Eating calories earned on fitbit

boofle2 wrote: »

Can someone advise please if any calories earned on fitbit should be eaten. I have around 1200 1300 cals daily, i am 5 foot 2 148 pounds, want to be around 133 to 136 pounds. I have lost half this week but not consumed any exercise calories. Thnk you

If your FitBit is linked, it is not giving you "exercise" calories per sei...it is simply reconciling your stated activity level in MFP to your actual activity level per your device. If your actual activity level per your device surpasses that which was selected in MFP, you get additional calories...essentially, the more you move, the more energy you expend and theoretically would continue to lose at the desired/target rate of loss. This does not, however, take into account inherent inaccuracies in logging, etc.

When I was logging I ate back additional calories for activity and exercise in excess of my stated activity level...that's how this program is designed to work...that said, I was pretty meticulous in my logging and verifying entries in the database to either packaging or the USDA website for whole food items, and I weighed out most things on a kitchen scale...particularly more calorie dense items. Weighing most of my food was quite an eye opener for me...for example, I would grill some chicken breast and would log it as 4 oz which is a serving of chicken breast and I figured since I was only having one, that was a serving...turns out, the average chicken breast is typically closer to 8-10 ounces. I had all kinds of material errors like that when I was logging before I started weighing things out, and those calories really add up.

In most cases, when someone is not losing as expected, they are simply consuming more calories than they think they are due to logging errors. A lot of people also forget or neglect to account for things like cooking oils and even fruits and vegetables because they are under the impression that fruits and vegetables are "healthy" and thus don't really count towards your calorie target...but everything counts towards your calorie target.