Maximum daily calories logged from exercise?

umamibrain

Do you cap your daily calories burned from exercise in any way? When I did Weight Watchers years ago I recall there was a maximum of points you could log each day from exercise. If I had to guess I'd say it was the equivalent of 500 calories or so. I often find myself burning more than 500 calories/day, and I'm wondering if it's OK to deduct all those calories from my daily net total. 

Today, for example (I'm rounding), I ate 1100 calories and burned 700. That gives me a net intake of 400, with 900 still left to consume at 7 in the evening. If I capped my calories logged from exercise at 500, then I would say that I had a net intake of 600, with 700 still left to consume. 

I will say that last summer, when I had an active outdoor job, I was logging a lot of calories from exercise but I still lost plenty of weight. I had some sedentary days and I didn't want to overestimate my calories burned, so I set my activity level as sedentary and logged hours of activity on the job day by day. 

I am a little over 200 lbs, in average cardiovascular shape. I can happily walk for hours every day, don't get winded running up a flight of stairs, but I'm not a gym rat (as in, haven't been to a gym in months), if that makes a difference to your answer. I get most of my exercise from walking, sometimes up and down hills and stairs, sometimes with a heavy backpack. I apologize if this is a frequent question but I couldn't find it in the archives.