Calories: Why do they have to be so confusing?!

Okay, so today I burned (or will have burned after my strength training) over 3500 calories and I ate 1412. So, my deficit is 2146 cals.... is that too much? I am a little hungry, but not crazy. I might have eaten up to 1500 (mistakenly), so I'm wondering if this is ok. I just gained 15 pounds in 3 days since I started eating 2000 cals... not really sure what that's about because I have the exact same measurements as always!

So, the final question is should I eat more, or am I fine?

whoa...how did you burn 3500 calories?!?!  a deficit of 2146 is a really big one... well if your hungry, eat! if youre not, then i say dont. its late. just try to keep your deficit to 1000 from now on!

Don't trust the calorie count on exercise machines.

I burned 3500 calories because I walked for 5 hours today plus an hour of weights. I wasn't doing the walking for exercise, but to get places. I calculated it on cc and it said I burned 3558 cals! I don't know how accurate that is though. I did have a bowl of cereal because my stomach was rumbling.

Hmm... try getting a fitday account (free) and calculate it on there.

Okay, thank you.

It says that even if I did absolutely nothing else that day, I still burned 2912 cals today! So, should I eat more or not. Will I be in starvation mode if I don't?

3500 is a LOT of calories to burn. Even if you walked for 5 hours at a moderate pace carrying a couple of pounds worth of small things (say a purse) you should only have burned around 1500 calories. Where did you come up with your figure?

How did you gain 15lbs in 3 days?!?!?  Also, you can check how many calories you burn per exercise a lot more accuratly on  http://www.calorieking.com you put in age, weight, height and sex and it tells you how much you burn based on YOU

I checked it on two different sites and it said I burned at least 3000 calories in total that day!

If you gained 15 then Id say it's in muscle and water....are you expecting your period?

Because Im obese I can easily burn that many cals on a active day...they say (different sites) that my RMR is 2002.

I find it really difficult to believe that you could have gained 15 lbs in 3 days.  Even for water weight, that's absurdly high, especially considering that your measurements have remained the same.  And muscle just doesn't grow THAT quickly.

It's probably more likely that your scale has gone wonky, or if you're using different scales, that they're calibrated differently.  For instance, I know that my scale in my bathroom at home is somewhere around 5-7 lbs under my actual (doctor's scale) weight.  For that reason, I don't obsess too much about the actual number I'm seeing, just the trend I see from day to day.  In your case, I would just not even worry about the 15 "extra" lbs.  

As for your actual question, sounds like you're fine.  :) 

Ya, I'm pretty sure the scale has something to do with it. I'm really confused though because apparently I'm the same weight that I was when I looked 20 pounds heavier, but I don't have any muscle.... and I'm only like 1/2 inch taller than I was....