Eating more to lose?

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scamp101
scamp101 Posts: 3 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi, I'm new :) Just connected fitbit to MFP. I know there is a separate forum for FitBit however my question is related to eating more calories. So my daily food calorie intake is 1200 however through my steps and exercise today I earned 1150 more calories to like a total of 2300 calories. So I have a 1100 deficit -- I'm afraid to eat and then blow my first day in trying to keep to a 1200 calorie diet to lose weight. Any thoughts here? Should I just forget the 1100 ?

Replies

  • xLyric
    xLyric Posts: 840 Member
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    Personally, if I walked that much and ate that little I'd be starving at the end of the day. I eat back most of my Fitbit calories depending on how hungry I am. If you've entered your loss rate (2lb/wk, 1lb/wk, etc) into both MFP and Fitbit then you should be able to eat your exercise calories and still lose weight. Some people don't eat them all just in case it overestimates, but I've found Fitbit to be pretty accurate, so I usually will eat them unless I'm just not hungry.

    Keep in mind that Fitbit adjusts throughout the day. It's annoying, but it assumes that you will keep moving until midnight, so your exercise calories will actually go down. It's usually safe to leave a couple hundred at the end of the day just in case.

    Right now your net calories are really low because of all that exercise. I'd recommend eating them, but I'm not any kind of professional. :smile:
  • scamp101
    scamp101 Posts: 3 Member
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    Thank you so much for your note. It is just so frustrating but after reading all the posts about eating back exercise calories, I'm starting to think it makes sense. Just so afraid to eat more but at this point, what do I have to lose right?
  • flyingfur74
    flyingfur74 Posts: 80 Member
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    If I were you, I would definitely eat at least half of those calories back. You don't want to starve your body by burning so many calories and not feeding it. Like xLyric said, when you entered your info on MFP, it already has you in a deficit to lose weight without the extra exercise. Go ahead and eat within your extra calories.
  • starwhisperer6
    starwhisperer6 Posts: 402 Member
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    The only thing I would say is check where it puts your fitbit info on mfp. Sometimes it gives me my exercise calories a couple of times instead of just once. That is a lot of calories from exercise.
  • thrashertm
    thrashertm Posts: 12 Member
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    scamp101 wrote: »
    Hi, I'm new :) Just connected fitbit to MFP. I know there is a separate forum for FitBit however my question is related to eating more calories. So my daily food calorie intake is 1200 however through my steps and exercise today I earned 1150 more calories to like a total of 2300 calories. So I have a 1100 deficit -- I'm afraid to eat and then blow my first day in trying to keep to a 1200 calorie diet to lose weight. Any thoughts here? Should I just forget the 1100 ?

    Do you want to achieve your goals or have the the short term pleasure of some more food? Fitbit walking value is inaccurate so unless you are fatigued, do not eat beyond your target.
  • soulofgrace
    soulofgrace Posts: 175 Member
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    thrashertm wrote: »
    scamp101 wrote: »
    Hi, I'm new :) Just connected fitbit to MFP. I know there is a separate forum for FitBit however my question is related to eating more calories. So my daily food calorie intake is 1200 however through my steps and exercise today I earned 1150 more calories to like a total of 2300 calories. So I have a 1100 deficit -- I'm afraid to eat and then blow my first day in trying to keep to a 1200 calorie diet to lose weight. Any thoughts here? Should I just forget the 1100 ?

    Do you want to achieve your goals or have the the short term pleasure of some more food? Fitbit walking value is inaccurate so unless you are fatigued, do not eat beyond your target.

    Yea, no! Even if she ate back half those exercise cals she'd only be at net 650 cals. I'd say eat back half and see what happens. It's going to be trial and error for a while.
  • soulofgrace
    soulofgrace Posts: 175 Member
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    I think my math is wrong there, but I still say eat back half and see what happens.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,948 Member
    edited January 2016
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    thrashertm wrote: »
    Do you want to achieve your goals or have the the short term pleasure of some more food? Fitbit walking value is inaccurate so unless you are fatigued, do not eat beyond your target.

    Wow. You sure about how inaccurate Fitbit's walking value is? 'Cause I've spent almost a year trying to figure out how inaccurate mine is.

