Gained fat while at calorie deficit?

A week is not enough time to assess if you've gained fat. Going off the look of your belly button and the scale is not a good way to determine if it's fat or water weight, you need to know your trend over a longer time period.

You cannot gain fat whilst you are eating at a deficit, so if your calories in and out are accurate then you're retaining water.

With regard to your fitbit, they can overestimate if over a period of 4-6 weeks (this allows for hormonal water weight gain to average out) you find your weight loss is not as expected then adjust up/down the amount you're eating back.

Check out the flowchart below - it might help in checking how accurate your loggging is:

A week wouldn't be long enough to tell if you have actually gained as weight fluctuates a lot in general.

are you new to using Fitbit?

So, good on you for actually tracking your Thanksgiving feast! That "fat" you think you are seeing is probably just water weight from that epic day.

If you have been eating to your Fitbit for the last 5 months and have been successfully losing weight there is no reason to think that it suddenly became incorrect.

Be patient. Drink lots of water. Eventually it will come off.

seriously? if the numbers posted above are correct, how do you figure you have been in a calorie deficit since Friday (6 whole days ago)??

anewell28 wrote: »

By the looks of my belly button and the scale, I believe I've gained some fat. I've been at a calorie deficit since Friday according to MFP and Fitbit. Does this mean that my Fitbit is overestimating my calories burned? I haven't had any issues with it doing that in the past five months since I've started this journey.

Thoughts?

I think you have retained some water.


scale weight isn't just fat....and that is why it's one number out of 10 or so that you need to look at.

I have burns that high, eat less than that on most days and have been experiencing a creeping gain. I occasionally have a 2500 calorie day which I call a binge. My Fitbit gives me 2500+ too but if I ate to that the gain would be even faster.

Sounds like not enough of a deficit. Have you updated your stats recently?

anewell28 wrote: »

I've been at this since August. The start of November I transitioned to trying to maintain weight but absolutely do not want to gain weight.
I've had about 3 or 4 bad food days this month but the other days have been below my calorie goal.

Then you need to trend your weight over 4-6 weeks. Take your calorie intake, along side your weight gain/losses and exercise burns to come up with your real world results. In the end trackers and any other method you obtain your numbers from are not exacts, but you can get close by using calorie intake, scale weight trends to come up with your actual TDEE and maintain off that number, customize MFP calorie goal to use that as your maintain weight.

Your diary shows (recent) exercise calories earned ranging from 600-1500ish. That might be a bit high if it is based on number of steps and weight training, particularly if you are eating most of those back. For comparison, a hour of running earns me about 400 exercise calories and I rarely eat back more than 50% of those. Add in sodium, water retention, etc. etc.

anewell28 wrote: »

@RoxieDawn, I did that in October. I did the math old school, also compared it with two bod pods I did in September and October and found that the numbers are pretty consistent and correct within reason.

TDEE can be a moving target. Just keep trending your weight over periods of time, and adjust upwards or downwards as needed. Maintenance really should be given a +/- weight range (for me its 5 pounds).

eta: and factor in all the dietary changes you may make (more food, carbs, sodium, hydration needs up or down) and your monthly cycle as well, fluctuations for me are over many days (If a gain on the scale is up for more than 7 days I may react to that and make an adjustment in my calories) depending on the former factors I mentioned.

anewell28 wrote: »

For what it is worth, when I started in August on MFP I weighed 158lbs and now I am between 144-148 right now.

so you've lost up to 10lbs since August, that is good progress. weight will fluctuate for lots of reasons, sodium being the most likely culprit but that is temporary (usually it sorts itself in a few days).