I just started using the daily plate to track my calories. I'm fairly active (work out at the gym 4 - 5 days a week, between 45-60 min per workout), and based on my stats, the daily plate is telling me that I need to eat 2875 calories per day to maintain my weight. I DON'T BELIEVE THAT.

When I input my exercise for the day, the daily plate tells me that I usually burn between 500-750 calories per workout, and the site is also telling me that by the end of the day, I'm usually between 900-1100 net calories (counting my exercise). I REFUSE TO BELIEVE that I'm burning that many calories - especially since my weight loss seems to have stalled. Can anyone chime in and let me know their experiences with the daily plate and exercise calories?

What did you set your activity level at to estimate your calorie needs? I usually have mine at sedentary or slightly active, even though I am working out 4+ days a week. But I sit on my butt all day at work, so I consider myself sedentary-ish. This gives me a calorie estimate of anywhere between 1550 and 1750 calories. I settled on 1600... it has worked great for me.

I actually manually enter my calories burned that I get from my heart rate monitor, because I've found TDP's calories burned estimates to be a little low, especially if you don't input heart rate. And, I tend to ignore the "net calories"... it just makes me want to eat more, lol.

Fat Pants, you raise a good point. Even though I'm working out, I do sit on my butt all day (I work in computers). I went and changed my "daily activity level" to slightly active. Right now, it says my daily calorie goal is 2364, which does seem more reasonable. I need to ignore the "net calories" also.

Sounds like I also need to invest in a heart rate monitor, that may give me a better picture of how many calories I am burning when I work out.

For me, I don't even count the calories I burn during exercise, because I think it's really hard to tell how many calories you burn during a workout. Personally I don't even think that technology like Body Bugg is all that accurate.

I use the daily plate, but I don't log in exercise there. I keep exercise and calories separate.

Wearing a HRM will tell you what you are burning more accurately than TDP estimates - some of the items lined up pretty well (within 50 or so calories) with the estimates and my actual from my HRM, others were drastically overstated. Statinary bike was overstated by about 200 calories for my 30 minute session on TDP...

It definitely is more accurate, especially more accurate than the machines at the gym! It's not the be-all, end-all, but the HRM I have calculates everything based on consistent monitoring of your heart rate, sex, age, weight, height, etc. Like Shannon, in addition to TDP underestimating calories burned, it also over estimated sometimes!

I've been using TDP on and off for a year now, and I definitely think they over-estimate activity calories. Plus there's the whole "baseline" burn rate based on your response to the overall activity level question that can totally conflict with entered activities. Now that I'm wearing a Gowear Fit (BB), I can see that my actual burn rate is usually about 60% of what TDP estimates for the same type and amount of activity. So I only use it to track food now, not to figure out how much I should actually eat.

I'm glad that I found this thread. TDP says that I'm burning 400 calories with 24 minutes on the elliptical. That might be true if I were at full incline, full resistance! But it seems pretty high and reading the comments here, it seems that I'm correct to not really trust TDP's estimate. My elliptical has a place for me to enter my age and weight and its readout of how many calories I've burned is quite a bit lower (boo!! LOL).

It can feel like I'm dying on that thing, so it would be nice if it was really 400, wouldn't it!?