    The darn thing adds steps i don't take, and doesn't give me steps that I take... it is enough to drive a grown man to cry.

    And then I sit with my spreadsheets... and did I mention I even shelled out money for DXA scans to also take body composition into account?

    And you know what I found out? That the dang thing will drive me to drink, is what I found out!

    I mean at the max it over-estimated my TDEE by a FULL 6.5%. And at the min it under-estimated my TDEE by a whopping 0.5%.

    So like a full 7% variation with no rhyme, or reason... cause it was growing bigger and bigger every month... and after the December firmware update it became smaller!

    I mean 1150 calories... 6.5% maximum error (my own data, I know).... hmmm: I don't know... obviously not eating the last 7x calories out of a TDEE of well over 2000 (I assume you're set to a -1000 deficit) must be the critical point here.

    OP: you don't need to eat 1200 to lose weight. Your TDEE today was somewhere north of 2500 Cal today (check the total number given to you by Fitbit at midnight).

    A deficit in the up to 10% to 20% range of your TDEE is considered a safe deficit (up to 25% if you are obese).

    Set MFP to lose at that rate: in your case it would be 1lb a week.

    Be a rebel and go to 1.5lb a week while your TDEE is regularly above 3000 Cal a day, and you remain in the upper range of the overweight side of things.

    Eat as per what MFP and Fitbit suggest.

    PUSH YOUR FITBIT DAILY WEIGHT IN DATA AUTOMATICALLY to a trending weight application by connecting to a free WWW.TRENDWEIGHT.COM account (or www.weightgrapher.com account)

    This will help you figure out that water weight is not relevant, and your body has a weight range not a single point weight. It will also save a lot of people a lot of typing when you don't come back here wondering why you've plateaued .. when you haven't but think you have.

    After you have a month's worth of data evaluate how close your Fitbit provided TDEE, your MFP logged calories in, and your Trendweight "you are burning X calories more/less a day" all mesh.

    Adjust your goals and actions per that information.

    Rinse, lather, repeat. Have fun.
  • mlinci
    mlinci Posts: 402 Member
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    scamp101 wrote: »
    Thank you so much for your note. It is just so frustrating but after reading all the posts about eating back exercise calories, I'm starting to think it makes sense. Just so afraid to eat more but at this point, what do I have to lose right?

    What you have to lose if you eat so little and exercise so much is frankly your ability to stick to your diet. Because you'll likely end up starving, and this will increase your chances of abandoning your diet. If you eat back some of your exercise calories, you have more chance of succeeding on the long run - and it's all about the long run with losing weight.

    PS looking at my Fitbit estimates of my calorie expenditure, my logged calories, and my weight loss over the last four months, I think my Fitbit is fairly accurate.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
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    thrashertm wrote: »
    scamp101 wrote: »
    Hi, I'm new :) Just connected fitbit to MFP. I know there is a separate forum for FitBit however my question is related to eating more calories. So my daily food calorie intake is 1200 however through my steps and exercise today I earned 1150 more calories to like a total of 2300 calories. So I have a 1100 deficit -- I'm afraid to eat and then blow my first day in trying to keep to a 1200 calorie diet to lose weight. Any thoughts here? Should I just forget the 1100 ?

    Do you want to achieve your goals or have the the short term pleasure of some more food? Fitbit walking value is inaccurate so unless you are fatigued, do not eat beyond your target.

    I've been eating the calories back from mine since July and have lost/maintained exactly as expected.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    When I had a fitbit, I just ate 20% less than the average it gave me (never synchronized it with MPF because I don't trust it that much) and I lost just fine.

    I guess it depends on how much you have to lose though, but a 1100 deficit seems extreme. If you have less than 50 pounds to lose I'd eat 500 less, not 1100.
  • scamp101
    scamp101 Posts: 3 Member
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    thank you everyone for your replies. I might just take a chance and turn off the adjustment, use calories burned from exercise on fitbit apt to adjust or add to daily goal. I only want to lose 15 lbs but I have a feeling I am slowing my metabolism down by not eating more calories and causing the loss to crawl..scale isn't moving ...thank you again!

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