Calorie balance

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xJackalx
xJackalx Posts: 3 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hey everybody. I’m new the the forum but I’ve been working out consistently now since January and I’ve lost over 20 pound and around 5” on my waist. I’m now close to my goal and I want to transition more to maintaining my weight and gaining/defining muscle. I have a Fitbit charge 3 connected to my MFP account. My issue is that I work in construction and have a generally active job (I have my MFP account set to an active lifestyle) so when the Fitbit adds calories into MFP it says I can eat near 3000 calories a day, which I think absolutely can’t be right. Since Fitbit tracks everything throughout the day sould I be setting my activity level to something lower than active (either lightly active or not very active)? Do people have any tips for this point in the fitness journey?
Thanks for any help or advice.

Replies

  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,129 Member
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    Construction and 3000 calories sounds about right.

    Only way to know is to do it! Lots of guys (I'm assuming you're a guy) maintain on 3000 and above.

    Welcome to maintenance. :)

    There is a subforum for maintenance: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/categories/goal-maintaining-weight

    Lots of good info there.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
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    Why can't 3000 cals be your maintenance level?
    2500 is often given for an average man and working construction isn't an average occupation.
    (I'm 5'9" and retired and eat over 3000 cals to maintain, quiet a bit more in summer when I cycle a lot.)

    I don't use a Fitbit but if you sync it so that it is giving you your daily goal doesn't changing the activity setting on MyFitnessPal simply change the size of the adjustment rather than the total number?

    Think the first thing to decide if you want your Fitbit to be setting your goal or not. How has its accuracy been while you were losing weight?
  • xJackalx
    xJackalx Posts: 3 Member
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    I only recently got it and it’s more for the tracking of calories I burned during lifting and exercise. I’ve been eating around 1800 calories a day since January so bumping up to 3000 was really surprising. I’m using MFP for daily calories I was just wondering if I should tell MFP that I have a less active lifestyle to compensate for the fact that Fitbit is tracking everything I do throughout the day.
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
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    Regardless of what you set your activity level to, MFP will adjust the incoming calories to avoid double counting, so it won't really affect much. 3000 calories sounds about right for an active man.

    If you're doubting the activity calories, look at your food and activity logs. How many calories were you eating and what was your rate of weight loss? You could use those numbers to figure out your maintenance level individualized to your logging practices.
  • WinoGelato
    WinoGelato Posts: 13,454 Member
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    This doesn’t sound excessive to me at all. I a 5’2 female around 123 with a desk job that gets around 8-10k steps a day and my maintenance cals according to FitBit are around 1900-2000.

    You don’t need to trick the systems. If your FitBit says you burn 3000 calories but you tell MFP you are less active then you are then the adjustments will actually be larger. The adjustments come from the difference between what MFP thinks you should burn according to your stats and the activity level that you choose and what FitBit says you actually burn.

    Why were you only eating 1800 calories? How were you tracking those - are you logging everything and using a food scale? Because if you’re actually eating 1800 calories as an active male the weight would be falling off of you. 1800 is close to the minimum a male should eat (1500) and is no way enough to support an active lifestyle and maintenance, with strength training thrown in. My suspicion is you were eating far more than you think because you arent tracking accurately and If that’s the case you do need to be careful adding an extra 1000 or so calories of your estimations because it could put you higher than your actual burn (3000)
  • sarabushby
    sarabushby Posts: 784 Member
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    Whilst I also agree 3000 could well be your maintenance for an active job, there’s 1 tweek you could do if you haven’t already and that’s to wear your Fitbit on your non-dominant wrist but tell it that you have it on your dominant wrist.

