Eating all the calories!
SierraFatToSkinny
Posts: 463 Member
Okay! So I purchased a Fitbit Blaze earlier today. I'm still a little bit confused as to how to go about my new life as a HR monitor owner.
I have it synced to my phone and it's adjusting calories for me. I wore it for half the day and it adjusted about 300 calories. (C25K Week 6 Day 1 and then a walk around the block.)
I'm 5'8"and 266lbs. I set MFP goals to 2lbs loss a week. Sedentary setting gives me a daily food allotment of 1480.
I plan to eat back all the adjusted calories. ALL.
Am I good to go? Will that lead to a 2lbs loss a week?
I have it synced to my phone and it's adjusting calories for me. I wore it for half the day and it adjusted about 300 calories. (C25K Week 6 Day 1 and then a walk around the block.)
I'm 5'8"and 266lbs. I set MFP goals to 2lbs loss a week. Sedentary setting gives me a daily food allotment of 1480.
I plan to eat back all the adjusted calories. ALL.
Am I good to go? Will that lead to a 2lbs loss a week?
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Replies
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Be careful with Fitbit calories. Mine overestimates my calories A LOT. I personally maintain (actually I gain veeeery slowly) at the number Fitbit gives me as a 500 calorie deficit. I'd say to start by eating a portion of them (maybe around half to start with?) and see how your weight loss goes.8
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I agree, only eat half at the most4
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I eat between 1/2 and 3/4 of my Fitbit adjusted calories and with tight, consistent food logging am losing at or under my estimated weight loss of 1lb a week. I'd start eating back a percentage and see what the scale says.0
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At 266lbs, eating 1700 calories (including exercise), you are probably ok. Be aware that as you get lighter, it will be wise to reduce the percentage of exercise calories that you eat back.6
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I've got a Fitbit also (a Charge HR). While I am thinking it may be overestimating my calories burned, it seems to match what the various TDEE sites say I would be burning based on me thinking active and entering moderate. The calories burned sits right between the two most days. As a 225-lb male, I've been keeping an average deficit of around 1100 calories (I'm actually trying to eat a little bit more, but 1950 calories of nutritious food is pretty filling).
Anyway my data is limited as I have not been tracking closely except for the past 4 weeks or so. It's been a relatively steady 2 lbs/week. I've noticed that I get heavier a day or so after strength workouts, so the weight fluctuates as expected. So with the caveat that this is limited data and still short term, my Fitbit may be closer to accurate than I expected it to be.2 -
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I find it pretty crazy, but you're a bit taller and heavier than I am (5'6, 212 lbs). According to my own stats plugged into multiple TDEE calculators and mostly confirmed via tracking my numbers in a spreadsheet, 10,000 steps gets me 2400 calories with my sedentary TDEE being ~2150. I'm not sure how much more your extra pounds and inches 'buy' you, but I would have to get around 35,000 steps for that calorie number.
Edit: Clarifying something I didn't type very clearly.1 -
If you have MFP set to lose 2 pounds/week, eat back all the exercise calories.
Then pay attention to how much weight you actually lose and adjust from there. If you lose less than the expected 8 pounds/month, cut back on how many exercise calories you eat. If you lose more than expected, eat a little more (relative to your goal; understand that your calorie goal will naturally decrease a little as you lose weight). If you lose as expected, stick to the plan.
The reason that I think you should start off eating back all the exercise calories is that if they're right and you don't eat them back, you lose weight faster than is healthy. If they're wrong and you eat them back anyway, you lose weight slightly slower than expected - but, with a 2 pound/week goal, you still lose weight pretty quickly (worst case scenario would be 1.5 pounds/week if you eat back 250 calories more than you burned).
If you were only aiming to lose 0.5 pounds/week, I'd advise you to be more cautious about not eating back too much. But aiming for 2 pounds/week, it's more important not to eat back too little.4 -
I use Garmin and anytime I see Fitbit calories posted they always seem crazy high in comparison. Garmin used to say I burned about 400 calories walking steep hills for 3 miles, not running so that could be the difference, when I was in the 260's. Last time I had a burn that high I ran 4 miles through sand and gravel then walked another 2 miles for a total of about 20000 steps for the day. In my experience Garmin underestimates my burn a bit, but that's still a big difference. I'm 5'3", 220.3
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My only exercise of the day was 20-25ish minutes of trail running. The trail was moderate for the most part. There were a couple staircases I had to run up and down.
I also ran faster today than I would typically... taking breaks between runs allows me to kick into a higher gear.
And I was also rather ravenous tonight.... I'm hungry again right now. So maybe I did burn a lot more.
But... probably not 1100 calories worth. That seems too excessive.0 -
Over 1,000 calories for 10k steps does sound a bit excessive. I'm 5'5 and 140lbs and I get about 400 calories for 10k steps. But at your height you can certainly eat more than 1,500 calories a day and lose weight.
PS you ate 0.2 of a chicken liver? That sounds more like you used it in a magic potion rather than in a recipe
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The first thing I noticed was the chicken liver too!
