I'm confused about eating back calories

I want to take in 1200 calories a day. I know that a woman should not go below 1200 calories in a day, so if I exercise that day, should I make up the calories I burn? If thats the case, why bother exercising if your just going to make up the calories by eating? This may be a stupid question, but I am sorta confused.

oops, the heading should be "I'm confused". LOL.

It's difficult to answer this question without knowing your weight, height and other stats. I do not eat back my calories and stick to a 1200-1500 calorie diet. That being said, I am very short and small boned and don't work out very hard and my BMR is under 1200.

because you're already creating a deficit if you're eating 1200, most likely.

like, if you burn 1800 just sitting around doing nothing, and you're creating a deficit from restricting what you wat by eating only 1200, that's a deficit of 500. if you work out and burn, say 200, that would be a 700 calorie deficit.

well, you could always eat your bmr and exercise to make a deficit... but the reason to cut down calories and exercise, then eat back what you burned is so you don't go below the magic 1000-1200 area.  Your body needs that minimum number of calories to work the brain and vital organs, and not wating that much will put you into sarvation mode, hence having to wat the excess you burn.

To your good point of why exercise then.... well if you don't exercise you will loose muscle as well as fat, and since muscle burns about 50cal/day per pound, the less muscle you have, the smaller your defecit gets, and the slower the weight loss goes.

So EXERCISE THOSE MUSCLES!!!

Actually,

You eat back the calories after intense exercise because a lot of the calories you will burn, if you stay in your target heart rate zone, are fat calories.  If you are at 70% max heart rate, you should burn about 55-60% calories in the form of fat.  So, if you burnt 500 calories, then 300 of those calories would be fat that are gone forever.  The remaining 200 would then definately need to be replaced for regulary bodily use for the next hour or so.  Your metabolism in increased for about 4 hours after a workout session so in reality, you need to have a post workout meal that consists of atleast 200 calories and then eat another meal of the same calories probably  1.5hrs later.  Your body can handle only so large a defecit but then again, we're talking about intense exercise.  If you just walk a treadmill or do very light resistance training then the percentage of fat you burnt was smaller as well as the total number of calories.  But yes, you always eat after a workout.  You don't burn FAT when you are starving yourself. 

Unless your total caloric expenditure is over 2200 for the day (assuming female; 2500 for males), there is no reason to eat back calories. I think the point of it is to ensure that your deficit is not more than 1000 calories.

Let's say your normal expenditure is 1900, and you exercise an additional 300. Then you burned 2200. If you normally eat 1200, your deficit is 1000, and that's still safe; there's no need to eat back the calories, although you can if you want to, and the exercise can be a good way to work in an occasional treat without sabotaging your diet. However, if you burned 500, you now have an expenditure of 2400, and you'd need to eat at least 1400 to keep the deficit 1000 or below. So ideally you would eat back 200 of the calories, minimum.

However, a very occasional deficit of over 1000 isn't going to do anything bad, so if this is just a once-in-awhile thing, don't worry about it; the eat-back is optional. If it's a regular activity, then you should work the extra into your diet.