating more but in reality, its the same calories but a much better balance of Protein, carbs and fat that actually gives my body something to run on.

Note: I'm not a doctor or a nutritional professional, I'm just doing what I always do on this forum, talking as if I know what I"m talking about, lol. But have you ever noticed how complicated nutrition and weight loss is these days? Pre workout supplement this, post workout shake that, so many grams, eat at precisely this time, have precisely this combination. When I was a teenager and my mum wanted to lose a bit (or I did), we just went to Weight Watchers, which was, and always will be - wait for it - portion control. No science, no blarney, no expensive supplements. You ate less and moved more! I dont think our bodies have undergone much evolutionary change in the last 30 years.

I guess I don't understand why someone who is trying to lose weight would try to eat back the calories they just burned.