Fitbit question....am I really that active?

kam3190

GOT_Obsessed

Give us an idea of what you did that day. Did you go for a walk or a run? Did you Shovel snow or something? Or did you lay around and read a book?

JaydedMiss

well by comparison that was about my steps at work yesterday which is 40 min walk to+from and thn im on my feet semi constantly lifting furniture yesterday was only for 4 hours though. So it depends.....how do you compare to that

kam3190

I work at a steel manufacturing plant. What I do is take a 3x3 ft piece of sheet metal (about 10 -15 lbs) walk about 20 ft load it into a machine that welds it then take it out and walk over another 20ft and set it on a different table. I do this about 200-250 times a day in an 8 hour shift. I also pace back and forth alot and bend to pick up and load those sheets of metal. I don't sit down the entire shift. Then I come home and take care of 4 children including a 25 lb infant.

JaydedMiss

kam3190 wrote: »

I work at a steel manufacturing plant. What I do is take a 3x3 ft piece of sheet metal (about 10 -15 lbs) walk about 20 ft load it into a machine that welds it then take it out and walk over another 20ft and set it on a different table. I do this about 200-250 times a day in an 8 hour shift. I also pace back and forth alot and bend to pick up and load those sheets of metal. I don't sit down the entire shift. Then I come home and take care of 4 children including a 25 lb infant.

then yes its very possible, And sorry the only reason i mentioned the furniture carrying part is because the motion of the arms sometimes can pick up as steps but since im lifting i count it as steps because it evens out roughly calorie wise anyway lol. Didnt really explain why i said that

GOT_Obsessed

Then I think it is possible you stepped about that much. However keep in mind that your body is already used to doing that every day at work. (Or however much you work)

Someone with a less physical day (ex. desk job) would get more out of those 16000 steps than you do.

kam3190

Just adding my fitbit is a flex 2 so no heart rate monitor, and I also just got it yesterday

WinoGelato

Sounds reasonable to me. Have you synced it with MFP? What are your goals?

kam3190

I synced it with mfp and i have mfp set to lose 1 lb a week. Im set at lightly active. It gave me an allowance yesterday of 3118 calories, with 1268 extra calories earned from exercise

JaydedMiss

i dont eat near what fitbit tries to give me, Some people find it accurate, Im kind of stupid with the amount i eat back vs how active i am but i appear to be the abnormal one who drags average calorie burns down lol. Test it out see how much you can eat back id start at 50% and see how you feel/how fast you lose and adjust

Live_life_well

Fitbit gives me ~1k calories each day and I eat back ~500 calories on average.

kam3190

Live_life_well wrote: »

Fitbit gives me ~1k calories each day and I eat back ~500 calories on average.

Are you losing at the expected rate?

whitpauly

I'm most impressed by the 9 hours of sleep! I only get 6-7 hours

kam3190

JaydedMiss wrote: »

i dont eat near what fitbit tries to give me, Some people find it accurate, Im kind of stupid with the amount i eat back vs how active i am but i appear to be the abnormal one who drags average calorie burns down lol. Test it out see how much you can eat back id start at 50% and see how you feel/how fast you lose and adjust

How much are you losing every week? I want to lose at a good for me rate of 1=2 lbs a week. I weigh 215

kam3190

whitpauly wrote: »

I'm most impressed by the 9 hours of sleep! I only get 6-7 hours

I usually dont get that much lol. Its usually closer to 7

shadow2soul

I usually get about 800 from my Fitbit (mine has the HRM) and I eat them all.

My experience is:

Zip/Flex underestimate by about 250 calories a day on avg for me.
Surge/Blaze are about perfect. Close enough that it's hard to say if the device is off or it's my logging. When I've run the numbers in the past, I have gotten a swing of about 50 cals per day. One month I will come up with the burn was an avg of 50 per day over and the next 50 per day under. That however could easily be explained by logging errors on my part.