It does seem a bit high to me. But, I agree with other people that at this stage you should probably eat back almost all of your daily burn and then adjust from there. That way you don't short change yourself, but it will also give you feedback on how accurate your fitbit is.
P.S. nice job on the running!
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They start off inaccurate then get more accurate the longer it gets to know you.
Within 4 weeks mine was pretty much spot on and for two years now I've eaten back all the calories it says to.8 -
Is your tracker heart-rate based? These are reasonably accurate for some people more than others because they try to guess at your max heart rate using formulas and those people happen to fall within an acceptable range of it, but may be less accurate for your own individual heart rate, plus they don't take into account fitness level like more advanced heart rate monitors. As suggested, start by eating whatever you determine to be a good percentage 25%, 50%, 100%, doesn't matter, and just watch what your weight does then adjust up or down accordingly to match your planned loss.
ETA: also keep in mind that some trackers try to "guess" your activity level for the rest of the day by using your activity level during exercise, giving you more eat-back calories than the actual value. You can see if this is happening by checking your extra calories in the evening, then going back next day to see if they settled at a lower value.1 -
Lol! @mlinci @hoshiko the chicken liver was part of a meal prep. I forgot to add it to the recipe so I had to tack it on to the meal. I mostly work from my phone and I'm limited on tweaking recipes.
(I'm up way too late....) I ended up eating most of the calories. I figured 2400 wasn't too far off from what I was eating when I began losing weight and if I'm hungry, then I might as well enjoy it guilt free. I can be more moderate if I need to later.4 -
I find my fitbit to be very accurate. If I were you, I'd try eating them all for a few weeks and track your weight loss. If you're losing an average of 2lbs/week (not always linear, but averaging that), then you know its accurate. If you're above or below that, then you can figure out what percentage to eat back from what you're losing. 5
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You're tall(ish), heavy(ish), and ACTIVE.
A TDEE over 3500 Cal (which is what your Fitbit gave you) is ENTIRELY reasonable given your stats and activity level.
As Susan mentioned: eat them all back and see if you're happy with your weight loss and your ability to keep at it. It is more important to keep losing than to lose faster.
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I burn 1000-1200 cals in an olympic triathlon, 1.5km open water swim/40km bike/10k run.
You can use this as a comparison on the estimation and what you did.2 -
That's suspicious for some double counting to me. There's no way that a 25 minute trail run burned 1000 calories. Investigate under Exercise in MFP to see if things are getting counted twice. I have found fitbit/Garmin to be pretty accurate but sometimes weird things happen.1
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It's really going to take some time to assess how much you should be eating back. I feel like more often than not I read posts about how Fitbit was overestimating so much for people but I have to wonder how many of those people actually weighed all of their food to the gram to ensure accuracy. Please don't let that deter you from eating. Like others have suggested, I'd start with 50 to 75% depending on how hungry you are.
I've been a Fitbit user since July 2015; I started with the Charge HR and upgraded to the Charge 2 when it was released. I didn't believe the burns either at first, so only ate back 25 to 50%. Now that I'm leaner and don't have as much body fat to sustain me, I have to eat them all back. In fact I have to eat more than Fitbit says I do, as it was underestimating my TDEE. I'm 5'3" and 113 pounds or so; my Fitbit gives me 2100 to 2500 daily and I'm doing just fine. What you're getting doesn't seem all that farfetched to me, honestly. Good luck!2 -
I burn 1000-1200 cals in an olympic triathlon, 1.5km open water swim/40km bike/10k run.
You can use this as a comparison on the estimation and what you did.
What do you weigh?
My husband weighs 215 pounds. On a day in which he gets 10,000 steps, he easily burns 3500 calories (which is what her total daily burn was reported as; her weight is 266 pounds). He eats about 3000 calories/day and is losing weight steadily.
For the people who think the numbers are too big - you're projecting what the numbers would be for you at your weight. It doesn't work that way. I've taken 10,000 steps more than my husband today. His daily calorie burn is still higher than mine. Because he weighs 60 pounds more than me.4 -
Okay! I've been through some trial and error with my Fitbit.
This is what I think is happening.
My BMR is about 2000. I have my Fitbit set to lose 2 pounds a week. I think it deducts the 2 pounds from my BMR and then the adjustment is everything above the BMR.
I've set my MFP calories to 1000 calories less than my BMR and I'm going to eat all my exercise calories.
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That's not how the syncing from MFP and Fitbit works. You should set MFP to sedentary and let MFP do the work. It adjusts accordingly with your goals and the data sent from your Fitbit. You just need to test the numbers in the real world for a period to see how accurate you are. Fiddling about with your own numbers while having the devices synced could just knock things out of whack even more.
And I'm in agreement that your numbers don't seem crazy due to your height and current weight. People do seem to fall into the trap of comparing themselves when they're half the weight of the person posting their burn numbers. Hauling 266lbs around is going to be much harder work than for me currently hauling 157lbs around and of course when I started at 220lbs my burn were much much higher.5 -
i just want to agree that your fitbit will be more and more accurate the longer you wear it. i have the tan lines to prove it. lol3
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VintageFeline wrote: »That's not how the syncing from MFP and Fitbit works. You should set MFP to sedentary and let MFP do the work. It adjusts accordingly with your goals and the data sent from your Fitbit. You just need to test the numbers in the real world for a period to see how accurate you are. Fiddling about with your own numbers while having the devices synced could just knock things out of whack even more.
