Exercise and Weight Diary

I don't like the fact that the site pre-programs in the calories burned. There needs to be a modification which allows us to put whatever we want in that or even zero it out and only look at the calories we burn doing specific exercises. And it would be nice if we could put in the exact calories that our heart monitors are providing rather than the calculator in this program. This program is VERY generous in what it says is burned during a spefific exercise.

I wish it would give more choice in terms of speeds for running and walking I.e. there is no 4km walking speed etc

But as a rule it works for me

I tend to slightly under record activity and slightly over record eating to keep a.margin for error

There is the option of 'other' in the exercises which allows you to enter an exercise time and calories. So if you do for example walking on a treadmill at 5kph and the machine said you burnt 203 calories then you can enter the details exactly.

The point of having the 'default' calories (resting/sleeping) is so that you can see what kind of calorie deficits you are creating. Obviously this won't be an exact science, but it should get you pretty close. If you think it is overestimating your base of calories burned, you can always change it to 24 hours of sleeping, which should come out to be the lowest possible numbers of calories burned without exercise. If you zero it out, then your calculated calorie deficits will be enormously overestimated.

And like johnnybadback said, you can always select the "other" option for entering exercise/calories. I pretty much always use that as my option for entering my calories burned as recorded by my heart rate monitor. You're right, FS typically overestimates the calorie burn for many activities.