Today was the first time I actually put some exercise in the appropriate box in CalorieKing (I know, I’m a slug). It’s highly convenient to be able to simply search for the exercise in the program’s long list of activities and then enter the number of minutes you engaged in it.

Did I mention that CalorieKing uses live searching? It automatically narrows the list as you type, so you generally don’t have to bother typing the whole word before what you’re looking for pops up.

On the topic of searching, here’s a tip: The database used by the program generally follows an increasing-specificity format. For example, skim milk would be “Milk: Cow, Fat-free, skim.” As opposed to, perhaps, “Milk: Goat’s milk, whole.” You can narrow in on what you’re looking for oftentimes by typing in that format, although sometimes it’s inconsistent and the punctuation can be a gotcha.

Anyway, back to exercise. I assume that the exercise calculation is taking into account your basal metabolic rate, something the start-up interview asked for info to use in calculating. Still, that’s not clear from the interface, and the program never tells you outright how many calories it thinks you’re burning each day just from existing.

What I’m wondering is, is that 100 calories the program said I burned by walking for 30 minutes 100 above and beyond what I’d normally burn just sitting around or standing at the kitchen counter, or not? Would it be a value of 100 calories for someone with a different metabolic rate?

The program knocks the amount of calories you’ve exercised off your total consumed for the day. Convenient if you want to stay under the total yet still have that banana split.

Tagged: Software Review