Excersize and calories

Ok so I have a another question that I have been thinking about lately. Alot of Dr's, Nutritinist, health people I have been talking to agree that it is a general rule that to lose weight you must burn more calories then you consume. So for example I do 30 minutes a day on the treadmill that seems high intensity for my fitness level.. In that 30 minutes my treadmill say's
I have burnt 230 calories (average) ... Now if I consume 1700 calories a day )lean meat, wholegrains fruit & vege) ... it would seem my calories are getting no where near the food I am eating?? I'd have to be on the treadmill
7 hours straight to burn off my food! lol... does this make any sense??

You burn calories by simply living, not only the exercise you do. Your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is an estimate of calories used to keep you breathing, maintaining body temperature, etc.

Among many BMR calculators, here is a link to one...
http://www.dieting-review.com/bmrcalc.htm

So for example, if you were a 30 year old, 5'4" female who weighed 150 pounds, your BMR would be approximately 1459. Your 1700 calories would cause you to gain weight if you did absolutely no activities. If your 230 calories on the tredmill were the ONLY thing that you did, you would stay about even, eating 1700 calories, and buring 1689.

Oh, and before anyone states the obvious, I offer the following disclaimer:
Counting calories is only one way to track overages. There are others.

Personally, I've found calorie counting to be a useful tool. The mileage of individual posters may vary.

Imagine that it takes 2000 calories a day for you to live. And if you cut back by 500, you will lose approx. 1 lb/wk. By adding the treadmill, you have two choices. First you can eat a little more and still maintain a reasonable weight loss or you can lose weight 50 percent faster.

In addition to the calories burned on the treadmill, it has other benefits as well. It can help with appetite suppression, it keeps you off the sofa eating, it is good for self esteem, metabolism in general and does all sorts of nice things for you including prevention of some disease.

Something I read lately about exercise and diet pointed out that people who engage in moderate exercise do not lose that much more than those who do not exercise but the long term success rate of those exercised was clearly better.

Or count your calories, figure out where your overages lay, and eat less.
Whichever works better for you. (Doesn't have to be all of one and none of the other, either.

you burn off calories by maintaining higher than ambient body temperature, by having your heart beat every second, by fidgeting, etc etc etc. Even when you watch TV your body gets a little workout. Energy expenditure at rest is called Base Metabolic Rate (BMR).