Advice please re calorie counting and exercise

[Overtiredmum]

Hi all, wonder if someone could answer a question for me. I recently lost nearly 2.5 stones and have one more stone to go. I am now calorie counting at approximately 1200 a day and so am losing approx 1lb per week. I am a great fan of the Shred, although I had to stop last year after damaging my knee, but I want to restart it, but my question is this, if I am consuming 1200 cals a day, but then exercising which is burning 200 calories a day, should I consume an extra 200 calories or not?

I have heard that I can starve my body which would result in me retaining the fat I was to get rid of

Any advice gratefully received! Thanks OTM x

My view is that you should eat the exercise calories if:

a) they are good nutritious calories, think 100 calories for some nuts and an apple not a bar of chocolate AND

b) you are hungry for them

I don't think you should starve yourself which is why if you are hungry for the exercise calories you should eat them. However if you eat them then the exercise doesn't directly benefit your weight loss efforts quite as much.

I found on average I ended up eating around half of them.