App Dashboard - Calorie Net DIFFERENCE

[kykoliko]

Hi, I recently got a FitBit and I'm pretty underwhelmed so far if I have to be honest. One thing that I can't get my head around is how I can quickly and easily check my calorie deficit. Is there any way to do that?

I couldn't care less about my "calories burned" as that becomes irrelevant if I am eating more than I am burning. Why is that included on the dashboard but a simple difference between the two is not?

Then there is the Calories In vs Out. Okay. But that only shows how much I have burned up to that precise point in the day. Seriously, who on earth thinks this way?

All I want is some very simple calorie deficit information on my dashboard that tells me whether or I am going to be on target. It should be painfully simple:

- Based on your daily activity, we predict you are going to burn x calories today.

- You have consumed y calories today.

- Based on your agreed daily target deficit of z calories, you are over/under budget.

PLEASE tell me this exists somewhere and I am too dumb to find it!

[Rich_Laue]

Tapping on the food tile will give an in versus out chart. 

The app can only look at what has been recorded up to the time of viewing. This can be very useful in knowing if a person needs to increase activity or take it easy. 

As for calories in, a person can see if they are under or over. 

As for as the app knowing the future, could this be actually possible? Can the app know what the user will eat for the rest of the day? Does the app know that the user will or will not be taking a run tonight? Or maybe simply do some yoga. 

[t.parker]

You can sort of see such prediction (at least it worked in the past) if you link your Fitbit account with MFP. In MFP, when you sync you will see updated calorie target with predicition for whole day. Lots of people don't like this mechanics and struggle to understand how it works but once you get a grasp on it, its quite good.

I usually compute such prediction using BMR + 0. It means, if I don't exercise, all I will burn will be my BMR. I don't include anything else that is not an actual workout. With Fitbit it may get slightly complicated as you cannot see only active calories but it is possible to figure that out, too.

To simplify, don't expect Fitbit to tell you how much you gonna burn but you make your goal. This requires to do actual registered workouts for which you target burning, for example, 500kcal. You do such workout and you know that you will burn at least BMR + 500kcal (approximatelly as it contains part of your BMR).