Question

HannahLDT
HannahLDT Posts: 31 Member
edited December 23 in Getting Started
Hi. I have just joined and I just wondered what people thought about eating back there calories they have burned with steps using Fitbit? I brought myself a Fitbit to go along with my fitness pal so I can exercise more and have more calories, particularly if I'm going out or something, but is that wrong? Surely I'd still be on a calorie deficit?

Replies

  • ElizabethKalmbach
    ElizabethKalmbach Posts: 1,415 Member
    Yep! You're supposed to eat back the exercise calories you earn and you will remain in deficit. I'd pay attention to your rate of loss over the first couple of weeks using the fitbit to measure your exercise calories. Fitbits are meant to give you the numbers generated by a "perfectly average" person in your height/weight/gender profile. You may need to make some adjustments over time to get everything tuned to you specifically. After a month or so, you should have the data you need to figure out whether or not you need to eat more or less or exactly the amount of extra calories the Fitbit suggests to lose weight at the pace you decided on.
  • ElizabethKalmbach
    ElizabethKalmbach Posts: 1,415 Member
    (As an aside on the Fitbit, I would not use the heart rate function to determine calories, as that seems to increase the rate of error for simple step counting. If you have one of the less expensive altimeter/gyroscope only models, they seem to do a very good job determining burn for step activity.)
  • HannahLDT
    HannahLDT Posts: 31 Member
    Hi. Thanks both. I do have one with a heart rate. Would you advise turning the heart rate off if I can?
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,617 Member
    HannahLDT wrote: »
    Hi. Thanks both. I do have one with a heart rate. Would you advise turning the heart rate off if I can?

    I'd advice using the data as is for 4-6 weeks, then deciding what adjustment to make (if any) based on average weekly weight results.
  • Luke_rabbit
    Luke_rabbit Posts: 1,031 Member
    I have a Fitbit without HR. I can only eat about 1/4 - 1/3 of the exercise calories to keep losing at .5 lb/ week. And my Fitbit has a glitch that prevents it from even counting all of my steps (it crashes at 9900 steps). If I ate all of the exercise calories I would stop losing or even gain.
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