Do you eat back all the calories your FitBit gives you?

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dancephysics
dancephysics Posts: 53
in Health and Weight Loss
When I started back in October, I told MFP that I was sedentary, and would like to lose .5 lbs per week, so it gave me 1550 to eat every day. I lost about 10 lbs that way, and was actually losing closer to .8 lbs per week. Like many, I got a FitBIt for Christmas. Turns out, during the week, I am a lot more active than I originally thought. Most days I get to 10,000 steps or beyond without much difficulty, mostly from my job (teacher, kind of), and a little bit from exercise.

Because of all these steps, my FitBit gives me 400-500 extra calories every day. That doesn't seem quite right, so I've not been eating them all back, and on some days my net is sub-1200, even thought my totals are in the 1600-1800 range. I have continued to lose weight at what I think is a reasonable rate, though is a little more than .5 lbs per week.

So, if you have a FitBit, do you eat everything back? If yes, are you continuing to lose weight according to your plan?

Replies

  • fushigi1988
    fushigi1988 Posts: 519 Member
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    I eat around my FitBit calories, I have it set to maintenance, but I am losing inches (recomp)
    So if it says I have a 2500 burn for that day, I tend to be around 2400-2500 with my calories for that day.
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
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    Would it make more sense to change MFP's settings to 'active' instead? I don't know what difference it'd make, if any.
  • Dnarules
    Dnarules Posts: 2,081 Member
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    In all honesty, since you are losing less than a pound a week, it sounds like what you are doing is working. You could add another 100 calories or so every few weeks and see what happens.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    I used the fitbit to give me an estimate of how much I burn, and set my goal at a 20% deficit from the average. I don't totally trust the fitbit though, sometimes it just doesn't make sense.
  • p4ulmiller
    p4ulmiller Posts: 588 Member
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    So, if you have a FitBit, do you eat everything back? If yes, are you continuing to lose weight according to your plan?

    No. My calorie target is a target. If I go under, that's OK.

    But on the converse, I go over on the odd day too.

    The trend is to stay under, and my weight loss trend is downwards. We can overthink this weight loss thing sometimes.
  • honeysprinkles
    honeysprinkles Posts: 1,757 Member
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    My goal is to burn about 2,100 calories a day, but on here I have my activity level to lightly active which puts me around 1880 (for days when I'm not as active). Now that I have a fitbit, I don't pay attention to net calories at all, I just look at my calorie burn for the day and decide what kind of deficit range I want (usually anywhere from 500-750 calories) and eat whatever that is...well, that's my plan at least, I don't always follow it lol. So if I burn around 2100 a day, I try to eat around 1500 or so. I do the same thing on workout days or when I burn more than 2100, I just adjust the amount I eat but still ignore MFP's net calculation because they're considering different things.
  • aleggett321
    aleggett321 Posts: 186 Member
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    I use the average calories burned for each week from the Fitbit as my TDEE and subtract 15% for my daily intake. Doing it that way yiu don't eat back calories from exercise. I only use MFP as a tracker of calorie and macro intake.

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