How does calorie counter work?

[Nicole29]

I have logged all my meals today. My Calorie out says I have burned 1410. My calorie in says 1028, but I am in the red zone? I am so confused...lol

[RobertoME]

Hi @Nicole29, let me start by giving you a warm welcome to our Fitbit Community. This information is controlled by your Food Plan which 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 updates based on your foods logged and activities recorded by your tracker, so the more you exercise throughout the day, the greater your calorie allowance will be. For additional information take a look at this post from @TandemWalker.

Hope this helps and let me know how it goes. I'll be around!

[Nicole29]

Robert...Thank you for the response. So is it normal for me to have let's
say 1100 calories in and 1400 out and for it to say I am over budget and in
the red zone? In other words, does the counter have a gap (like 300 in my
example) that gets you in a range of your calories and if u go over that
gap then u are overbudget? Hope that makes sense.

[RobertoME · Accepted solution]

Hi @Nicole29, in your example you have to consider the deficit of your Food plan and this is how it will be under/over budget.

I made an example for you using my own Dashboard. So I have a food plan whit a gap of 500 calories of deficit. Now I logged  441 intake calories  vs 2,926 calories out gained through out the day.

So according to my Dashboard I have left 1,985 calories to reach my goal.

To end with my example; if I ate a total of 2,000 calories I will be overbudget, despite my calorie allowance is greater and this is due to the deficit of your food plan. As this will determine exactly how many calories you need to eat.

Just to clarify, if you noticed on my screenshot, both tiles say different amount of calories. Since one is going to let you know the comparison between your calories intake vs the calories burned. While the other tile is subtracting the deficit of 500 calories, minus the amount calorie consumption to give you the amount of calories you need to eat to reach your target.

Hope this helps and let me know if you have more questions.

[Nicole29]

Thank u for your response. I get it now 😀