Hi!! Gain weight/ muscle help!

a_dros
a_dros Posts: 4 Member
in Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
So I recently got a fit bit and it tells me how many calories I burn during sleep. Should those be counted in order to help me achieve a calorie surplus?
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Replies

  • danielntharper
    danielntharper Posts: 1 Member
    No calories burned during sleeps are calculated in your BMR and tdee
  • DancingMoosie
    DancingMoosie Posts: 8,619 Member
    Total calories burned over the whole day is TDEE. I'm not sure how fitbit works...I just use MFP.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,325 Member
    edited February 2022
    a_dros wrote: »
    So I recently got a fit bit and it tells me how many calories I burn during sleep. Should those be counted in order to help me achieve a calorie surplus?

    Of course. If you want to gain weight, you have to eat all the calories you burn (no matter how/when you burn them) plus more calories.

    Your all-day Fitbit calories are what you should try to exceed, when the goal is weight gain. How much to exceed them depend on how fast you think you should gain.

    Even so, Fitbit is still giving you an estimate, not a measurement of calories. So, use it as a guide, follow it for 4-6 weeks, then look at your actual gain rate (on average over that time). If you're not gaining as you'd like, adjust the calories you eat..
    danielntharper wrote: »
    No calories burned during sleeps are calculated in your BMR and tdee

    Huh? Calories burned while sleeping are counted in TDEE (total daily energy expenditure).

    It doesn't make sense to say calories burned while sleeping are (or aren't) counted in BMR, because BMR is essentially the calories you burn just being alive. That is, some of the calories you burn during sleep are from BMR, and some (not very many) can be above and beyond BMR (such as movement during sleep). Some BMR calories are part of sleep calories.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    a_dros wrote: »
    So I recently got a fit bit and it tells me how many calories I burn during sleep. Should those be counted in order to help me achieve a calorie surplus?

    Of course. If you want to eat in a surplus, that means you're eating calories in excess of your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). You burn calories 24/7, most of which are you just being alive and existing on this planet and nothing else...your BMR and NEAT calories are included in your TDEE...so yes, everything obviously counts.

    If you burn 3000 calories per day...being alive, eating, sleeping, going about your day to day hum drum, exercising, etc....they all count and you would need to eat in excess of those 3000 calories consistently to be in a surplus.
  • a_dros
    a_dros Posts: 4 Member
    Thank you for the replies! That helps me a lot.

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