have i been doing this wrong the whole time?? need advice pleeease

Boy, I don't know.  I am stumped too.  I have a very sedentary job but work out every day either lifting weights or elliptical for 1/2 hour.  Not sure if this is sedentary, light, or moderate activity?  I was counting as moderate but now that I read your post I am even more confused.  There is no option for desk job + daily workouts.

yeah exactly! i figured for the expenditure tool just tagging myself as sedentary was fine since i individually add exercises for the day, but when it comes to calorie allowance its throwing me off cause i dont know how many cals i should be eating...

Here's what I do....... my activity level is set at sedentary.  Then I add in my activity for the day to get my total calories burned on days I exercise.

Days I don't exercise, I follow the allowance recommendation.  On days I do exercise, I have 1000 less than the total burned for the day. 

Those levels correspond to what the dietitian recommended for me and I'm still losing.

bump =)

I was wondering the same thing.  I sit in front of a computer all day for work so I marked myself as sedentary, then I add workouts as an activity.  But back-tracking my weight and calorie intake, assuming a pound = 3500 calories, I'm somewhere around 2,600-2,700 calories burned normally.  This is between light and moderate levels for my weight.  I guess it's worked out because I've never met my calorie goal for any given month, yet I'm still losing more weight than my goal!

i think i'm gonna try focusing more on the defecit, now that i have a heart rate monitor i'll be able to tell more accurately what i'm burning.. and ii'm gonna try upping my cals from 1300 to 1500.. we'll see how things go

i'm interested to hear what happens. bust through that plateau!