I have recently been trying to exercise more, and eat more healthily, and I have a few questions about Calories:
I understand 3500 calories is one pound, and that the base calorie consumption per day, with no exercise, is about 2000 calories. Now, is weight loss essentially controlled by the difference in calories burned minus calories consumed in a day?
Is there any difference between burning 2000 calories and eating 2000 calories, and burning 3000 calories and eating 3000 calories, in a day?
Anyone have any good sites that would answer some of these basic nutrition questions?

Hi, Dan, I'm not sure but the page I'm linking you to (at the bottom) may help a little with this. Basically, you're correct. If you burn what you consume, you'll break even or maintain your weight. If you consume more than you burn, you'll eventually put on weight. If you burn more than you consume, you'll eventually lose weight.
Keep in mind that it's not just your workout. You burn calories every second of the day, whether you're sleeping, eating, watching tv, or running laps. Those are of course factored into your "calorie-burn" for the day. You might find this page interesting. It has a link to a site where you put in your weight and time (in minutes) and it will tell you how many calories you burn for about a hundred different activities.
http://www.easy-weightloss-tips.com/burn...
Don't fall into the trap of "over-analyzing" though. Try to burn about 500 calories a day through extra activity (ie. workout) and play with your calorie consumption to determine where you can lose, gain, or maintain. Good luck!

2000 is actually not the base amount of calories burned in a day it is the AVERAGE amount burned by a moderately active male. What you are looking for is your BMR (Basel Metabolic Rate, the number of calories you burn in a day) and it all depends on your height and activity level. Your digestion, muscle to fat ratio, and metabolism also effect your BMR so it is hard to calculate all of these precisely. At best you can get a rough estimate.
I'd suggest talking to a fitness expert or joining a gym. That way you will have access to an expert and they can tailor your fitness program and diet to help you meet your goals. Or if you don't have the money to get a personal trainer or join a gym, I found the program at http://www.weightloss-for-anyone.com was very helpful when I started dieting and exercising.

Yes, weight loss *CAN* be controlled strictly by caloric intake (even though exercise is beneficial for health reasons).
Theoretically, there is no difference between each of your examples.
My recommendation is to do a search for the BMR calculation, which will tell you (based upon gender, age and activity level) what your basal metabolic rate is. Then you can calculate how much less you can eat to reach a desired weight.
For example, if you are maintaining your weight at a current caloric intake of 2000, then eating only 1800 calories per day would allow you to lose a single pound of fat after about 17 or 18 days (3500 divided by -200 calories = 17.5 days). On the contrary, if you are maintaining your weight at 2000 calories, and you started eating 2200 calories, your weight would increase by one pound after about 2 weeks.
Hope that helps and good luck!