Burn Meter and me

I know I tend to ask all the wrong questions, but I have been searching for days to understand the burn meter. I have read and read and I just don't get it. What am I supposed to do with these numbers? Is the burn meter supposed to be higher than the calorie meter or vice versa? My burn meter today is higher than the calorie meter..I just don't get how this information is to help me with my weight loss. If you don't mind my question please respond...I know it has probably been asked before but I am not finding the answer easily on my own searching the forums and reading about the meter. I also notice that the top number on my meter is slightly higher than the bottom number. I read all about the meter..its just not clear what my goal should be with it. I had a horrible diet day today and went way way way over calories and ate some pretty bad foods so I tried to be very active today...

Burn meter should be higher than eat meter if you want to lose weight.

Between 500-1000 difference is ideal.

~H~

Okay, go to Tools, then go to Burn Meter, make sure your information (height, weight, age) are accurate. Then check that you have the sedentary activity level checked. 

I suggest having sedentary checked even if you are active so that you can add the activity as you do it instead of having the side do a generalization.

Now, go to your main account page. Look at the Burn Meter. The Burn Meter at the top will have a number after the phrase "Total Estimate:" this number is how much at your heigh, age, weight you burn when you do just normal desk sitting and minimal walking activities. 

The bottom number changes throughout the day. This is how many calories you have burned from midnight till now, assuming that you burn evenly (no one does you burn less when you sleep), which is just easier. So at the beginning of the day the number will be lower, at the end of the day it will be higher until you reach 11:59 pm when it should match the number after the "Total Estimate:" which is how much you burn per day doing little to no activity. 

If you are working on diet alone (not adding exercise) then you are aiming to eat between 500 and 1000 calories less per day than the "Total Estimate:" daily burn number. Keep in mind that if you are a woman you do not want to go below 1200 calories a day (a man not below 1500 calories a day). 

For example if my daily burn is 2060 and I am not exercising then I want to eat between 1060 and 1560 recognizing that I don't want to go below 1200 my calorie range should be between 1200 - 1560 / day with no exercise. 

If you are exercising (which is a good idea) enter this in your daily log. Since since you probably don't want to be watching your burn meter creep up to 11:59 pm, take the amount of calories you exercised and add that to your burn meter. It's not exact but it's close enough.

For example if my daily burn is 2060 and I do 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer which burns 200 calories then I would know my burn for the day is 2260. So now I would aim to eat between 1260 - 1760 calories per day. 

Good luck

You can add your activities to the meter and have it  read your totals.  If you add them in your head you will be overestimating a little bit.  For instance, if your sedentary burn was 2400 (an easy number for the sake of the math) then you're burning ~100 calories an hour just living.  If you exercise for an hour and burn 400 calories, then if you use the tools to add to your activities CC realizes that you burned 400 for the hour -- not your sedentary 100 + the 400, but 400 total, so it would increase your total burn for the day to 2700 (not 2800). 

Either way it's not completely exact,  all of them are just reasonable estimates, but by actually  adding them to the meter you won't overestimate your total burn. 

Please see Calorie Count's FAQ's here and the specific answer to your question here. Also here in more info from the Weight Loss forum Resource thread:

This is from the FAQ's in the Weight Loss Forum resource thread stickied at the top of the Weight Loss forum:

• What does the Burn Meter mean?

  The top number of the Burn Meter is the total estimated calories you will burn the entire day. This number is based of the activity level that you chose in your Account Settings.

  The bottom number displays how many calories you have burned up to that point. The time will be displayed right below the meters. This number will increase as you add activities to your Activity Log.

Thanks nycgirl, I read that already and it made no sense to me that is why I posted...its not really that detailed like the above posts which was what I was looking for.