Interesting. I've never thought about calories in terms of net consumption, and until last week I would have had no idea what my net consumption was. But I've been tracking my food and exercise on Sparkpeople for the past week so now I can figure this out.
I've been eating about 1650 calories per day during the work week, and Sparkpeople says I'm burning about 750 calories on my daily bike commute (I don't have any other way to estimate this), so that makes my net calorie consumption about 900 calories per day. Yesterday I ate about 2550 calories and Sparkpeople says I burned 2300 calories on my 40 mile bike ride, so my net was obviously lower.
I've only done this for a week, so I can't really say how it will work for weight loss, because as you know the first week is not really indicative of how things will go. But I've been happy with my progress on the scale this week.
I'll keep tracking this and see how it goes.