Does sitting and resting really burn that many calories?

I'm new... I found this site via the android app I downloaded and I am intrigued. I've just started to record what I eat, and I have a question. I am eating what I normally eat, just because I want to see on average how many calories I eat in a day normally.

I then log my activities for the day... sitting, resting, sleeping, driving, desk work... and it says I am burning 4019kcal a day?!?!

I am normally eating about 3000 calories a day (sometimes less), so I have a 1000 calorie defcit each day, according to this site. How can this be? If this is true, then shouldn't I be losing weight? Are the calorie counts for the exercises that much off? Little confused about this... any answer would be appreciated. Thanks!

hi I've just joined the site also. I think it's really good and helpful, but I don't eat 3000 calories per day. Yesterday I think was around 1350 and today so far is around 1500 and I have been using around 2500 in sitting around and exercise etc. I'm going to give this a go because I am doing the 9lbs by 9.09 challenge and will stay on until then and if I do manage to lose that much i will continue.

You do burn a lot more calories at rest than you probably think you do. That's a result of the BMR (basal metabolic rate). Think of it this way: even when you are doing nothing but sitting on your butt or lying in bed, you are still breathing, blinking, pumping blood throughout your body etc. A average woman generally burns 1300-1500 calories per day at rest, while the average man burns 1600-1800 calories. If you are heavier, your BMR goes up, because it takes more energy to fuel a larger body. That figure is widely accepted so you can probably use the sedentary BMR provided by FatSecret to be pretty accurate. Not perfect, but pretty good.

That said, most of the calories burned figures for activities and exercises that are given on this site (and others) are ideal estimates, and I find them to be inaccurate (usually too high, sometimes too low). So yes, they really are that much off, in many cases. There's simply no way for a website to calculate calories burned for every single person out there, even through averages, because everyone does each activity differently. If you want a truly accurate measure, you need a heart rate monitor.

I was also really shocked at how many calories I supposedly burned by just resting, playing tennis, and running a little. I ate a little less than 900 calories today, but I burned around 2000 calories?! I usually don't eat more than 1000 calories, and I'm not being extreme because I feel completely fine and full. I had a difference of around 1200 calories, which is crazy. I had no idea that resting could burn so many calories.

The calories burned on your exercise chart are based on the average person. That being said, your metabolism could be messed up or something, so it may not be accurate to everyone. So if you have a fast metabolism, you burn more than the exercise chart predicts and vice versa for a slow metabolism.

You need a calorie deficit of 3500 to lose one pound. So if your deficit is 1000 a day, it would take roughly 3.5 days to lose one pound. However, it take much less calories to gain a pound, which is just not fair..lol

A couple of notes: Desk work as most of us know it today has little to do with the desk work folks did when the Mets values were calculated. Anymore, desk work consists of sliding a 3 oz hunk of plastic back and forth over roughly 36 square inches of desk and some occasional typing. It used to mean grabbing and moving and opening and closing files, etc. A lot more activity, so if you use a computer at your desk, don't count that as desk work. Also, if you drive one handed with your fingers at the base of the wheel and your knee propped up next to the door, don't count that as driving. You'll need both hands on the wheel and your feet doing your speed control to count it. I I only track my proper exertion (walking my morning route, standing for extended periods, etc) and not incidentals like sitting or walking from my desk to the restroom and back. As a result I find my net calories to be a reasonably accurate predictor of weight loss.

I tend to agree with kristopherd. I don't count driving, cooking, desk work or any of that sort of thing. I count my *exercise* and nothing else (and honestly, a lot of the time I don't even count that because I get annoyed that my activities are often not listed, and I don't have an HRM). Otherwise, I end up with some ridiculously high quantity that isn't anywhere near accurate.

Hello all,

My name is Amber and I just recently joined. I have a question, is there any way to take the sleeping and resting off of the exercise routine I do not want to count those as extra calories burned?

Amberjoi: It doesn't count them as "extra," just as a baseline for your BMR (ie the amount you would burn even if you were doing absolutely nothing, since your muscles and organs need calories just to function at rest).

I just had a revelation today while talking to my trainer. I was using the FS number for my BMR (1812 kcal) - that's with 8 hours of sleeping and the rest just resting. A few months ago I got on one of those body-fat estimators that use electrical impedance to gauge your fat and BMR and my BMR came up as 1468. It's probably a little higher now cuz I've put on some muscle but stilll ... So, on the days when I would eat 1600 calories and think that I was still maintaining, I was really over doing it. To top it off, I was logging desk work and walking in my exercise diary. Now I'm just going to do what katana_x does and only record my workout sessions as extra exercise. I'm also going to mentally subtract 350 calories from my calories-out number when looking at my deficit.