Calorie Budget seems inaccurate - I can't eat that much

[ked71570]

There something about the Food Plan portion of the App that I just haven't been able to figure out.  I'm a 46 yr old male with a desk job but I exercise regularly and typically burn about 2750-3500 cal per day (according to the tracker depending on daily activity).  But the App wants to insist on giving me a food budget between 1750-2500 (or more) calories base on that days calorie burn (using a -1000 deficit in my food plan).  But if I eat that much, I GAIN weight, not even just maintain my current weight.  I can't eat more that 1600 cal/day and expect to lose weight regardless of my 'calories burnt'.  So what am I missing?  Why such a big difference.  a 1000 calorie deficit is supposed to be a pretty aggressive plan to lose weight but it doesn't seem to even come close.  A couple weeks ago, I had an extremely active day and tracked a 4345 calorie burn for the day, so the budget said I should eat 3345 calories!?!  That's absurd...  I could use some help here.  I tried setting the App to a static daily calorie budget but I don't think it took... Not sure what I did wrong but this might be what I need to do because I know I can't actually follow the dynamic budget the App displays.  Look forward to you assistance.  Thanks.

[RobertoME]

Hello @ked71570, good to see you again. The Food Plan provides a daily calorie estimate as well as a gauge of real-time calories in vs. calories out. The calories in vs. out gauge gives dynamic feedback of whether you are under, in, or above your selected plan's recommended calorie deficit. You can also see a simple readout of the number of calories you have burned and eaten for that day.

This mean will update based on your foods logged and activities recorded by your tracker. Your Fitbit tracker is always watching, so the more you exercise throughout the day, the greater your calorie allowance will be.

For more details please take a look at @SebringDon's post from more information about the Food plan: Fitbit's Food Plan Demystified.

Hope this helps, see you until the next one.

[ked71570]

Roberto, thanks for the reply..

But there's still something that still seems way off for me.  I've actually been using a tracker for almost 2 years now but I took a really long time off with tracking dietary info, but now I've gotten back into it because I'm really trying to get back to losing some more weight.  I remember the in-vs-out being a challenge before but not like I'm seeing now.  I waited a few days to respond because I was on the final stretch of a DietBet.com challenge (and not succeeding) and wanted to see how I finished before replying.  I started the challenge at 198.2 lbs and using fitbit to track my cals in-vs-out for 28 days and came up with the following totals.

Total Calories IN:  54747

Total Calories OUT: 86400

Avg Daily Burn:  3085

Avg Daily Intake: 1955

Total Calorie Deficit:  31653

Avg Daily Deficit:  1130

I finished the Diet Bet 28 days later at 197.4 lbs.  

I only lost 0.6 lbs.

Can you see why I'm confused?  That's pretty extreme and even if I'm off on calculating my intake and were to add an avg of an additional 500 cals per day, I should still have still been at a 500 cal deficit and lost more than 0.6 lbs.  I essentially lost nothing (and lost the bet).