Vickie very sensibly asked on my last post if I could disable the "net calories" function in Lose It, so that I could just track total calories. I poked around in the settings and, apparently, I can't. I'm going to stop trying to juggle two systems in my head and just follow Lose It.

I think it's OK that Lose It tries to hold me to a lower calorie count that what Russ and Jeff suggest. It keeps me a little more cautious. And Russ and Jeff also say that it's fine to go 200 calories or so lower to speed up weight loss.  I also know that my weight loss results are pretty close to what Lose It says as long as I'm exercising regularly. The last couple weeks, I haven't been able to, and that's when the Lose It calorie counts start to feel a little too low.

Now that I'm back to exercising regularly, I'm going to follow Lose It and try to stay in the green zone. I am also going to track my results in a spreadsheet. I can't believe I didn't do it sooner.  I am going to track average calories per day, calories over Lose It's suggested range, total calories burned, and weight loss, along with the Biggest-Loser-style percent of weight lost. I'm curious to see if there is a predictable relationship between my weekly weight loss and any of these numbers. It might help me get a sense of what I need to tweak.