Am I eating too few calories?

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  • kpkitten
    kpkitten Posts: 164 Member
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    Make sure you're not overcalculating calories for the non-step exercise like your bike.
    You said you're logging accurately, but just make sure you're measuring all liquids and not using generic entries if you have exact nutrition info available.
    The other thing to consider is that at 316lb you are very overweight and presumably have a very high bf%. Afaik, Fitbit doesn't take bf into account when working out your calories, so it may be overestimating your burns. I've adjusted me height in Fitbit to account for this (I'm currently 225lb, also very overweight with high bf%) using Heybale's spreadsheet - can't find the link right now but someone else might be able to help you. 3000 calories a day at your weight doesn't sound that unreasonable, but it may well be a couple of hundred calories lower.

    I'd suggest sticking with your planned deficit for a couple of weeks, make sure any "cheat" days (hate that term!) are logged accurately, but don't stress out if you have them, and see if your loss matches what it should be. If not, drop the calories by about 100 at a time - don't drop too quickly because even if it's potentially still healthy to eat less than you are, it will be more difficult to stick to!

    FWIW, on a day where I just hit 10,000 steps and don't do any other activity, I burn about 2,500 calories, and my losses seem to be on par with what Fitbit expects (now I've adjusted my height), so I really don't think 3,000 calories is going to be so far off that it accounts for you not losing anything.
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
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    I'm averaging between 20,000-25,000 steps a day and have mfp set to sedentary. That way i can choose to eat back my exercise calories or not. Setting it to active or lightly active just makes things more difficult....
  • ericaelainefields
    ericaelainefields Posts: 14 Member
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    Are you logging your walking separately in your journal? If you said you're lightly active 7000 steps would already be included in that count and honestly is a bit of an overstatement.

    Also, not sure how true is bc I have water /hormone problems, but I've heard that your body retains water weight when you're active so since you don't walk Saturday and Sunday your body may have just released water weight.

    I would change to sedentary and eat accordingly.....and not base any changes off a single weigh in, but only long term trends (week plus)
  • purplebuttersunflower
    purplebuttersunflower Posts: 12 Member
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    Happy to report that after 5 days of increasing my calories by about 300 more a day I am finally starting to lose! Very very happy! Am now 140.5! I should've been that weight after a month of eating 1800 calories but it just didn't happen. Still testing it out for now of course but so far so good :)

    The reason my steps are low is because I'm a carer so don't leave the house very much apart from volunteering days or our daily walk. Most of those steps are from moving around the house & going up and down the stairs. I don't log my exercise though, just rely on steps. I'm happy to lose slowly though & don't feel the need to push more until I need to which will probably be in May.

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