Need help figuring out your TDEE? Get a Fitbit.

I bought a FitBit for my husband and I about 3 weeks ago. I haven't put it down since. I have been enlightened on how sedentary a desk job is!!

I never, ever thought something this small would be so motivational. I'm not the kind of person who goes after badges and accomplishments, but you have no idea how many times we've walked up and down our cellar stairs just to get in one more flight. We've even walked around the neighborhood in the rain just to get 10,000 steps before bed.

I've become obsessed with it, and I didn't think I would.

With that all said, it took about a week for me to understand what the numbers meant between MFP and the FitBit dashboard. I did a LOT of forum reading here and within a week, everything became crystalline clear.

If you're frustrated with your FitBit, don't give up just yet! I considered returning mine about 4 times in the first week because I got very aggravated, and I thought $100 was a lot for something that seemed so useless.

3-4 weeks later, I won't leave the spot I'm standing in without it (save for showers LOL)

bump...Love my Fitbit

When I decided to go with the TDEE - % idea, I never felt comfortable with what the online TDEE calculators would tell me. Was I lightly or moderately active? I bought my Fitbit last May just to have something that would be with me 24/7, something I could be fairly confident would give me an accurate (as accurate as any machine can be) account of my calories/activity. After a week, I compared the FB data to the online calculators and I fell right in the middle of lightly/moderately active.

I love my FB. I'ts the second best item I've bought for my weight loss (food scale being #1).

The reason I went with FB over BMF or BodyBugg is that FB website is free.

I love my fitbit.

I've had my Flex for 4 days. So far, so good, although I don't trust it 100%, just like I don't trust anything in this process 100% (amount of calories in anything, calories burned by exercise, my true TDEE, etc). That's just the inherent nature of estimating things that aren't absolute.

From the past four days:

- The calories burned during exercise seem to more-or-less match up with my HRM. This is for cardio (30DS, C25K, Zumba), primarily.

- Mileage between my exercise routes and fitbit mileage also seem to be within a half mile of each other. Not bad.

- It hasn't counted me sitting here typing all day as steps yet, which people have complained of. I can tell how many times I get up to use the restroom, my steps go up those minutes.

- It's nice that i get some "extra calories" after going grocery shopping, cleaning, walking around, playing with kids, etc. Fitbit is just telling me I burned more calories that day so can eat a little more, but I wouldn't have considered those activities exercise (and wouldn't have worn my HRM for them, either). Encourages me to be more active overall.

- The sync between MFP and Fitbit has been fine. I don't love the auto-calculation of the extra calories, as I generally have a separate goal I've set, but it's nice to guesstimate that I'm within a good rage of deficit. Even better, it's helping me feel okay about eating more, as I set my fitbit for 1000 under/daily (2lbs/week) and came in under that with the MFP goals I'd set. I don't eat all those extra sync calories, but it leaves me wiggle room.

- My TDEE for the past four days of wearing it constantly are pretty much on par with what the many calculators spit out; fitbit is about 100/day higher than the “moderate” exercise level for most calculators/methods. When I completed them in the past, I wasn’t sure if I was “light” or “moderate” level, so that was helpful to know at least.

I agree, it's a helpful tool, and a motivator (I'll move more if I'm under a step goal, for example), but I don't think it's absolutely necessary- you can get close enough with the Interwebs, and a calculator. And, while knowledge is power, our bodies don’t always cooperate. According to my reports, I’m running around 4k deficit for the past four days (which is right since I’m aiming for 1000/day). So that should be about a pound down, but this morning I weighed a pound *more* than Monday. Having all this data just makes me say WTF even louder, and while the scale isn’t the only measurement of success…. still annoying!

Interesting topic. Question, would the fitbit track hiit work outs like turbofire or insanity well?

I use HRM for that.
It is very basic HRM (spent $35 on it...). It only gives me average and maximum heart rate, and the minutes the activity lasted.
I use online calculator to figure out how many calories I've burned.
Fitbit calculates how much you burn based on amount of steps and intensity. So 1000 steps in 1 hour gives you less calories than 1000 steps in 10 minutes.
Personally, I think that it is a good idea to use HRM on exercises other than walking or running.

ETA: When I compare my calorie deficit over a specific time period and weight loss for that period, it seems to be pretty accurate.

Well I do suggest you stick with one or the other. MFP calculates "calories remaining" its own way based on the current number given to it by the other app/device.

I would suggest you look at previous, completed days and compare the MFP target calories to the target calories given by the other app. If they're far apart, you may want to adjust one or the other.

Let me give you a for instance. Looking at yesterday, MFP wanted me to eat 2073 calories. Fitbit wanted me to eat 1963 calories. That's because Fitbit is set for a 500 calorie deficit and I set a custom goal on MFP that's a little bit less than that. That's fine. They don't need to match up perfectly.

The most useful thing for adjusting is how Fitbit's site shows me calories eaten versus calories burned by day. It also shows an exact calorie deficit on a daily basis. I look primarily at that to see how big of a deficit I'm running. If the deficit is too big I'll raise MFP's goal a bit. If the deficit is too small I lower MFP's goal a bit.

Either way, stick with MFP for meal planning. Just adjust your MFP goal up or down to make sure you're running an appropriate deficit.

Thanks. I've had the UP for a while now, but just recently MFP allowed them to be synced. I really wasn't sure what syncing was going to do, but I don't like the fact it messes with my calories.

Yesterday, my daily burn according to UP was 1695, I eat 1600 a day total on MFP, however it gave me 364 extra calories from activities. My active burn for the day was 533 on the UP. No clue where the 364 came from. I eat 1600 no matter what and don't eat back calories burned.

What I just wrote doesn't even make sense to me, so I don't plan on it making sense to anyone else. Thanks for attempting to help though!

If you go to your Exercise tab, you can click the "i" icon next to the adjustment and it'll show you exactly how it calculated the 364.

Crazy!!!! I've seen that "i" a gazillion times and have never clicked on it! LOL Holy cow....thanks for sharing this!

This is really good to hear. I just received my Body Media armband in the mail yesterday! What you stated is the exact reason I decided I needed one for Mothers' Day. ;-) I'm hoping it will be a bit more reliable for my strength training than my HRM was. That, and my head was spinning, trying to decide which source I was going to follow for my calorie goals.

Don't kid yourselves. Fitbit is a gloried pedometer with algorithms. The fact that it only works for walking based movements is proof of that. Anybody that thinks this is more accurate to determine cals burnt than a HRM is delusional.

If you use online calculators to calculate TDEE, just use Sedentary as your activity level then add all your exercise cals from a HRM to get your TDEE.