Calorie counting on MFP - do you eat back exercise calories

[BubbleBoop]

I need to lose a few pounds (literally just 4-5) and am tracking my calories on mfp. I have it set to losing 0.5 per week and have activity set to active. I have a desk job but also exercise every day either a 5k run or a home workout/weights and walk around as much as I can at work.
Therefore I am not even bothering to add exercise to MFP, as I figure I’ve got the extra calories by setting it to active.
Have I done it right?!

Personally I wouldn't eat the exercise calories they can be massively inaccurate.

Good luck with your journey I myself have just restarted got 5lbs lockdown weight to shift.

Ideally I try to add ones which are intentional exercise rather than just calories logged on my watch for usual walking about, pottering, walk to work (out of lockdown).

Sometimes I will just log some of them, rather than all as I worry my watch over predicts.

Other times when I am flagging I do use them all as a way to keep myself vaguely on track.

Sometimes if I know I have a dinner party or event where there will be lots of food, I purposely don't log the exercise calories or save them up to use on that day.

It all depends! I obviously find I lose much more effectively when I don't use them but that is just the science. It motivates me to exercise if I know I'm getting some reward in the form of calories at some point in the next week!

No. I have worked out my TDEE from the level of exercise I do. That is about 2400 cals a day. I therefore have MFP set to 1750 per day which allows for a 1-2 lb loss a week. It tends to adjust if I do more exercise and tell me that I can eat more but I just ignore that and stick to the 1750 and it’s working! My weight loss so far has matched my calorie deficit almost perfectly.

Depends. I use a Garmin with a heart rate monitor which I think tracks calories fairly accurately - the estimates that MFP has for a run, for example, are much higher than what my Garmin says.

I usually eat my exercise calories and lose weight at the rate MFP is set to.