Calorie Intake

Have a resting metabolic rate test done and it will give you a better idea of how many calories you need to consume just to survive and then you can go from there based on exercise level. My local Y has this handheld machine - you breathe into for about 10 minutes.  It was well-worth the $40 for the test.  After the test, they printed out a report that gives me information about minimum calories, number of hours to exercise, breakdown of fats/carbs/protein, etc, etc.   I have now dialed in my nutritional needs just to live and can adjust it based on the quantity and intensity of exercise/training. I have already lost 1 lbs (something that I have been struggling to do for over a year now).  This

Using the online calculators can only use basic information and can be off by as much as +/-500 calories which is huge when dial in nutritional needs.

The website below gives you a search option to find a local place that uses the same gizmo my Y uses.  They also have a great program called BalanceLog that I can use on my Palm PDA so that I can track calories,etc even when I am away from home but BT's nutrition log is great too which I noticed you are already using.

http://www.microlifeusa.com/products_weightmanage.asp

For websites with calories for a workout,  someone on BT posted this one and it seems very accurate (compared to my HRM a few times and they were dead on)  http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.php

Good luck because even once you think you figure it all out, it will likely change.

Edited by Fechter99 2008-08-27 8:34 PM

Thanks, that helps! At least I realize now how complicated it is.