Can I get an "accurate" calorie counter please!?!

Trying to reduce your body mass by at least half is no small process.  In fact, its a very big, long and hard process fraught with many obstacles to overcome.  For me, counting calories has been a big key dropping the pounds.  Several years ago I used the latest and greatest technology to help me which was the body bug.  The contestants on The Biggest Loser used them so if they were good enough for them, good enough for me.  It was helpful as I started on my journey, a bit of a pain to wear a tight strap around my upper arm 24/7 often leaving an imprint on my arm.  But it gave a pretty good indication of how active I was and how many calories I was burning.

Fast forward to the present.  I no long have the body bug to bug me and I'm using other technology to track my calorie intake and burn.  The latest app seems to be the myfitnesspal.com  It's a very good app for free.  It has a large database of foods and exercises you can put in and track your calories.  But here is what was frustrating me today.

So I'm riding on my stationary bike and I'm once again wondering what am I actually burning and how many calories am I actually losing.  The display on my bike will only allow you to put in a max weight of 350 lbs as a way to track how many calories you are burning.  But I far exceed that number.  So no matter what that display says at the end of my ride, it's just not right.  Using the myfitnesspal to enter my exercise for the day they were many options for stationary bike.  There is very light effort, light effort, moderate effort, vigorous effort and very vigorous effort.  Well how the hell do I know which I just did?  There isn't anything that lets you know what the difference is! Also when I put in my strength training it doesn't even count that as burning calories.  Very frustrating.

In my search of the inter webs for some information on how to calculate it I came across several sites that would give you your starting information such as how many calories you need per day to just move and keep going.  I tried several sites and entered the same age, weight, height and sex information to each.  My daily caloric intake ranged from 3600 to over 6500 calories per day on various sites!

In the end I am left with what I have been using.  It seems about 4000 calories a day for me is a good average.  And of course 3500 calories equals a pound.  So I'm left with a whopping 500 calories per day to eat.  If your not careful, you can blow more than half of that on breakfast alone.  So that means I'm basically exercising so I can eat the rest of the day.  :-)    So you can see why I want to get a good idea of how many calories I'm burning when I go for my bike rides.

Just some thoughts from today's journey.  The struggle continues!

Take care, until next time!