Eating back Fitbit calories burned?

MFP is designed with the intention that you will eat back your activity adjustments. Yes, your weight loss will be slower if your deficit is smaller, but eating enough is important.

meganreid163 wrote: »

So I’ve recently gotten a Fitbit to better understand how active I actally am, I am known to be very hard on myself and as I suspected I was underestimating how active I am. I walk on average 10,000 steps a day at least and work out 4 or 5 days a week.
My question is should I be eating back some of those calories that my Fitbit allowes me or no?
Most days I don’t but sometimes when I work out extra hard I do allow myself to have a protein shake and a treat for some extra energy.
I’m just worried my weight loss will slow.

It will, and that's ok. When you signed up here, you said how fast you want to lose weight, and eating your exercise calories will prevent you from losing weight faster than that.

The fastest way to lose weight would be never eat again until you're at your goal weight. Probably you can see some problems with this approach, right? Those same problems apply when you eat too little, too, not just nothing at all.

One piece to add here-are you weighing your food on a food scale?

You don’t HAVE to, but if you’re using measuring cups or logging by gut checked portion sizes, it’s possible that you’re eating more than you are logging.

Or it’s possible the Fitbit is overestimating calorie burn.

The most important thing to look at is your actual rate of loss. If you’re losing a pound a week, then whatever system you’re using to log food and estimate calorie burns is giving you about a 500 daily deficit - regardless of what numbers show up on what app.

You should be eating enough to account for your activity - whether your activity is from workouts or running after children or an active job or whatever. If you’re losing a pound a week-then you probably are eating enough.

In a world where everyone weighs their food to pinpoint accuracy and they fit within the range of being “most people” and the Fitbit produces a reasonable calorie estimate-then you should be intentionally eating those calories.

You don’t have to eat back exercise calories, and Fitbits/MFP tend to be really inaccurate with them. You can use your weekly trends to determine how you should change your caloric intake. If you are losing too quickly you can add some calories, if slowly take some away (1lb=500 calories/day deficit).

The thing about my fitbit is that a lot of the "steps" logged are just me shuffling around the kitchen, walking my dog (elderly and very slow), walking round the supermarket etc. I'm pretty sure I'm not burning the calories it says I am. But I do eat them back because I'm here to gain weight.