Valerie-

Here's how I log calories in Fitday PC.

You can set up a typical day, which is used as your baseline activity for any day. I set mine to 8 hours of sleep and 16 hours sitting.

Then you can enter specific activites. The software decreases the number of minutes charged to "typical day" for evey minute of "logged activity".

You can make custom activites. Since I wear my pedometer all day, and it calculates a calorie count (based on steps and my current weight), I enter those calories as my logged calories. I did this by making an activity called "excercise - 5 calories per minute" and entering however many minutes I need to match up with my pedometer calorie total.

If I do any decent amount of exercise that wouldn't show on a pedometer (like pilates or bike riding), I take my pedometer off while exercising and log the minutes of that activity in Fitday. For stuff like jump roping, I just use the pedometer count.

The numbers seem pretty accurate and my current 2.6 lbs per week is what you'd expect averaging a 1300 calorie deficit. I think my initial rate was a little slower because I was increasing exercise and added several lbs of muscle (calculated from lean/fat readings on the scale.) In fact, let's check: 66,768 cal deficit should be 19 lbs. Actual loss, 17.1 lbs, but that was 20.2 lbs of fat loss and 3.1 lbs of lean muscle gain. I'm pretty impressed with how accurate this stuff is. It also makes me really respect the potential risk a sedentary lifestyle (if I ever were to go back to one) could have on maintenance. No wonder I didn't do well in the past when I exercised during weight loss and gave it up at goal.

Lynda