There are a couple of difficulties with fitday and calorie expenditure is one of them. It's really easy to over estimate.

I've got a long explanation but lets try easy first Michelle. Can you tell me how long it's taken you to lose your 20 lbs?

SUSAN The 20 pound loss is the amount I have only lost since September 2004. I had lost 40 pounds last year, but after surgery gained almost all of it back. Then since March of this year, I have been trying on and off to get back on track. So I really don't have an exact time frame. Sorry this is a bit confusing; maybe I should only put my starting weight since March which was 248, instead of the heaviest weight I started out awhile ago? Thanks Susan for your help!

No I think we can rough guesstimate from there. Let's then say you've lost 11 lbs in 13 or 14 weeks????

Oi who's a math whiz? How about 9 lbs?

No, You can't do this with the PC version. I love the PC version but that is my complaint also, you can't make it public, since it's not web based and you can't sync your PC version with the web version.

SUSAN Yes, I have lost 9 pounds since March, but I haven't been trying very hard. That's why I want to start using Fitday, but I didn't know what all I should be logging under activities, and also I'm going to guess that I should start my calorie range maybe between 1500-1600, what do you think? You're so good at this and I trust what you say!

Thanks for the reply, Tammy! I will be saving my $30 and sticking to the online version.

Honestly, I never really bother with the exercise feature in terms of calculating how many calories I've burned - more for a note of what I have done that day. I find it never matches up with what is on the internet, treadmill display, etc. As far as logging sleeping - I'm not sure why one would bother! lol

But, I do think Fitday is great for calorie counting, especially once you've been using it a while and have a large 'custom foods' database established!

Kelly

I log sleeping because it takes away calories from your "lifestyle" burned for every hours you're sleeping - it only gives you your basal for those hours you spent sleeping. So I don't count, say, sitting at my desk, because thats what I have in the "lifestyle" calories that fitday gives automatically. But sleeping time is spent as sedentary - the more you sleep, the less you burn.

That being said, its pretty inaccurate on calorie counts as a whole. Its nice to have a general idea, though.

Michelle, if my calculations are about right, you seem to have a deficit of around 300 cals per day. So if you've logged your food for a little while and KNOW that you're eating 1600 cals ... you must be using about 1900. See if you can find an activity level that gives you that.
Keep in mind that all this is a practiced guess at best.
And keep asking questions and fiddling away. It's taken me a while but I have mine worked out pretty close to accurate.

SUSAN Thank you very much for your help, and I will keep you posted on how things go, and if I have any more questions, I'll let you know. You're so kind and patient and I really appreciate your help!

Well, sometimes I get frustrated with Fitday(which is what I use) because, like right now for instance, I am looking for how many cals are in a just a nice thick slice of red, raw tomato. I can't find it.

Under tomato, here are my choices:

Tomato;
broiled
canned, low sodium
cooked
from canned:
cooked
stewed
from fresh:
broiled
cooked
scalloped
stewed
green:
cooked
from fresh
pickled
raw
raw
red:
dried
fried
from fresh, fried
scalloped
stewed

If you will notice, there is a selection for GREEN raw tomato, but for red, my only choices are dried, fried,from fresh fried, scalloped, and stewed.

WHY CAN'T I FIND JUST A STUPID RED TOMATO ON THERE?????

This isn't the only thing this happens with either. So, if I am eating packaged food that's OK, because I can just add a custom food. But, for something like this I just have to guess, or look at another site and copy the information from that. That can be a little frustrating sometimes.

But, Fitday is what I use. The free one.

Try tomato, raw ... and when you find the one you want custimize it. You can simply change one letter to a capital like "Tomato, Raw" and it'll stay in your drop down menu forever.

Oh and Michelle, you're very welcome. I just think fitday is such a valuable tool, well worth the work and frustration of starting.

I tried using fitday and found it way more complicated, at least for me just starting out. I now use S P A R K PEOPLE.com It fits me and my lifestyle better! Find it way easier to understand, helps with grocery lists and such, meal ideas, etc... check it out!