Confused about activity levels

golfergirl92

Okay so I've had my Charge HR for almost a full year....wear it day in and day out. I love to track all stats. I'm really trying to hone in on weight loss right now to get from my hover between 179 and 185 to around 155-160. I walk about 8-10 miles every day at my job in a bakery where I'm usually lifting 50 lb sacks of flour and slinging lugs of dough around that can weigh upwards of 70 lbs. Average steps are around 15,000 daily. On my two days off, I clean house and run errands and get in the occasional gym workout so my steps can be as little as 3,000 to as much as a full day of work at 15,000. I'm trying to start a training plan for a 5K on MapMyFitness so I've been jogging a couple times a week for about 2 miles each.

Right now, I have my activity level on MFP set to Active as my job is pretty demanding. I have the Fitbit food plan set to -750 calories. Negative adjustments are checked as well for my "lazy" days off. Weight loss has been extremely slow. Like 3 pounds in a month. I don't always eat all the calories I'm given, I try to stay between 1880-2200. 1880 is what MFP gives me to start with.

I saw another prominent MFP poster say that I should set my activity level to Sedentary and just eat all the calories Fitbit adjusts, which would start me at 1310. When I synced Fitbit yesterday after work, it gave me 1666 calories extra to eat! (including my run of 196 calories). I ate 2160 calories which left 816 remaining.

SOOO should I set my activity level to Active or Sedentary?

heybales

That option is merely going to play in how big is the Fitbit adjustment at the start and end of the day.
If it helps with planning what you are going to eat - might be useful to pick the realistic one.
I'm betting you have a pretty good idea of where eating level should be anyway, and probably not needed until end of day to help get to eating goal.

The closer MFP activity level matches actual activity level - the less MFP has to correct itself using the Fitbit stats.

At the end of the day both choices would result in same amount of calories for eating goal though.

So your 750 deficit if followed is probably just barely reasonable for amount left to lose.

But you have made it a lot more it sounds like by missing your eating goal.

Your body isn't going to be happy eating upwards of 50% less than what it could burn, and it'll adjust so you burn less and aren't that extreme to what you eat.

Extreme deficit is going to stress body out and slow it down, also cause muscle mass loss. You still have a deficit - just not what it could be - hence the slower weight loss.

I'd suggest trying to reach your goal better, especially introducing more exercise.
You may even need to go to maintenance mode for a few weeks to let it recover and speed up to full burn - right now Fitbit's estimate is on healthy average body with your stats - your's may not be entirely healthy at this point and it's overestimating your burn.

The other difference between choice of activity level - is the inflated calorie burn introduced in the evening when you finally plop down and then sleep until midnight - when you are obviously not being Active or whatever level you pick.
Hence the suggestion to pick sedentary which minimizes that effect.

The FAQ in the stickies - 2nd half, discusses this with math to see what happens, as well as what MFP is doing with Fitbit data.

golfergirl92

Okay so I reread the FAQ sticky part 2.....

If I'm reading this correctly, I can leave MFP at Active to have smaller adjustments (I like to know a ballpark figure for my dinner eating goal). And secondly, I'm not eating enough to lose weight? I hardly ever meet the Fitbit eating goal of -750. Almost always under it.

NancyN795

What heybales was saying was that you may be trying to lose weight too fast, causing your body to burn muscle and slow down its metabolism. (The rule I've learned says that a deficit of 750 calories a day is only for people who need to lose more than 50 pounds.) As a result, your Fitbit may be overestimating how many calories you burn. In order to correct the problem, you might need to stop trying to lose weight for a while - increase your food to a maintenance level and at the same time, increase your exercise in order to regain some of the muscle mass that you've lost. (To be honest, it sounds like you're pretty active at work already, so you might not to add that much exercise, just stop stressing your body by not feeding it adequately.)

To figure out if your Fitbit is accurate for you, take a month where you log your food extremely carefully - weigh every single bite you take to the gram and log it. At the end of 30 days, you can use numbers on the intake vs. burn graph on your Fitbit profile page to compute your expected weight change and compare it to your actual weight change. The difference will tell you how many calories per day (on average) your Fitbit is off by.

I also wouldn't call losing 3 pounds a month "extremely slow" when you've got as little to lose as you do. At most, you should be trying to lose 4 pounds a month (1 lb a week), perhaps even just 2 pounds a month. Maybe what really needs to be adjusted is your expectations as to what a reasonable rate of loss is.

golfergirl92

Huh I didn't think I'd ever need to eat over 2000 calories. Oh yay! I have been tracking most probably 90% of my food by the gram with my food scale, given the few days here and there where the restaurant we go to doesn't have count and then I overestimate to be sure. I will have to get on my computer and see the intake vs. burn for the last 30 days. I can see a week at a time on the app.

golfergirl92

So I have upped my calories to 2130 in MFP so that it's a -1 lb a week loss. Makes me nervous to eat more now.

Christine_72

I'm in awe that you can lose 1lb a week eating over 2000 calories, you lucky duck

golfergirl92

@Christine_72 "supposedly" I can lose 1 lb a week at 2130 calories....I had it set to -1.5 a week and I wasn't losing. So I'm going to give it a couple weeks. Like today, my calorie burn goal on my Fitbit is 2567 calories and I hit that before I left work. When I came home, I went for a 2.5 mile run and my calories burned are at 3400.....I still have 600 calories to eat and I'm at 2500 right now.

Christine_72

golfergirl92 wrote: »

@Christine_72 "supposedly" I can lose 1 lb a week at 2130 calories....I had it set to -1.5 a week and I wasn't losing. So I'm going to give it a couple weeks. Like today, my calorie burn goal on my Fitbit is 2567 calories and I hit that before I left work. When I came home, I went for a 2.5 mile run and my calories burned are at 3400.....I still have 600 calories to eat and I'm at 2500 right now.

Awesome Would you mind keeping me updated on how it goes?

heybales

You'll have to give it more than a couple weeks.

As a woman your metabolism literally changes through the month, pick the wrong couple of weeks for anything weight related you can have bad looking results.

One effect you should immediately get is more stored glycogen in your muscles, along with the attached water.
This will immediately increase your LBM, your metabolism, and your scale weight - but not fat weight.

So reminder not to be bound to the scale which has no idea if you've lost muscle or gained water, or it's fat weight.

This speedup will take more than a couple weeks.

If you were going to start any strength training - this would be the time.