Calories left drastically changing in short time

[swampmom]

Saturday night I checked my fitbit a bit before midnight to see how I did on my calorie goal, because I noticed it had been a bit off. It said I still had <100 left over so I felt like I achieved my goal and went to bed. Today it says I overate around 300 calories for Saturday. I thought maybe it was a one time thing, but today (Sunday) I worked out late at night and when I checked my caloies it said I hit my goal. I was happy about it and went to go take a shower. I come back from a couple of hours to find that it says I'm almost 400 calories over! I'm used to the daily goal changing with activity, but not so much in just a couple hours. I've been using my fitbit since April and this is the first time I ever had issues like this. What's going on?

[MarreFitbit · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Fitbit Community @swampmom, hope you're doing great today! I'd like to share this with you, a different way to see what the calories mean:

1. Overbudget means that you're current deficit is too small compared to your target deficit. You need to eat less or, better, get more active.
2. Underbudget means that you're current deficit is too large compared to your target deficit. You need reduce your activity or, better, to eat a little more.
3. In zone means that you're current deficit is just about right compared to your target deficit. You are doing everything just about right. You haven't necessarily been more active than usual, but you are eating for your current activity level.
4. Calories left means that you can eat that many calories between now and midnight and end the calendar day in zone. You can have part or, if calories allow, all of that tempting chocolate bar before bed and not feel guilty.

Basically, use it as a guide to what changes you need to make to your life to move yourself into your zone and/or towards your goal.

If you are trying to lose weight, the important bit is that the colored bar is shorter than the grey bar. It doesn't really matter if it is green, orange or red. It only matters that you maintain a deficit and you are making lifestyle changes that will allow you to maintain your goal weight when you reach it. There is no wrong rate of loss, just statistics that say slow and steady has a greater probability of maintaining goal.

Hope this helps! 

[SebringDon]

@swampmom

Do you have your food plan set to Personalized or Sedentary? When the Personalized setting is used, Fitbit does some calculations in the background estimating how much you're going to exercise for the day, and bases the Daily Calorie Estimate on that. With the Sedentary setting, you only get additional calories to eat after you've earned them by burning calories. Here's a screen shot to show you where that setting is controlled.