You can see in the picture I posted that the Fitbit app says I have 1047 calories to eat.
This is at the start of the day. Just moving around will earn me "exercise" calories. I end up with at least 300-500 calories even sedentary days.
On days I run I often end up with 1000+ calories.0 -
SierraFatToSkinny wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »That's not how the syncing from MFP and Fitbit works. You should set MFP to sedentary and let MFP do the work. It adjusts accordingly with your goals and the data sent from your Fitbit. You just need to test the numbers in the real world for a period to see how accurate you are. Fiddling about with your own numbers while having the devices synced could just knock things out of whack even more.
You can see in the picture I posted that the Fitbit app says I have 1047 calories to eat.
This is at the start of the day. Just moving around will earn me "exercise" calories. I end up with at least 300-500 calories even sedentary days.
On days I run I often end up with 1000+ calories.
Fitbit will adjust as the day goes on, as long as you are aware of this and know roughly where you will actually be at the end of the day you can plan accordingly. If you have calories left carry them forward to another day and vice versa.
And your definition of sedentary is probably different to MFPs definition of sedentary and to reiterate, your numbers aren't crazy when we take into account your height and current weight.
And once again, as stated several times, you adjust as you have real world data to work with. What your losses actually are and how that aligns with Fitbit numbers.
By making your own adjustments you're over complicating it and defeating the purpose of having the trackers and having it synced to MFP.
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VintageFeline wrote: »SierraFatToSkinny wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »That's not how the syncing from MFP and Fitbit works. You should set MFP to sedentary and let MFP do the work. It adjusts accordingly with your goals and the data sent from your Fitbit. You just need to test the numbers in the real world for a period to see how accurate you are. Fiddling about with your own numbers while having the devices synced could just knock things out of whack even more.
You can see in the picture I posted that the Fitbit app says I have 1047 calories to eat.
This is at the start of the day. Just moving around will earn me "exercise" calories. I end up with at least 300-500 calories even sedentary days.
On days I run I often end up with 1000+ calories.
Fitbit will adjust as the day goes on, as long as you are aware of this and know roughly where you will actually be at the end of the day you can plan accordingly. If you have calories left carry them forward to another day and vice versa.
And your definition of sedentary is probably different to MFPs definition of sedentary and to reiterate, your numbers aren't crazy when we take into account your height and current weight.
And once again, as stated several times, you adjust as you have real world data to work with. What your losses actually are and how that aligns with Fitbit numbers.
By making your own adjustments you're over complicating it and defeating the purpose of having the trackers and having it synced to MFP.
VintageFeline is correct, use your real world data and adjust. I posted this earlier this week on another thread...
I have used my actual data. (1) Sum up the last 28 days of your calorie totals. (2) Pounds lost in those 28 days *3500. Add those 2 numbers together and divide by 28. That will be a real value of what your TDEE is. I find mine comes in higher than the estimates and usually a little lower than my garmin #
For you since you've had your fitbit about 2 weeks, use your 2 weeks of data and change the 28 to 14 or whatever the number of data you have. I keep all my info in Excel and run this calculation once a week using the prior 4 weeks data. This gives me a truer picture of my TDEE. I love my garmin w/HR for run data and steps, and on some days it comes in real close and other really active days (high steps and run activity) it comes in about 10-20% high.1 -
Don't pay attention to the calories in the Fitbit app. Log your food in MFP, set your activity to sedentary, and let MFP adjust your calories for you. Only log non-step based exercise in MFP...let Fitbit count the steps for things like running, walking, elliptical. If you try follow the calorie in/out info in Fitbit and MFP, you will go crazy. At the end of the week look at your Fitbit average calorie burn for the week and see how it compares to what MFP says. It will get more accurate over the next month after it learns your heart rate patterns.
I use this method and I find that it is pretty accurate. I have my activity set to 'lightly active' because I always get a min of 5000 steps a day. MFP only adds exercise calories when I go over 5000. For 2.5-3 miles of running (30 min because I'm a turtle), which for me is equal to about 5000-6000 steps, MFP gives me about 200-250 calories (for my height and weight). This is consistent with most databases I've checked, and a little less than what the treadmill says, so I consider it pretty accurate. At the end of the week the MFP and Fitbit averages for calories burned are pretty close.3 -
And i've just noticed, the 1000 calories you have "left" is including everything, the calories you have used from existing since midnight. You haven't eaten yet (0 cals in) so that's where that is coming from.0
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SierraFatToSkinny wrote: »
How reasonable is that burn... seems inflated.SierraFatToSkinny wrote: »
How reasonable is that burn... seems inflated.
This is below the number of calories I'm still able to lose at and I weigh a less and am short so you would most likely be ok with a few hundred more... I do run though, and I walk around a lot
I subtract 25 percent of my exercise calories and then eat that number
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