.

Why are you including your time in class and your time doing homework? As I understand it, those types of things were already included when you selected your activity level (sedentary, light, etc.). It's the extra excercise you do that you should be including, unless you selected something like light, or moderate or higher for your normal activity level.  If you don't include your everyday sedentary activities then your expended calories should be more accurate.

Well since I've heared here that the calculators aren't supposed to be accurate for people under 21 I used a calculator that figures out the bmr for those under 21. I thought the bmr was the ammount of calories your body needs just to be alive, so I figured I would have to add everything else to that number. I'm guessing I have it wrong?lol you can see my confusion xp thank you for the quick response btw ^-^

Ok! I was confused too. I thought you meant the activity calculator on this site. Either way I think sitting or studying would already be included in that number since you aren't really doing anything but existing in an upright position.   I'm not sure about what to do with your calories, but since you are trying to maintain your weight, have you noticed a change in either direction? I guess that would be an easy way to tell if all of your calculations are working for you.

I agree with Kelly.  Even though you are using a different calculator, I think that the concept is going to remain the same.  When you choose your activity lever, I think it includes things you do every day, such as homework or fixing meals, or whatever is involved in your regular routine.  Then anything above what you normall do should be recorded and added to your daily burn.  If your activity is set at "Sedentary," for example, then any exercise you do (again above your daily activities) should be recorded.  For example, when I started, I had mine at "Sedentary" and I added in all my exercise but left out stuff like doing work at my desk, fixing dinner and cleaning up, etc.  I only added in extra chores like if I mowed the grass or did Spring Cleaning or something like that.  Since then I've lost a fair amount of weight and am in better shape, I'm doing more strenuous exercise so I've increased my activity level on this site to "Very Active," and so I don't log in all my exercise anymore.  Anyway, that's been working for me until I hit my current plateau.  Now I'm looking for a new plan, but you get the general idea.

I feel like the counter inaccurately counts calories.  I logged 50 min of moderate effort on the elliptical and it said i burned 634 calories. I find that impossible to believe.  Add to that 15 min of running on the treadmill and somehow in an hour I supposedly burned 756 calories?

Or just don't log stupid stuff, like sitting around twiddling your thumbs. Make yourself work harder by only logging in significant workouts. My wife started logging in EVERY little thing when she first started CC, like "Walking around the grocerie store" for 15 minutes, I was like WTF, that's all normal stuff. So now she/we just log the times we make efforts to workout, like walking up our local mountain, or time spent on the elliptical trainer.

I don't want to BS myself into thinking I burned more calories then I really did, because it's not the calories that CC thinks I burned that count.

Don't take any of the numbers as gospel, but the basic concept is:

BMR of1420 = 1kcal/min (24x60=1440)

Your activities listed in your first post add up to 9.5h (570 min) therfore you deduct 570kcal (already included in the BMR figure).

So, if your numbers are correct, then 2564-570=1994kcal total expenditure.

Original Post by jenik369:

I feel like the counter inaccurately counts calories.  I logged 50 min of moderate effort on the elliptical and it said i burned 634 calories. I find that impossible to believe.  Add to that 15 min of running on the treadmill and somehow in an hour I supposedly burned 756 calories?

I think the CC poorly labels effort for the elliptical.  I'm working out at my max and burn 300 cal / 30 min (according to elliptical trainer) - and that's what CC calls "light" elliptical training.  So I just plug it in as light - I figure that the calories are more important than the "effort". 

foiegras is right, pay attention to that post above!  I think a lot of people get tripped up on the net calories vs. total calories thing, which is why it's sometimes easier to log your (major) activity here as opposed to calculating it in your head.