What do you use to estimate your calorie output?

I use fitday. On a different thread yhamad asked a question that made me turn to the closest calorie calculator google led me to, and I realized that it had a wildly different estimate of the calories I burned, about 300 calories different as my base. What's a girl to think? I know everything out there is an estimate based on assumptions that don't necessarily pertain to me, but still 300 calories!

I have to say, I'd prefer what fitday tells me. And it seems to work. In there, I'm set up with the assumption that I'm sedentary (not entirely accurate) and I log my exercise, but I don't log things like housework, shopping, etc. I also keep track of my food there (and here's a secret your average calorie counter would disapprove of: I don't measure. I have measured, and I'm not bad at estimating, and so it's what I do.)

Then, because I'm a big dork, I take my calories in/calories out information formation and put it in a spreadsheet along with my daily weigh-ins and wrote lots of formulas so I can compare my goal weight, my theoretical weight based on the calories in/calories out, and my actual weight. Right now, after 8 weeks of tracking, I weigh 0.8 lbs less than my theoretical weight. Not bad! I was 4 lbs low at one point and 1 lbs high at another, but it overall, that's pretty darn accurate, considering the inaccuracies in both my intake calcs, and my output calcs. I figure I'll keep doing it this way until it stops working.

I've used fitday before, but I've also looked things up and found completely different numbers. I don't put much faith in those calculators. I don't really worry about trying to figure out my calories burned.

zoodoo! Wow girl! Thats a lot of calculating! But I love math, so I think it would be kinda fun...

I think for me personally, the best way to calculate calories burned is using my heart rate. So, what I do is use a heart rate monitor and use a calculator like this one.. http://www.gersic.com/calories/

Everyone's body is different, and the fitter you get, the less calories your body will burn to do the same tasks!

Thats my 2 cents!

I use Livestrong.com. I liked the food portion better than fitday b/c every food I ever ate has been entered into it already. I find that some of the calorie output is wrong. For instance the elliptical calculates to 750 calories per hour. The elliptical itself calulates to about 650. Spinning is really off in Livestrong... it calculates to 565 per hour. I wore a heartrate monitor today and it calculated to just over 800. But I like livestrong for other reasons and I guess it is consistent. What's most important is that we are having calorie output!

Pick one place, consider it an estimate at best and entertainment at worst

Perfect!

Stacy, I know that Livestrong's calorie output calculations are off, but how do you find the calorie counts on the food and their suggested breakdown?

After putting in my stats and selecting a sedentary lifestyle, they claim I should be eating 951 net calories each day. That seemed awfully low, so I bumped myself up to "light activity". (Truth is, I'm prob somewhere in between.) That brought me up to 1225 net calories, which seems reasonable. However, according to Livestrong, I should only be eating 31 g of protein. That seems awfully low doesn't it?

I always peek at the breakdown, but don't worry over it. I am eating low carb because they've always been my downfall. I figure if I can learn to live without the refined carbs, meet my calorie goal and exercise regularly, I'm off to a fairly good start.

Has anyone else had a similar experience with Livestrong?