Part 1: Fitbit Food Plan Basics

[SebringDon]

Table of Contents

Part 1: Fitbit Food Plan Basics

Part 2: Fitbit's Food Plan In-Depth

Part 3: Fitbit's Food Plan Tracking Tools

Part 4: Tips for Fitbit Weight Loss Success

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Calories In - Calories Out: The Basics

Scientific note: what we call calories from a weight loss perspective are actually kilocalories, or 1000 calories, from a scientific viewpoint. For our purposes, you can now forget that. We'll be speaking of calories from a weight loss perspective.

Barring other medical conditions (consult a doctor before starting your weight loss plan) weight loss is a matter of following a simple formula: Calories In - Calories Out.

A pound of weight represents about 3500 calories. Eat 3500 calories less than you burn in a period of time, and you'll lose about a pound of weight. Eat 500 calories a day less than you burn, and you'll lose a pound of weight in a week. (500 * 7 = 3500)

That doesn't mean you have to (or should) starve yourself, however. The kind of food you eat can help, since some foods provide better nourishment than others that have similar calorie counts. Your body also helps by burning calories all the time, even when you're sleeping.

Your Basal Metabolic Rate 

The rate at which your body burns calories while at rest to keep vital functions going, such as breathing and keeping warm, is called your Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR. Your BMR is based on several factors; height, weight, gender, and age are the most important. Most people have a BMR between 1200 and 1600 calories per day.

You may have wondered why Fitbit asked for your height, weight, age, and gender as part of the setup routine. Now you know why. They use those figures to calculate your BMR.

It's a good idea to know your own BMR. The simplest way is to use the BMR calculator at MyFitnessPal. You can try it at http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator

Your BMR normally represents well over half of the calories you burn each day.

Activity Calories

We'll refer to the calories you burn each day in excess of your BMR as Activity Calories. Note that it's not very hard to accumulate Activity Calories. Just sitting up in a chair using a computer consumes about half again as many calories as you burn at rest. Standing or walking slowly burns about twice your BMR. Walking at a reasonable rate triples your calorie burn rate, and a very brisk walk can burn five times the calories you burn at rest. These multipliers are called Metabolic Equivalent Tasks, or METs. Harvard School of Public Health provides a basic list of some METs at the link below, but there are far more extensive lists available if you search the Internet.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/mets-activity-table/

Weight Loss Guidelines

We all want the weight gone tomorrow, but it's much healthier to lose weight at a rate that avoids doing long-term damage to your body for short-term gains from a lower weight. Losing weight too fast is a recipe for long-term failure. While consulting your doctor before starting any weight-loss plan is the best idea, here are some general guidelines. Keep in mind these are upper limits. You can lose weight more slowly and still be headed in the right direction.

When you have more than 40 lbs to lose, 2 pounds a week is reasonable.
From 40 to 20 pounds, you should plan to lose no more than 1.5 lbs a week.
From 20 to 10 pounds, plan 1 pound a week.
Under 10 pounds, plan 1/2 pound a week.

With that schedule, you're much less likely to burn muscle mass that you'll just have to rebuild once you hit your target weight, and you'll have less trouble maintaining your new weight after you hit your target, because you're avoiding the problems that come with a starvation diet. Your goal is healthy weight loss that's sustainable.

Starvation Dieting

A starvation diet is aptly named. You're starving your body of the nutrients it needs to work properly, and that results in several problems. While the weight may be flying off, your body is consuming muscle as well as fat. Muscle takes a lot of time and effort to rebuild, unlike fat, so you're doing long-term damage for short-term gain. Secondly, you're training your body to survive on a tiny amount of food, which means all your systems are working at sub-par. Finally, you're slowing your metabolic rate, which means that the more weight you lose, the less your body will be able to burn. You're setting yourself up to gain weight rapidly if you ever go back to anything approaching a normal eating routine.

Putting It Together

You've got the basic information you need for dieting now. Food provides calories, and your body burns them, both for basic maintenance tasks and when you engage in activities more energetic than laying around. The more energetic the activity, the more calories you'll burn. If you burn more than you consume, you'll lose weight at the rate of one pound for every 3500 extra calories you burn. You've got some information about healthy vs. unhealthy dieting, a guideline for how fast you should lose weight, and some important information about the dangers of a starvation diet. Now let's see how Fitbit puts that all together in the Food Plan and the tools they provide for tracking how closely you're following that plan.

