Calorie Deficit Question (Be Nice!)

I had the same problem when I first started and that's when I learned all calories are not equal. I worked with a trainer and nutritionist, and Googled A LOT. I have changed my calorie breakdown to 25% carbs, 45% fat and 30% protein from my daily calories. I do work out 3-4 times a week and the weight is coming off, not as fast as I would all like but you know the saying "you didn't gain it overnight." Stick with it and find what works for you.

Everyone is different. If I tried to eat 1700 calories a day, I would gain. I have to eat less than average to lose. Not complaining! I'm just happy I can lose after so many years of trying!!

But what works for Sam may not work for Janet.

We all have to walk our own path. Find what works for you and do that.

If you're only losing .4 pounds per week (good for you!), it's probably because your deficit is smaller than you think it is.

.4lb * 3500cal/lb = 1400cal deficit

5000cal - 1400cal = 3600cal difference

So, you're underestimating your intake or overestimating your output by about 3600 cal. This makes sense, because as you say, when your deficit is less than 3700cal, you gain a lot. That's because you're ACTUALLY not in a deficit, but eating at maintenance and storing glycogen and water. Take a look at what you're eating and how much excercise you're getting and re-evaluate. You might try weighing everything you eat. Good luck!

Do you eat back exercise/earned calories? If you're truly logging every bite, then you may be overestimating your burns.

I'm confused because you mention a weekly deficit of 5,000 but what is your basis? Like what are you subtracting it from? What is the TDEE you have calculated and what is your daily calorie goal.
I doubt it's that you need a 10,000 deficit, I assume it just means you are over-calculating your TDEE to begin with. What calculator did you use? If you tell us your current weight we can also help you come up with a TDEE -20%

Do you use the MFP weight loss plan? If you go to My Home, Goals, what does it expect you to burn per day? Or I can figure it out with your weight and activity level.

If you're eating 2400, you'd need to be burning 3400 per day to lose 2 pounds a week. That's quite a bit but you might be. But if your average intake is say 2200 and your average loss is say .5 lb/week, that implies your average burn is more like 2450. Which doesn't matter for much, except to know that if you want to lose 2 lbs. a week, you'll need to go down to 1450 in intake.

All I'm really trying to say is the '3500 calorie to a pound' isn't negotiable. What you need to back into is your total burn (or at least the one implied by what you log and what you lose, though water weight issues will affect that latter.)

Good luck!

This. There's nothing wrong with the formula...3500 calories does equal 1 pound of fat. Calories in vs. calories out determines gain/loss. A 500 calorie deficit per day = 3500 per week = 1 pound gone. These things are facts.

The problems come with either calories in or calories out are incorrect. This can happen when your initial daily burn is calculated incorrectly, or the food diary is calculated incorrectly.

To eliminate the first possibility, check your estimated TDEE on several different sites and see how they compare. Also, keep in mind that this is an estimate, as your personal metabolism might be slightly higher or lower than the average. You might also use a fitness tracker to get a better grip on how much activity you really do, and how many calories you really burn. Also, if you're recording your exercise in MFP, keep in mind that it estimates calories burned rather high, so it might be misleading you to think you're burning more than you are.

To eliminate the second possibility, make sure you weigh everything, and log it accurately according to that measurement. Scan barcodes whenever possible to avoid accidentally picking the wrong item. Check and double check listings against package info.

And finally, just in case your metabolism is off from average, after you've made sure all of your numbers are accurate, track for 30 days on a spreadsheet. Calories in, calories out, and weight. If the numbers don't make sense, raise and lower the calories out by 100 until they do make sense. That should be your actual TDEE.

I don't like TDEE because it combines things that are easier to figure out if kept separate. It's easy, but easy isn't always good is it?

Calories out is BMR + NEAT + EAT + DIT (which can be disregarded as unalterable)
Calories in is protein + fat + carbohydrates + alcohol + fiber (which can be disregarded as negligible)

You likely know the calories in, but let me explain the calories out (and stop reading here if you forgot to add those 10 shots of vodka every night, that's your problem!

BMR, if you don't already know, is your basal metabolic rate. It is how much you burn laying in bed all day without moving a muscle. Heart, lungs, brain, etc.
NEAT-Non-exercise activity thermogenesis, is what you burn during your daily life. It's what the Garmin tries to measure but probably fails at because you don't use all your energy as a pendulum on your wrist.
EAT-Exercise activity thermogenesis- it's your deliberate exercise, not walking to the car to drive to the gym, but actually at the gym. This is measured by either a calculator for activity or directly from the machine itself. If you are not putting your weight into the machine it it is going to be wildly inaccurate, and if you do put your weight into the machine it will be slightly less wildly inaccurate.
DIT-diet induced thermogenesis. Your body requires energy to process foods. This is it.

So, go back and reevaluate your calories in and calories out. I'll use me, a 225 lb male that works a lightly active job, exercises intensely 4x a week, and tracks calories religiously and squats 2x lean body weight, subtracting the 18-24% body fat that a couple of different methods gives me.

I know from years of tracking that my BMR + DIT +NEAT is approximately 3000 cal, plus or minus probably 5%. That's a big range. But that's all I can calculate. The calculators say BMR is more like 2100. That means:

NEAT is approx. 900 calories a day. MFP puts my NEAT at about 300 calories a day above sedentary. So, at lightly active, I am to eat 1820 cal a day to have a 1000 cal deficit. Keep in mind that my job is being in the Navy where I lift objects sometimes, walk around a bit, go up and down ladders, and stay generally active. If you are less than that, you are likely sedentary.

The machine says I burn 4000 calories a week, so there is the EAT. I don't count weight lifting, too difficult and not very much.

So over a week I eat 10500 calories and burn 4000 EAT, 14700 BMR, and 6300 NEAT. So you would expect I lose -10500+14700+6300=10500 cal / 3500 cal/lb = 3 lbs a week. I do. There are daily gains and losses with water and "swoosh" effects but it's pretty spot on.

So yes, calories in - calories out, 3500 calories per pound. But if you keep it too simple you'll end up not adding and subtracting all your calories.

My best advice to you: Build a spreadsheet to track PRO+FAT+CARB+ALC-BMR-NEAT-EAT=NET CALORIES. Then and only then can you tell if your Garmin and the online calculators and the gym machines and your calories estimates seem to be accurate.

When I did that, I wound up adjusting my BMR because with 50 lb weight loss over 4 months I realized the numbers only worked if I burned 3050 cal a day rather than 3000 cal a day. That's pretty precise info.

Since it seems you have the calories in part correct, then the issue would likely be in the estimate of calories out. I am guessing your activity tracker is over estimating your calories burned, thus you calorie deficit estimates are likely not correct.

^This is the correct answer. The deficit you think you have is evidently not the deficit you have. You can see this based on results. If you weigh your food with a digital scale then the explanation must be that you're overestimating your daily requirements.

ETA: How many calories does your Garmin say your expenditure is each day? If you say you gain weight when your "deficit" is less than 3700 this means you are overestimating your expenditure by 530 calories each day. This might sound like a lot, but estimates are exactly that. For a while I was estimating in the wrong direction by about 400 calories per day because I happen to sit at the far end of the metabolic bell curve.

How long have you been tracking your weight? How often do you weigh in? If you've only been doing it for a 4-8 weeks, say, then natural weight fluctuations could throw off your numbers a bit. For example, I weigh in every morning right after getting out of bed and going to the bathroom, before getting dressed and before eating breakfast. The conditions are as repeatable as I can get them, yet my weight can be up to 2-3 pounds different from one day to the next.

For example, I weighed in at 199.8 lbs today. I would not be surprised to see anything from 198.5-201.5 tomorrow.

And if you only weigh in weekly, those fluctuations could be pretty misleading. A 2lb fat loss could be covered up by an extra-low reading last week and a extra-high reading this week.

Just throwing that out there. The influence of this will of course diminish over time as you collect more data and expand your time window. In a 2-week window these fluctuations are a big deal; in a 3-month window, not so much.

Thank you so much everyone! Your replies and advice have been very helpful and I will take a more in depth look at the calorie deficits (or lack there of) without the 'active calories' factored in. I will look into giving the formulas a try as best I can too. It's nice to know there are actually nice people on these calorie tracking sites, most times I ask a question I just end up with 20 flame posts full of rhetoric and put downs.

Your Vivofit has to start the math somewhere on that daily burn estimate - all of them start with BMR.

And like the others, I'm betting it did NOT ask for your bodyfat % to get a better Katch BMR estimate, but the normal Mifflin or worse Harris BMR based on gender, age, weight, height.

If you have yo-yo dieted before, or even were doing a diet prior to MFP and Vivofit, you likely burned off decent amount of muscle mass. That does NOT follow the 3500 calories per lb, but when used for energy 600 calories.

So if you have less muscle mass than the device is aware of, all it's math for non-moving activities is going to be inflated.
I've seen differences between Katch and Mifflin be 200-400 daily, that's a sizable chunk, for perhaps 2/3 of your day, at least 1/3.

And if the stride length is off, it could be overestimating your moving calorie burn too.

So as others said, you only can confirm one side of the equation at this time with better accuracy - food.

Does Vivofit have a section that shows how many calories you burn per min during non-moving or sleeping time?
That figure x 1440 is the BMR they are using.

How does that compare to Katch BMR using BF%?
http://www.gymgoal.com/dtool_fat.html
http://www.gymgoal.com/dtool_bmr.html

Diet, me? No, yo-yo or otherwise. I have eaten healthy for years and used to walk to college and back daily. My gain was from pregnancy then severe inactivity from post-partum depression for almost two years, not overeating per se (though I guess my 'in vs out' was technically a surplus). However, I only have 19% skeletal muscle and roughly 56% body fat (according to my scale) when those should be 24.3% and 32.9% respectively so not great stats. I was never very strong, so the SM% isn't that surprising (I have trouble lifting milk gallons two handed). I do 5-6 minutes of 8-10 lbs weight lifting 2-3 times a week to help (my arms are shaking after that much).

Using the above links, my BMR is supposedly either 1445 (using my own bf% results from my scale) or 1630 (using the average from the calculator link).

My vivofit doesn't have a burn per minute amount, but it does have the "active calories are Total calories minus BMR", so using that formula backwards, it thinks my BMR is about 2252.


I'll take that inflation into account and see if I can find a balance that works based on the numbers I'm given.

So BIA scales can be very off too, though some can be consistent, and at least give a good direction. But at best, maybe 5% accuracy, just as good as those formula's.

So I'd actually use an avg of scale and avg of those measurements, which means BMR is down around 1500 likely.

I think Garmin must be doing something different with that formula, I can't believe their BMR would be that off, that's not close to any formula for your BMR or RMR based on your stats.
Might confirm your stats are correct on their site.

No graphs of calorie burn during the day, getting to see spikes and what not? I'm disappointed in them, they should have checked the competition to see what they should have copied.

So what you might do is take some weekly averages of total daily burn, divided by the BMR they appear to be using if stats are indeed correct.
So perhaps 3000 / 2250 = 1.33 for your personal activity factor. I would at least trust that part because if everything is inflated equally as bad, that math removes it.

Now apply that activity factor to better BMR estimate 1500 (or whatever it ends up being).
1500 x 1.33 = 2000 TDEE.

Now take deficit from that.

So whatever figure you arrive at for corrected TDEE, does that makes sense now with your results and eating level?

Also, if I can figure out how they arrive at BMR, I can help you adjust the height so they are using the 1500 or whatever instead of their figure - then you can start trusting it again and at least get what you paid for. Albeit by fooling them, but still.
I had to do it on my Fitbit. And last examined 39 days it was within 1% of results based TDEE.