looking for honest users

If the calories burned on the MFP website are greatly exaggerated, I don't know how I managed to lose 40 pounds in a little over a year and have been maintaining since December. I'm a 57 year old woman without a fitbit or any other way to guage my burns other than this and other websites. It's worked for me.

I am honest about the things I eat, and I just made a new account. I rarely exercise, though. I walk up and down my street about twice a week, sometimes three times a week. Mostly, I just watch my calories and that seems to work for me. It might not work for others, but it works for my body. I just think it is important not to criticize others and just support them. But I do see something wrong if you are taking diet pills and throwing up after you eat. I would not be able to support that.

Hello, everyone! I hope your diets are going well!

My hackles really don't get raised until cleaning the house gets logged. Then I raise my hackles.

I don't log anything that I count as part of a standard day (so no logging cooking, walks to and from the water cooler, laundry, bleaching the loo etc).

However, I clean house about once in a blue moon, so when I do do it, I feel it deserves logging, because it's bloody hard work when you have that much dust to evict!

anyone, feel free to add me. i eat normal foods and exercise in spurts. when i start playing basketball in the fall i will have bigger burns but normally i don't log my exercise. good luck to you!

Hard to figure out if I'm doing something wrong if I'm not honest in my logging.

Totally agree why lie about your weight and what you eat. sometimes I go a little over what im supposed to be eating but I still log it.
You have to be honest with yourself on this prograsm if not it will never work and you will become depressed

I'm using the livestrong site to calculate my burns until my HRM comes in the mail & I agree that MFP overestimates. I still have a lot to lose therefore I burn more calories during workouts than a fit person would. I can easily burn 600-700 calories just walking for a couple of hours, and 800-900 hiking but that may seem inflated to some people. I can see how really high burns in the thousands could be discouraging, and seem unrealistic, but I guess I'm an optimist. I don't ever see myself being an elite athlete or running a marathon, so those huge burns whether real or exaggerated don't affect me one way or the other. I really only work out so I can eat a little more :-).

I've been losing 2 - 2 1/2#/week consistently for 16 weeks and am highly motivated to meet my mini goals and ultimate long-term goal. I log everything I eat as honestly as possible. I only eat back about half my exercise calories & tend to underestimate my burns to be on the safe side. My diary is open to the public, but feel free to friend me!

My hackles really don't get raised until cleaning the house gets logged. Then I raise my hackles.

The funniest log I saw was: Smoking 1 cigarette = 20 calories

Someone logged folding laundry

I wear a BodyMedia, which I consider to be pretty accurate, so I never need to worry about overestimating.

Even when I ran a marathon, my burn for the day was only 4,640. :laugh:

Me too. Whatever it inputs I go with. I don't use MFP's exercise tab at all. I think it grossly over exaggerates on burn on most of the activity.

Are you taking into account that people who are extremely heavy burn more calories doing the same activity than someone who is a lot lighter? My daughter and I have both measured our calorie burn doing the same exercise on several occasions using our HRMs. I'm quite short and on maintenance, she's taller and 40lbs heavier than me. She burns almost double what I burn doing exactly the same workout. This could be a factor as to why people look like they burn so much?

Are you taking into account that people who are extremely heavy burn more calories doing the same activity than someone who is a lot lighter? My daughter and I have both measured our calorie burn doing the same exercise on several occasions using our HRMs. I'm quite short and on maintenance, she's taller and 40lbs heavier than me. She burns almost double what I burn doing exactly the same workout. This could be a factor as to why people look like they burn so much?

I've even exercised with a friend who weighs the same as me but is 2" shorter and she burned way more calories than I did doing the exact same thing! I was a little jealous lol but I think it's because I've been regularly exercising for a long time now and she just started.

Are you taking into account that people who are extremely heavy burn more calories doing the same activity than someone who is a lot lighter? My daughter and I have both measured our calorie burn doing the same exercise on several occasions using our HRMs. I'm quite short and on maintenance, she's taller and 40lbs heavier than me. She burns almost double what I burn doing exactly the same workout. This could be a factor as to why people look like they burn so much?

I've even exercised with a friend who weighs the same as me but is 2" shorter and she burned way more calories than I did doing the exact same thing! I was a little jealous lol but I think it's because I've been regularly exercising for a long time now and she just started.

Indeed. I used to get a 700 calorie burn for an hour of zumba. 18 months later I have to work out twice as hard to get a burn of around 530. The price of fitness - the body becomes more adept at saving energy. So someone who is 200lbs over weight may well burn a lot of calories not working out as hard. Not something to get discouraged about, I don't think. :-)

I always post what the cardio equipment at the gym claims, which averages about to 500 calories an hour about 5 days a week. I also record the squats I do in the bathroom at the work but they don't have any calories attached. I figure the gym equipment probably overestimates calories burned so I just try to go a bit under on the calories consumed.

I keep my posts as real as possible. Honesty is the best policy

A combination of a HRM, Fitbit and Endomondo tracks my burns.

This morning I burned 1650 calories riding a mountain bike just under 20 miles in two hours.