How do I calculate my deficit?

Ok just curious if I'm doing this right??  I went for a walk to day estimated to have burned (200 cals) and my workout I burned about 535 calories so do I take the total (735 ) and subtract it from my total amount of consumed food?? and whatever that number is do I have to make up for the extra 735 calories I ate in food please help ASAP!

What you do is determine what you activity level is prior to working out. (edit setting on home page) than add you activities in from the activity board section then when you add food you will see the Eat Meter says a number at the top * that number was selected by you. The bottom number is all the food you have logged in for the day so far. On the Left is a Burn Meter this tells you how many calories you have burned living (if you don't add activities it will show only that) plus any activities you have which is 735 calories worth of activities. The bottom number of the Burn Meter shows you how many calories you have burned up to that point in the day. At 12:00 (mid-night) it will show your resting metabolic rate and the Eat Meter will show 0.

as the post above me points out, you need to figure out how many calories per day you are burning just by living. You can do that here: LINK

Once you get that number, you will add up everything you burned for today. Then you will subtract what you ate to find your deficit. Example:

The above number (lets pretend it is 1800) + 200 + 535 - food (lets say its 2000) = 535 deficit.

Ok I should have mentioned I already have that figured out I've been with CC for a while now but I got a bit off track and need to figure things out again.  The top of my burn meter says 2900 my activity level is set at moderate.  and the top of my food meter says 2150.  So I took the activity level of 2900+200+535 and subtracted 2110 (what I ate today) and its like 1500 deficit thats not right, I can't need to eat htat much food, I'm sooo confused what am I doing wrong.  Thanks for all your help!

So what I am understanding is that when you first logged all of your information on CC you wanted to lose 750 calories a day. To get this I took your burn meter# minus your food meter#..2900-2150=750. You never subtract from the burn meter you know right? I don't even know how you could have done that on the computer unless you did it at home and the computer didn't give you that number of 2110. You should review your edit setting again making sure that you are at the right setting BEFORE WORKOUTS. If you ate 2110 and you burn 2900 prior to workouts...by the way I doubt that that is prior to workouts; than you would have burnt 1525 calories.

Moderate is if you have a job where you work at a decent pace all day long, lifting, squatting down, and walking or jogging back and forth a lot. If that isn't you than you have the wrong setting down. Now 1525 isn't bad if you are taking in 2110 calories but you should never burn more than 1500, most people on the boards don't even suggest going over 1000 calories.

If your burn meter is set to moderate activity this would include your exercise already. You shouldn't add anything to that. Probably the best thing to do would be to set your burn meter on sedentary and add in your workouts. I don't work out a whole lot and I have a pretty active job that involves a lot of walking so I have my burn meter set at light activity, I don't add anything to it. It says I burn 2200 cal a day I generally eat 1200-1300 cal a day so my def is 900-1000 a day. You should shoot for a deficit of 500-1000 a day and no more for a healthy loss, it figures out to be about 1.5 lbs a week. Remember that if you eat 3500 cal less over say a week than what you burned this will equal about 1.5 lb loss. So unless you are doing a lot of workouts don't eat what you have burned so you can maintain your def. Good Luck with it, I hope this helped clear it up for you. I was truley in your shoes not too long ago.

I would set activity level to sed and THEN add the 200 + 535 to THAT total.  When you mark yourself moderate activity and add exercise you are double dipping....

:)
~H~