This is just my experience though. Some people find the numbers totally unreasonable (way over). The only way to know is to keep an accurate food log for a month (food scale will get you the most accurate log) and do a comparison at the end of the month. Figure out expected loss by averaging out your food intake for the month and subtact that from your monthly avg Fitbit burn (found on your profile on Fitbits website) to get your avg deficit. Multiply your avg deficit by 30 to get total monthly deficit. Divide total monthly deficit by 3500. The result is your expected loss. Compare that to your actual loss.

Example of a 10 day comparison (I only recently started being accurate with my food log again):

10 Day Avg Fitbit Blaze burn: 2852*
10 Day Avg Calories In: 2133
10 Day Deficit: 7190
Expected loss: 2.05 lbs
Actual loss: 3.6 lbs

Now I expect these being the first 10 days back to tracking that a chunk of that loss is water.

* I'm 5'4.5". The loss for this 10 day period is 143.8 to 140.2. I am active and this burn is slightly higher than normal because I had one day where I had 36k steps. I was in a Fitbit virtual race thing to get 36,800 steps and trying to get first place. However normal for me is 11k - 20k steps a day.

lorrpb

Not sure what the real question is. How would we know how active you were yesterdayr??

kam3190

JaydedMiss wrote: »

i dont eat near what fitbit tries to give me, Some people find it accurate, Im kind of stupid with the amount i eat back vs how active i am but i appear to be the abnormal one who drags average calorie burns down lol. Test it out see how much you can eat back id start at 50% and see how you feel/how fast you lose and adjust

Jay how did you manage to get locked up in the last 2 hours lol?

kam3190

lorrpb wrote: »

Not sure what the real question is. How would we know how active you were yesterdayr??

I'm sorry I know this was kind of general and pointless. It mostly just shocked me. I never thought of myself as super active. Those activity level examples always confused me. I keep thinking how I could be big when I'm this active, but deep down I know it's because I was eating a lot, probably close to 4000 calories a day. I guess I should have realized because I was losing about 2 to 3 lbs a week eating around 2000 calories a day. Plus I didn't really think about how much I move. You know those fidgiters? Well I'm that to the extreme.im never completly still even now I'm tapping my foot, clenching my buttis muscles in rhythm lol. It's just enlightening I guess

aleikita

I would definitely switch it to very active. Also jealous of how much deep sleep you get, I average 1.5 hours of deep sleep and the rest is light!

PAV8888

Jay, again?

+1 sleep jealousy!

OP, obviously you're very active (in mfp speak).

Connect Fitbit to trendweight to watch your trend when you slow your weight loss.

Consider whether 2 to 3lbs a week is appropriate (hint 0.5% to 1% of body mass lost per week is more lean mass preserving).

Christine_72

Edit- Too off topic.

kam3190

So from research if I sync my fitbit account to mfp my best bet is to set it for sedentary, enable negative adjustments, then just eat what number I get. THen adjust up or down for accuracy?

PAV8888

kam3190 wrote: »

So from research if I sync my fitbit account to mfp my best bet is to set it for sedentary, enable negative adjustments, then just eat what number I get. THen adjust up or down for accuracy?

Pretty much correct. Assuming you can tolerate/enjoy large positive adjustments.

Alternative (assuming you can tolerate seeing large initial negative adjustments):
You set to VERY ACTIVE.
This will minimize the size of the final positive adjustment.
You will start the day with a hefty negative adjustment... and as the day progresses it will turn into a smaller positive adjustment.
This will work if your activity is consistent in that it may help you better plan your eating (assuming you can inwardly ignore the initial large negative adjustment)

WinoGelato

kam3190 wrote: »

So from research if I sync my fitbit account to mfp my best bet is to set it for sedentary, enable negative adjustments, then just eat what number I get. THen adjust up or down for accuracy?