    This will just make a slight downward adjustment I believe to compensate for the movement of your wrist during non-step activity that could otherwise register as steps. Eg cutting vegetables, brushing teeth, lifting a drink etc
  • purple4sure05
    purple4sure05 Posts: 287 Member
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    Why dont you do the math to estimate roughly your maintenance calories? For some very loose math, you've lost 20 pounds in 2 months that's roughly 2 pounds a week, maybe slightly more. This means you're at a 1000 calorie deficit per day (or more). You said you eat 1800 calories per day. Add 1000 and you get roughly 2800 calories as your maintenance, again maybe more since you've lost over 20 pounds in potentially less than 10 weeks. Numbers dont lie ;) sounds like 3000 could be perfectly accurate.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,943 Member
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    Sounds like you've lost more than 20lbs in 2 months, so your deficit was likely slightly more then 1000 Cal a day while you were eating around 1800.

    3000 sounds... eminently possible. In fact, tbh, sort of lowish for all day construction.
  • kariadner
    kariadner Posts: 12 Member
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    My goal weight is starting to come in sight, so I, too, am thinking about the transition to maintenance.

    I use this formula to guide my eating:
    (Daily Base Goal + Exercise Calories) ± 5%

    Once I get a little closer to my goal, I plan to add 100 calories to my "Daily Base Goal." I expect that I will keep losing, but more slowly. If that's what happens, I'll wait until I'm even closer to my goal, and add another 100 calories. And so on.

    Eventually, I should "stall out" at my goal weight.

    Soooo, in summary, I am no expert, but I recommend slowly increasing your calories while monitoring your weight, rather than jumping from a current goal to maintenance.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
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    jennifer_417 wrote: »
    If you're using a fitbit connected to MFP to monitor your exercise, then you should set your activity level on sedentary. Otherwise you're basically double-dipping.

    Think you mean he shouldn't log exercise on here if the Fitbit is counting his exercise as that would indeed be double counting.

    Setting an incorrect activity setting just makes the size of the Fitbit adjustment bigger which probably isn't helpful.
  • xJackalx
    xJackalx Posts: 3 Member
    edited March 2019
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    kariadner wrote: »
    My goal weight is starting to come in sight, so I, too, am thinking about the transition to maintenance.

    I use this formula to guide my eating:
    (Daily Base Goal + Exercise Calories) ± 5%

    Once I get a little closer to my goal, I plan to add 100 calories to my "Daily Base Goal." I expect that I will keep losing, but more slowly. If that's what happens, I'll wait until I'm even closer to my goal, and add another 100 calories. And so on.

    Eventually, I should "stall out" at my goal weight.

    Soooo, in summary, I am no expert, but I recommend slowly increasing your calories while monitoring your weight, rather than jumping from a current goal to maintenance.

    This is really helpful. I’m still a little leary if the extra calories I get from just doing my regular daily work stuff, but if I use my base calories + my exercise that would put my around 2600 calories a day (2100 from an active lifestyle and 500 ish from my workouts). That sounds like a great starting point, and if I’ve gotta increase calories I can go from there.
  • kariadner
    kariadner Posts: 12 Member
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    Regardless of how one sets one's daily target, I think the a smart way to switch from loss to maintenance is to start with the number of calories one is currently consuming and slowly increase that until weight stabilizes.

    I would fear that switching from one target to a new, larger one might be overshooting and lead to weight gain.
  • jennifer_417
    jennifer_417 Posts: 12,344 Member
    edited March 2019
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    Welp, I guess it's never too late to teach old dogs new tricks. Whoops.
    WinoGelato wrote: »
    jennifer_417 wrote: »
    If you're using a fitbit connected to MFP to monitor your exercise, then you should set your activity level on sedentary. Otherwise you're basically double-dipping.

    No that’s not the case at all - FitBit and MFP are designed to work together to sort out the difference in total cals burned (FitBit) and predicted NEAT (MFP). People that choose Sedentary when they really aren’t get larger adjustments because the difference is bigger and then they often mistrust those adjustments even further.

    The math comes out the same either way but personally I like having both set to the activity level that is representative of my actual activity and since I average 10k steps a day, I wouldn’t choose Sedentary for myself .

  • Tolstolobik
    Tolstolobik Posts: 78 Member
    edited April 2019
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    Sorry, posted by mistake. The app is not letting me to delete.

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