More calories when sick?
Options
Replies
-
A lot of questions there! First, I tried but am unable to figure out how to accurately separate my exercise cals from my total calories. Yesterday was a very lazy day and I laid around mostly bc I didn't feel well (Fitbit still recorded 10 min of exercise??). My total calories yesterday were 1926. I would ultimately like to lose 21lbs. I selected a loss of 1-2lbs per week. I track very accurately with a scale 98% of the time unless I cannot (no scale with me, etc).1
-
A lot of questions there! First, I tried but am unable to figure out how to accurately separate my exercise cals from my total calories. Yesterday was a very lazy day and I laid around mostly bc I didn't feel well (Fitbit still recorded 10 min of exercise??). My total calories yesterday were 1926. I would ultimately like to lose 21lbs. I selected a loose of 1-2lbs per week. I track very accurately with a scale 98% of the time unless I cannot (no scale with me, etc).
Forgive me if this has been answered somewhere upthread, but what is your height, current weight and goal weight?1 -
I figured it out. Yesterday Fitbit added 180 calories. So my BMR is 1746.0
-
A lot of questions there! First, I tried but am unable to figure out how to accurately separate my exercise cals from my total calories. Yesterday was a very lazy day and I laid around mostly bc I didn't feel well (Fitbit still recorded 10 min of exercise??). My total calories yesterday were 1926. I would ultimately like to lose 21lbs. I selected a loose of 1-2lbs per week. I track very accurately with a scale 98% of the time unless I cannot (no scale with me, etc).
It has been a while since I had a Fitbit (I have been using a Garmin Vivofit for the last 4 years) but IIRC your daily info on the Fitbit app should list total calories burned and under that will be calories earned from exercise. Subtract exercise calories from the total and you will get your "normal" daily calories burned.0 -
It's a bit trickier these days! Luckily MFP separated it out.0 -
I eat maintenance rather than loss when sick. Especially if it's more than just a passing cold. Otherwise you may recover slower, and that's not something I want to deal with because I have to go to work. Why drag it out.1
-
If that 21 lb loss will put you in the healthy weight range for your height, then you really don't have enough fat reserves to be aiming for a 2 lb loss each week, and your body is going to pull some of that from your muscle mass (which includes your heart).
If you only ate 1200 cals yesterday, that would mean you had a 700 cal deficit if your Fitbit is accurate for you (and as @WinoGelato said, many of us find our Fitbits to be highly accurate). You can work out how accurate yours is by using your Fitbit TDEE (that's all the calories it says you've burned in a day), your calorie intake info, and your weight loss averaged over 4-6 weeks.1 -
That feels like a lot of math. My head cold can't deal with that right now. 🤓3
-
Okay, so even yesterday you weren't actually sedentary, you were lightly active (my mighty 2500 steps with most of the day lying on the couch was sedentary).
Looking over your last 4-6 weeks (if you've been at a deficit that long), what's your average weekly weight loss?0 -
I can't do math either. If you have a friend or spouse who is good with numbers, maybe ask them for a favor. I pass math to Husband and he passes grammar to me.1
-
That feels like a lot of math. My head cold can't deal with that right now. 🤓
Fitbit will do most of the heavy lifting for you, but it's okay to wait until you're feeling better. As others have said, eat around maintenance while you're sick, then holler and I'll tell you how to pull that data from Fitbit (it's easy, i promise!).1 -
never mind
0 -
Nony_Mouse wrote: »Okay, so even yesterday you weren't actually sedentary, you were lightly active (my mighty 2500 steps with most of the day lying on the couch was sedentary).
Looking over your last 4-6 weeks (if you've been at a deficit that long), what's your average weekly weight loss?
Since January 5 (month and a day) I've lost 8lbs. Not linearly.0 -
Nony_Mouse wrote: »Okay, so even yesterday you weren't actually sedentary, you were lightly active (my mighty 2500 steps with most of the day lying on the couch was sedentary).
Looking over your last 4-6 weeks (if you've been at a deficit that long), what's your average weekly weight loss?
Since January 5 (month and a day) I've lost 8lbs. Not linearly.
Well, weight loss is never linear, particularly for pre-menopausal women!!
Is Jan 5 your starting date? You possibly have some water weight loss in there muddying the picture, but based on that, your rate of loss is too fast for the amount of fat you need to lose. Obviously you can choose to ignore the advice to increase cals and take a gamble on adverse effects, but you're still restricting calories if you increase to slow the loss to 1lb a week, but in a much safer way. There aren't more health benefits with greater restriction, that's not how it works, actually the opposite.0 -
Nony_Mouse wrote: »That feels like a lot of math. My head cold can't deal with that right now. 🤓
Fitbit will do most of the heavy lifting for you, but it's okay to wait until you're feeling better. As others have said, eat around maintenance while you're sick, then holler and I'll tell you how to pull that data from Fitbit (it's easy, i promise!).
Yeah I was going to say the same. FitBit and MFP really do most of the math if you know where to look and how to interpret it.
In case you’re curious OP you can go into your diary and under exercise you can click in and see how the adjustment is calculated . Here is mine from yesterday. The number on the bottom shows what MFP thinks you burn, based on the activity level you chose and stats you provided. I’m lightly active, 5’2 and 135 lbs currently. It estimates my NEAT (not BMR) as 1688. Yesterday was a pretty typical activity day for me with no exercise but still got around 8000 steps. So FitBit says I burned 1876 up till about 10:15 and therefore my adjustment was 1876-1688 = 188.
If I were aiming for 1200 I would be undereating for my activity, and that’s even without any real exercise.
You can also checkout the FitBit user group for more info like this.
1 -
You aren't calling me premenopausal are you?!?! I'm only 35. 😞1
-
-
I put my activity level as sedentary in Fitbit too bc like you said, if gives you too many cals until it's too late - 10pm! Rather just eat the calories I do use back. From your question earlier, I do half bc that seems to be what people say so you don't overestimate?0
-
-
I put my activity level as sedentary in Fitbit too bc like you said, if gives you too many cals until it's too late - 10pm! Rather just eat the calories I do use back. From your question earlier, I do half bc that seems to be what people say so you don't overestimate?
The cals on your Fitbit are 'live' info, ie, it's not projecting based on what you've done earlier in the day, it's giving you your actual total calorie burn up to that point (but not for the two hours post-10pm, where you're still burning calories to stay alive, for me, that's an additional ~120 cals, my baseline at rest being around 1 cal per minute).
The half to three quarters is the advice for initial stage (and generally aimed more at exercise machines, or estimates from the MFP exercise database and similar). The idea is to do that for 4-6 weeks, then adjust based on your actual results. Your actual results are saying that you are losing too rapidly.1
. As in, you are not yet in menopause (nor the lead up to it). Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 391.5K Introduce Yourself
- 43.5K Getting Started
- 259.7K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.6K Food and Nutrition
- 47.3K Recipes
- 232.3K Fitness and Exercise
- 391 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.4K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 152.7K Motivation and Support
- 7.8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.3K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.2K MyFitnessPal Information
- 22 News and Announcements
- 926 Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.3K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions