Make sure your stride is set too. Mine was off. That might help as well.

8500 calorie deficit for the week?

So on average daily eating 1214 less than you burn.

You burning up around 6000 calories daily for that to be anywhere near a reasonable deficit amount?

Your body won't be happy with under-eating that much.

You didn't gain it fast, don't attempt to lose it fast, unless you do indeed want less muscle too.

For mainly walking which is so low calorie burn anyway - probably really close daily burn estimate, unless your stride length is just way off for some reason.

Then again, Fitbit is estimating an average healthy body and what it burns, by under-eating that much, I'd suggest yours isn't anymore.

Listen to heybales. He can point you to the studies that show what he's saying. You don't want your body to get even more efficient at using calories by not eating enough. Set a reasonable weight loss goal (as outlined by editorgrrl), log your food carefully, and trust your FitBit for a few weeks.

I was amazed at how accurate it was once I started tracking my food carefully. However, I haven't done a huge amount of yo-yo dieting in my life, I exercise daily (as much as I'd prefer to skip it), and I've taken things slow. I think all of those help to counteract the metabolism slowing effect of eating at a calorie deficit.

DanielleMesa wrote: »

Wow, I really didn't think I was under eating! I always thought that exercise calories were optional to eat. I will go ahead and try eating the full amount and see what happens.

You eat say 2000 calories. Your body burns say 1600 merely for the functions of life, if you slept all day. That means another 400 for daily stuff.
You go workout and burn 500 calories off the top during the workout, calories the body can't use for anything else now, it was used purely for mechanical movement.

Now how much is your body left with to use.
1500, less the 400 for mechanical movement during the day, so 1100 left.

Your body wants/needs 1600 for the functions of life, those can only be slowed down so much.
The first thing the body does is slow down your daily activity, so you really don't burn that 400.
But Fitbit with goals helps keep that level up.
So what's a body to do - adapt. Become more efficient, slow down what it can, hair/nail growth, skin replacement, women's functions, hormones regulating metabolism (thyroid), eventually just becoming more efficient at everything that goes on.
It also slows down or stops repair of stressed body parts - like what that workout did.
So now the workout doesn't get recovered. So now the next one isn't as intense.

The body doesn't want to change, it must be forced to.
Like gaining muscle - it doesn't spend more energy adding something that will use more energy - for no reason.
And especially when it's already slowed things down to conserve energy.

I think the rule of thumb there is to have your setting at dominant hand but wear it on your non dominant hand. The non dominant hand setting makes it more sensitive to movement.

Actually, I wear mine on my non-dominant (right) wrist and have it set to non-dominant. So, not everyone does it that way. My accuracy (both calories and steps) seems good.

3JinItaly wrote: »

Is it bad to wear it on your ankle??

It needs to see impact from both legs hitting ground to count steps and therefore distance and therefore calories.

So it will be totally inaccurate only seeing one foot hit.