Confused but hoping I understand correctly.
angelb1983
Posts: 160 Member
I have been doing workouts that include weight lifting 3-4 days a week and walking a half hour a day most days of the week. I have been eating around1700-2000 calories a day which is higher than my trainer recommends but I have often questioned her knowledge of TDEE and BMR. She wants me to eat 1500 calories but I would be so hungry. I finally found this site and was wondering if I am right in saying its ok to eat all or even most of my fitbit allowance? One day I got 2400 from my fitbit but I was so nervous to eat those because of her wanting me to do 1500. I don't want to gain. My husband has lost eating fitbits allowance. Is it pretty safe to say that on my super active days, if I want the calories I can have them? Yesterday I went over fitbits allowance by almost 400 calories and finally saw a loss on the scale but thats probably because I have a lot of lower days where I didn't eat all the calories. I guess my question is, should I eat the amount fitbit says I can when I have it set to sedentary and still be safe to see losses?
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Replies
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If you are seeing consistent losses over time (not days or a week or two, but weeks and months) then continue what you are doing.
If not (and what I would generally tell someone starting out), do not "eat back" calories that fitbit or MFP gives you. These predictions are very inaccurate and are likely not the amount that you really burned from being active.
Also, if 1700cals seems fine to you then 1500 is barely a difference. Ensure that you are eating nutrient dense and satiating foods and you would be just fine at 1500 even being active.
Disclaimer: this all depends on your goals and all your personal info which I do not know so ymmv.1 -
A life lesson about weight management the above comment does not take in to account and why it's poor advice.
When you do more, you should eat more.
When you do less, you should eat less.
In a diet for fat loss - a tad less in either case.
To say don't eat back any increase of calorie burn based on exercise calories because it's inaccurate - then you better chuck the whole logging your foods too since nutrition labels are allowed to be upwards of 20% off.
Even worse for take out food you aren't weighing.
Besides the fact you are set to Sedentary merely because you have a device that MFP is attempting to correct to.
You are most obviously not Sedentary with exercise included, and perhaps not even with exercise not included.
And as this group proves - sometimes the increase of a mere 200 calories is enough for the body to become unstressed and drop cortisol induced water weight, as well as increase daily movement and therefore TDEE increases - actually allowing for weight loss that wasn't occurring eating too low for body to be unstressed.
The goal is really to eat as much as you can while still being less than you burn - by a reasonable amount to allow fat loss, and max benefit from workouts.
Because really, why put a bunch of effort into transforming your body with exercise when your diet ruins full effect.
Also, are some of those adjustment calories related to the fact you aren't sedentary?
Like do you have kids too?
Merely having household duties puts most people into Lightly-Active level on MFP. Which could be another part of the adjustment over Sedentary.
And yes - with tweaks to correct for stride-length for daily walking so the daily non-exercise burn is as close to accurate as possible, and logging exercise with more accurate info when available - totally lost weight eating back those adjustments.1 -
Heybales knows his stuff, his is good advice
Have you done the EM2WL TDEE Calculator? Try that - you will probably find your trainer is off.
Here is a link for you:
TDEE Calculator
Kelly
P.S. Most people fall into the Moderate category for exercise. From the sounds of it - you do too.0 -
heybales, thank you so much for being so willing to respond and help to understand. Im going to try eating fitbit for a week and see where that takes me. I think I should be ok because sometimes it is low on my less active days. With that said, it may be low for a few days because I got injured on my last weight lifting workout. Praying the chiropractor releases me back to my workout soon.0
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holy cow kcmsmith, it says to eat 2300 for losing 10%. That is pretty awesome if true!!0
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I know right? I was shocked when I first plugged in my numbers...0
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Of course - take into account your avg corrected Fitbit figures, as that is almost infinite levels compared to your selected one from 5 rough levels.
Take a 3 week rolling avg of weekly Fitbit totals email.
And I say corrected if you do a lot of weight lifting and it's giving you inflated HR-based calorie burn figures.0 -
But the numbers do actually work for your weight loss?
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A life lesson about weight management the above comment does not take in to account and why it's poor advice.
When you do more, you should eat more.
When you do less, you should eat less.
In a diet for fat loss - a tad less in either case.
I stated that one shouldn't eat back what the Fitbit or MFP recommendations if you aren't seeing results over weeks/months which is what the OP's specific question was.
I agree that increasing intake on activity days is best practice but in a more measurable way (ex; on weight lifting days I will have a certain pre/post workout meal). Then it is easy to track over time to see what is working and what is not.0 -
For the EM2WL method the guideline is finding your TDEE (total Daily Energy Exepditure) and then cutting 5-15% off that for a period of time to lose fat (and keep muscle). It also depends on getting to and staying for a while at your actual TDEE (Maintenance) level to stabilize your metabolism.
I know when I went from my 1700 cal a day diet and worked up to my 2500-2600 a day TDEE level I had a TON more energy for working out. I meant to stay at maintenance for just 3 months, but it has been closer to 9 months (surgery and vacation and holiday LOL), once I got to maintenance level I did not gain weight (except for after my surgery when I didn't go down to my after surgery TDEE). Cutting now STILL feels like mostly eating what I want - just in slightly smaller quantities and saving treats for special occasions, instead of eating what I want most of the time. I feel like this is so much more sustainable as a lifestyle than the fad restrictive diets in the past.
I set my MFP calories to my TDEE without exercise minus 10% (which is what I want to cut) Then I add back in my exercise calories (using mostly the fitbit numbers - MFPs are about double what fitbit allows for my workouts - martial arts) then I eat that number for the day or a little under. It works out to me eating about 2100-2300 cals per day and losing .5-1 lb a week, depending on if I have a high calorie weekend day (my current TDEE is lower than the original 2600 - its closer to 2400, I teach more now and workout less).
I highly recommend trendweight.com to track your overall progress and make sure you are not eating too many or too few calories. I weigh every few days and linked my MFP and trendweight accounts so it updates automatically. It's really cool to see my weight slowly and steadily going down, while I eat so much more food than I ever lost weight at before.
I have a long way to go, but I am good with the slow and steady and keep it off method for once. I am tired of obsessing and losing then regaining the same 20-40 lbs and still not being able to eat! I figure it took me 20 years to gain this much - I can take 1-3 years to get rid of it
just my 2cents,
Kelly0
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