I just started using The Daily Plate this week. It's been great. Very easy to add calories and also my exercise minutes.

I've noticed that exercise affects my net calories and usually my net calories are lower than my total calories. For instance, yesterday my total calories were 1,405 but my net calories were 1,005. Should I be eating more calories to get my net calories up or should I just be worried about the total calories. I know that if I eat too little calories that will not help me to lose weight. So I'm just wondering if I'm eating enough.

net calories should be no lower than 500 below your BMR. if your supposed to eat around 1800-2k you net should be 1300-1500. as long as your net is 500 below your BMR you'll lose 1lb a week. remember the more you exercise the more you'll need to eat

I put my stats into a BMR calculator and my BMR is 1655.15. So my net should be around 1155?

I have another question. Why does TDP say that I can eat more calories even though my net seems to be about 500 calories lower than my BMR?

TDP advocates eating your exercise calories back, since it bases your net on activity.

You can either eat those or just ignore that. Everyone is so different. Some people eat those extra exercise calories since they are taking a large food deficit. Some people only have an exercise calorie deficit, so eating those back would be counter intuitive to weight loss.

TDP is not just used by dieters, but people who maintain or train - and those are the ones who need to balance what goes in with what goes out.

HTH!

Thanks Lori! That was very helpful!

I also use TDP and I do enter all my calories as well as my activity. However, when it comes to eating I ignore it telling me that I can eat additional calories. I stick to approx 1800 calories per day regardless of that day's activity level.

I do eat my exercise calories... I figure what I want is the 1,000 calorie deficit each day, not 1,500 or whatever if I go for a long run.

BUT.... the main problem with this on TDP is that their calorie estimates for activities can be way too high. For instance, this morning, I went for a 3.1 mile run at an 11.5min/mile pace. TDP estimates my burn at 731 calories for the 35 minutes, but I was wearing my Gowear Fit (Bodybugg), and I know it was 519 calories. That's a huge difference, and that's only 35 minutes of activity! Imagine if you do 1 hour or more a day, you might think you're burning 500 or more calories than you actually are! If you plan to eat those calories, it can be a big problem.

So... I'm a big fan of eating exercise calories, as long as you know exactly how much you burned.

I need to get a heart monitor. I do the elliptical for 30 mins. but I'm not sure how many calories I'm burning. My elliptical is old and the monitor doesn't work properly so I can't rely on that. I also think the calorie estimates are a little high because TDP says that I burned 397 calories in 30 mins. When I uses an elliptical at the gym, I think the monitor would say that I burned around 300 calories in 30 mins (which may still be a little high but closer to what I actually burned).