Hi all!

I've got a question, and I've never really been able to get my head around it so I'm hoping I can get some advice from you lovely people!

Basically, how many calories do you need to burn in a day with exercise to lose weight?

I use the Calorie Count website and my daily recommended calorie intake is 1800. I usually eat around 1500-1700 so that's fine. My nutrition analysis is usually an A grade, so that seems fine also.

My BMR is 1660ish. So as an example my Burn Meter reads this: 1,864 of 3,018 cals burned. Does this mean I'm not exercising enough? Or am I eating too much TO burn off?

What's the magic formula for Calories Eaten to be burned off during the day naturally and through exercise?

Thank you for any help, need a bit of guidance

Be careful of these calorie counter/burner things because they're never going to be 100% accurate. When I try to use them I get radically different results depending on the source. If you're losing weight at a healthy rate, then i'd say you're fine with what you're eating and doing.

At the end of the day weight loss is simply creating a deficit. To lose a Ib you have to create a deficit of 3,500 calories (approx). You can always experiment by playing with your calories and the amount of exercise you're doing. Maybe by eating more, or less and so on.

I don't understand where that burned of 3,018 value has come from, is that how many calories you aim to burn this week?

It's a daily burn meter which is formulated on the website Calorie Count. It takes my BMR into account and the Calories I've eaten. So if I were to add Activity to it it would calculate how many calories I burned during exercise, which means according to its own source and what I eat I should be burning 3000ish calories a day (BMR + Exercise). Considering my BMR is 1600ish I'm supposed to be burning around 1400 calories a day through exercise? Is that right?

Um no. An intense run for an hour burns around 400-600 calories depending on your landscape. To burn 1,400 calories you could try running flat out up a hill for two hours without stopping.... or just ignore it.

Depending on how much exercise you do of course, burning around 200-500 is probably about normal from my experience anyway.

EDIT: I thought I'd add the usual stuff about BMR being how many calories you need to basically stay alive, in a comatose state. That doesn't include the calories you burn through movement, let alone brain activity. Around 70% of your calorie intake is used by your brain just through thinking so really in terms of exercise an hour or so depending on what type or what intensity is probably all you need. And even then you shouldn't do intense exercise everyday.

Thanks! Makes me feel better that I'm not expected to be an exercise machine to shift some weight!

The numbers you're looking at seem pretty out of whack. I just created an account there to see what it's like. I think that burn meter is just showing how many of the total calories you're going to burn today you've burned so far. It's not telling you that you need to do 1400 calories of exercise, it's saying that you have, or will have, by the end of the day. And like belmagick says, that number over your BMR isn't exercise. Even if you do nothing but sit in a chair all day, you'll burn more than that.

To lose 1 lb. per week, you want to burn 500 calories per day more than you eat. For 2 lbs, th deficit needs to be 1000 calories per day. As long as you're tracking well, you know what your intake is. So if you're eating 1600 calories, you need to burn 2600 per day for a 2 lbs. weekly loss.

It's really perty hard to know what you're calorie output is. Calculators vary a lot, and they're all based on estimates. This one you're using says I burn nearly 300 calories less per day than fitday, which I use, does. But it also credits me with 150 more calories for a bike ride than fitday does, so maybe it all washes out evenly at the end.

You can use this tracker as a guide, but it will really boil down to trial and error to see how much you need to do to lose at the rate you want to. I'll say this though. Unless your doing really intense exercise a couple hours a day, it's unlikely you're burning 3000 calories a day like it says you are. You should consider setting your activity level to sedentary, because if you don't, it's already crediting you for a certain amount of exercise before you even log it.

Thanks for the advice! It's a bit clearer now. Are there any little devices you can use to track how many calories you burn? Like a watch type thing? Might get one if it's not stupidly expensive.

I've heard people use a heart rate monitor for it, but I don't know how that works.

I have a bodymedia fit. It's on my upper arm, and I can wear it all the time... It tells me that I've burned 1431 so far today, lol..

I got mine used on eBay, because I'm cheap, lol, but you can buy them new here: http://www.bodymedia.com/

There are other things out there too, but.. I'm lost for the name of them right now.

ETA: I've been wearing it every day since November, when I really started dropping lbs. I want that little number to be HIGHER!

Also: I know it has an accuracy rate of only being like, 10% off, so I usually just try to burn more cals to compensate.