Have you lost weight eating back your Fitbit calorie adjustments?

Christismylife

Have you lost weight eating back your Fitbit calorie adjustments? Or did you find it worked better to manually input exercise and ignore Fitbit adjustments?

tinkerbellang83

I don't have a fitbit but I do have a Garmin which is essentially the same sort of thing, I eat all of my calorie adjustment back. Your best bet is to start eating 50%, you shouldn't ignore it, MFP's calorie allowance doesn't account for intentional exercise and creating too big of a deficit can be a bad thing.

Try eating a fixed amount of 50-100% over 4-6 weeks and then review if your actual weight loss trend is in line with what you're expecting to lose and adjust accordingly.

chornak05

Yes. I have my fitbit synched with MFP. I am 5'6'', 119 lbs (in maintenance). MFP gives me 1600 cals a day with a sedentary setting. I average 15,000 steps a day which adds about 800 calories to my total. I eat back every one of them and have been maintaining. If I didn't eat back those calories, I would be starvingggg.

katnadreau

Mine seems pretty accurate, I'm still figuring out maintainence, but I've been losing very slowly leaving only 600-800 Fitbit calories left a week, so I'm working on eating all of them to keep my current weight

jludwick78

I found its better to ignore Fitbit calories. I actually use my iPhone step counter calories instead. There is a significant difference for some reason. For example, let’s say I took 7000 steps. Fitbit credits me 250 calories. iPhone only 50. That’s huge. I found I wasn’t losing with the Fitbit.
However to be fair, I’ve been failing on my total calories a lot because I keep going out for drinks.

cwolfman13

I don't have my fitbit linked...my Fitbit seems pretty accurate in regards to total calories burned as compared to my own data so if I eat around 500 calories less than my total energy expenditure on my FitBit, I lose about 1 Lb per week give or take.

Christismylife

Thanks everyone for the input!

Chunkahlunkah

Sorry, OP, I hope you don't mind if I jump in and tag on another question. @chornak05 @katnadreau @cwolfman13 Which Fitbit do you have?

chornak05

@Chunkahlunkah I have a charge 2.

RaenaLynn

I eat half back of what Fitbit says I've "earned" if I'm still hungry. I've been losing. I have a Blaze.

paddydiver24

I have a garmin vivosmart 3 and is synced with MFP. I delete the calorie adjustment but pay strict attention to the exercise calories and try to stay lower than the combined total. Been working for me. Remember that different calorie sources process differently.

monica182

I downloaded my data today from both Fitbit and MFP and found that Fitbit overestimated by about 70 calories per day on my burn (about 4%). According to my data I should have lost a small amount more weight compared to what I have based on my calorie burn and what I have eaten. I weigh and log everything so believe I am fairly accurate on my calorie count with what I eat at home and only eat out every few weeks.

Angierae75

Yes. 46 pounds.

Silentpadna

Yes. For cardio and steps, almost all of it. For lifting or something like that, I ignore or eat a portion. (Blaze, previously a Charge 2).

ladyhusker39

I've lost all of my weight eating back all of my calorie adjustments.

pinksparklefairy

I worked out my BMR and set that as my calorie goal. I am not doing proper exercise at this point but I figure all the walking around, housework etc. I do every day is creating a deficit of some sort. Once I start exercising the deficit will be much more significant.

So far I have lost 1kg which is quite decent but it's early days.

I have only been doing this for a couple of weeks and it's working well. I feel hungry sometimes but always have enough to eat throughout the day if I am careful. It's much easier to stick to 1500 than 1200 calories a day. On 1200 I felt like my metabolism was slowing down to cope with the lack of calories and it was very frustrating.

And I do not need to guestimate how many calories I am burning by going for a run or doing Zumba for an hour. I will have to wait a few months to see if this is a better (and much more simple) approach to using Fitness Pal.

cwolfman13

Chunkahlunkah wrote: »

Sorry, OP, I hope you don't mind if I jump in and tag on another question. @chornak05 @katnadreau @cwolfman13 Which Fitbit do you have?

Charge 2

MegaMooseEsq

I don't "eat back" my calories exactly (I average by week and month), but I have found that my loss trend tracks with my net averages well. I actually think I was undercounting when I used the fitbit because I was entering exercise manually rather than syncing and allowing MFP to apply the adjustment - it's been more accurate since I switched to the Apple Watch and let sync do its thing. The only numbers that matter are going to be the ones that you measure over the course of several weeks at least - calorie counting involves a lot of estimates, so it's important not to take any one measurement as gospel and adjust as you go based on your actual results.

ETA: I have lost 47 pounds over 15 months this way. So it does work!