Calorie Allowance and logging don't tally

[GosportNancy]

After logging my first day food diary today I saw that although I had eaten around 1000 or so cals that fitbit tells me I am about 200 calories over my limit of 1750 calories.

How do I tell fitbit they have their sums wrong...or am I missing something?

I take very little exercise due to being physically limited so just logged housework and pottering about the house. Even so, their calorie limit is ridiculously low when checking it but their calorie starting allowance is much higher than the food I ate today.

[MrMarv · Accepted solution]

@GosportNancy - 

I cannot speak with a lot of authority, but I can say that the calories to go are dynamically refreshed throughout the day. If you happen to front load most of your intake in your first two meals and have a light supper, the app thinks your are going to eat just as heavy at supper - it just doesn't know any better.

It does the same with calories out.

I don't do a lot of formal exercising, either. I am a computer programmer (short description for what I really do) and sit on my behind much of the day. And the way Fitbit was estimating my "cals left" was off the wall. So I went to the web interface's Food Log page and changed the "calorie estimate setting" to "sedentary" from the default "Personalized" (which I defined as estimate crazy) and re-sync'd my app to get the new settings.

The calories to go estimates seemed more realistic to me, and handles the light breakfast, morning snack, light lunch, heavy calorie afternoon snack, light calorie dinner just fine, matching up with limited exercise in estimating "calories to go". At least it does for me.

I recommend trying that setting out for a day or two. If it doesn't work for you, "no harm, no foul". You can set it back. 

And remember this about calories you expect to burn - no matter who you are, or what you do, you will burn about 1 calorie a minute, or 60 calories and hour, just breathing. That is over 1,400 calories a day.   The term is Basic Metabolic Rate or BMR. My BMR looks to be 1.2 calories a minute, or a little over 1,700 calories a day.