Q: When deciding how many calories to eat in a day. Should you take into account The cardio you have done THAT day? If you need to eat 2000 calories a day to loose one pound a week, and three days a week you burn 750 calories through cardio, do you add part of those 750 to your calorie allowance? If so how much of that 750 would you add? Or is this all just nonsense?

A: I do not like coming up with total daily calories by trying to add up all the individual calorie expenditures during the day. Instead I look at the big picture: your age, height, weight, rough body fat percentage, average activity level (over a long time, not in any one day), exercise program, current diet, etc. This allows me to come up with a good ballpark figure for your calories. From that point all that's needed is to monitor the weight and make adjustments to the diet/calories once a month or so (eat slightly more if you're losing weight too fast or eat slightly less if losing weight too slowly). I feel this is a much more practical approach and allows you to keep your diet plan the same daily instead of trying to account for 500 cardio calories one day, or 300 yardwork calories the other, or watching TV instead of walking the third :)

So if you are following a 2000-calorie diet, then that's what you try to eat daily regardless of anything else. If, after a month of that you found you've lost anywhere between 2 and 6 pounds then everything's right on schedule! If you found that you lost more than 6 pounds, then you need to raise your calories a bit. And if you found that you haven't even lost 2 pounds, then you need to eat a bit less and perhaps should rethink your exercise program (of course I would need more detailed info to make the decision on whether and how to change the program).

So to make long answer short... Don't stress about daily fluctuations, either in weight or calories eaten or caories 'burned' -- instead focus on month-long (or longer) trends and adjust your diet and program according to those.