Yesterday I read a blog that was identical to a posting on the message board at By The Numbers the day before. While identical, they were by 2 different members.

I am not going to say who & what exactly, but the gist of it was, "why can't I just say I am sedentary and use that as the basis for my BMR and eat less to lose more weight?"

You can. Of course you can. But you will not lose more weight by "reporting" less activity. You will wind up on a plateau and we all hate plateaus. The longer you stay at the plateau, the harder it will be to break it.

So, I am posting this for anyone interested - you have free choice about what you eat and how much you eat. You may report or not report the actual calories you are burning daily. In the end, you are the one who will either benefit or be foiled by your program.

You are the only one who will either lose the weight or risk giving up. The choice is yours.

When this happened to me in Oct 2008 I went to the Expert's Forum for Exercise & Fitness and was told I needed to start eating a minimum of 1600 calories daily. It wasn't easy for me but I had stopped losing weight for 3 weeks and I was asking for advice. I discussed it with my DH and we agreed together that what did I have to lose but weight?! While I only increased to 1550 at the time due to being involved in a challenge at one of my teams, it was enough to start me losing again. Once I started losing, I also made sure I accurately entered all my burned calories (to the best of my ability) and it was the last plateau I was ever on.

So I pass the ball back to your court - do you really want to pretend you are sedentary instead of reporting true calories burned daily?