I disagree with leaving it as Sedentary if this is your normal activity. Especially since this is your job, even the MFP guidelines would have you choose lightly active or active. If you stick with Sedentary you will have very large exercise adjustments which many people have a hard time trusting and eating back the cals. Entering a higher activity level (which is appropriate for you) gives you a higher baseline to start with and smaller adjustment. Enabling negative adjustments means on days you don't work and aren't as active, it will keep you from eating too many cals.

That's my preference anyway - I average 12k steps in winter and 15k or so in warmer months. I have a desk job.

JaydedMiss

kam3190 wrote: »

JaydedMiss wrote: »

i dont eat near what fitbit tries to give me, Some people find it accurate, Im kind of stupid with the amount i eat back vs how active i am but i appear to be the abnormal one who drags average calorie burns down lol. Test it out see how much you can eat back id start at 50% and see how you feel/how fast you lose and adjust

Jay how did you manage to get locked up in the last 2 hours lol?

lol iv been in jail for a few weeks xD ends tomorow

also @PAV8888 wth do you mean again xD LOL i dont get in jail THAT much im very careful nowadays this ones literally only for saying strong first post to a spam bot

I havent seen bars at all this time around though, apparently you two can see them?

lorrpb

Do You think you're that active, or are you wearing your FB on your wrist and doing laundry, clapping, or doing something else that could cause false steps?

Dnarules

JaydedMiss wrote: »

kam3190 wrote: »

JaydedMiss wrote: »

i dont eat near what fitbit tries to give me, Some people find it accurate, Im kind of stupid with the amount i eat back vs how active i am but i appear to be the abnormal one who drags average calorie burns down lol. Test it out see how much you can eat back id start at 50% and see how you feel/how fast you lose and adjust

Jay how did you manage to get locked up in the last 2 hours lol?

lol iv been in jail for a few weeks xD ends tomorow

also @PAV8888 wth do you mean again xD LOL i dont get in jail THAT much im very careful nowadays this ones literally only for saying strong first post to a spam bot

I havent seen bars at all this time around though, apparently you two can see them?

I can only see bars in the app on my phone. I am on my computer now, and I don't see bars .

Christine_72

Dnarules wrote: »

JaydedMiss wrote: »

kam3190 wrote: »

JaydedMiss wrote: »

i dont eat near what fitbit tries to give me, Some people find it accurate, Im kind of stupid with the amount i eat back vs how active i am but i appear to be the abnormal one who drags average calorie burns down lol. Test it out see how much you can eat back id start at 50% and see how you feel/how fast you lose and adjust

Jay how did you manage to get locked up in the last 2 hours lol?

lol iv been in jail for a few weeks xD ends tomorow

also @PAV8888 wth do you mean again xD LOL i dont get in jail THAT much im very careful nowadays this ones literally only for saying strong first post to a spam bot

I havent seen bars at all this time around though, apparently you two can see them?

I can only see bars in the app on my phone. I am on my computer now, and I don't see bars .

That's what i said in the above reply that I deleted. I started a thread asking why we can see the bars on our phones, but not on a computer. Apparently they scrapped the bars thing, but only on PC's...

gentlygently

Sounds like the step count is right - but bear in mind that if you were doing all those steps at a really brisk rate (or carrying an even heaier load) you would use more calories up than if you are moving slowly.

I walk my dog a lot - some days fast, and going up hills, other days slow slow. Step count could easily be similar.

So yes - some trial and error.

Mfp tends to assume you sre goimg fast (and I suspect also double counts those calories you need to breathe/think/be during excercise) so is - my experience suggests and that of others too - over generous in its calorie allocations for excercise - Whichever method you use (sedentry and log excercise or 'very active').

But it is great for yoir heart health to be on your feet and moving around that much! That is a positive job to have. Are you doing any 'cardio' - a session at least weekly to get yiur heart rate really up or does work cover that too?! Good luck with the eating control.

yirara

My charge2 overstates by about 300-400kcal on working days and resting weekends by about 50-100. And that is despite having a hugher tdee than calculators give me. Thus if I was to trust it I would overeat by about 1900kcal/week.