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Table of Contents

Part 1: Fitbit Food Plan Basics

Part 2: Fitbit's Food Plan In-Depth

Part 3: Fitbit's Food Plan Tracking Tools

Part 4: Tips for Fitbit Weight Loss Success

[SebringDon]

Thanks to @ErickFitbit and the Fitbit team for reviewing this to make sure I had the basics down pat.

[Dominique]

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@SebringDon wrote:

With that schedule, you're much less likely to burn muscle mass that you'll just have to rebuild once you hit your target weight

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Thanks, @SebringDon, for the effort to put this great info for the benefit of other Fitbitters!

I have a comment about the above: you seem to imply that losing weight and (re)gaining muscle are two non-concomitant processes: first you lose weight, then you try to regain some of the muscle you’ve lost. However, it’s generally considered a good idea to proactively minimize muscle loss during weight loss, by eating enough protein and doing resistance training. I understand your series of posts focused on nutrition, but you may want to mention this.

[SebringDon]

@Dominique

Good point. I hope it was clear that I was encouraging people to pick a weight loss schedule that would avoid burning up muscle mass. With so much to cover about the Food Plan itself, I tried not to get derailed into nutrition and exercise issues, other than a couple of general notes that there is much to learn about those areas as well. In truth, the whole process is a three-legged stool, and the Food Plan is one of those legs, with nutrition and exercise as the other two legs.

I tackled the Food Plan leg first because it's the area where Fitbit has concentrated its focus from a software perspective, and I'm a long-time software guy and tech writer. Nutrition and exercise, on the other hand, are relatively new subjects to me. 😄

[sueb1997]

Quote from your original post: "Just sitting up in a chair using a computer consumes about half again as many calories as you burn at rest."

I'm very glad to have seen this, and it raises a question for me.  When I'm sitting and using the computer, my tracker shows far less calories burned than half-again my BMR.  (It goes up by only 1-2 calories per 15 minute period as compared to my sleep time or when I take the tracker off.)  My evidence-based suspicion is that my actual BMR is lower than the calculated BMR that fitbit is using.

Do you have any advice on how to adjust my tracker to lower my BMR?  (I have a Charge HR)

Thanks!

Sue

[CarolinaMoon]

Thanks so much, this is wonderful!

I do have a question ... my Basal Metabolic Rate is very low, around 900, but Fitbit estimates it quite a bit higher, of course.  Is there a way to enter my measured BMR, rather than rely on their estimate?

[sueb1997]

@CarolinaMoon, may I ask how you were able to determine your actual BMR?  I am pretty sure mine is lower than fitbit's estimate and I have the same question for them about how to tell it to use a given number instead of the estimate -- but I have only my own suspicions about my actual BMR, as I didn't know how to measure it.  Appreciate any input you have on that!  And I sure wish fitbit would answer our question about customizing the settings.

[CarolinaMoon]

I had a consultation with a dietician last week and they measured my Resting Metabolic Rate (is that the same as BMR?) by analyzing my breath over 10 minutes.  Not sure how accurate these measures are, but I was told my RMR of a 890 is "very low," equivalent to that of people who have been dieting for years and years, or are on a starvation diet.  I've done neither, so go figure.  I have my annual physical exam in a few weeks so will definitely have them check thyroid levels.  

[sueb1997]

Thanks!  I don't know if they are the same either, but it sounds like the same concept.

I just know I have a low metabolism and when Fitbit measures my resting-but-awake (ie sitting in a chair) calorie burn as the same as my sleeping calorie burn, I can only assume that my sleeping calorie burn is even lower than they are estimating, because there is theoretically a pretty noticeable difference between sleeping BMR and sitting/awake BMR.

My thyroid is low-ish but not outside of the normal range.  If you learn anything interesting in that regard, would love to hear about it as I might learn from your situation.  Thanks again!

And yet again, wouldn't it be nice if Fitbit would reply and tell us how to set a custom BMR setting when we know the auto-estimates are incorrect.

[bob2dogs]

This is an excellent explanation of a difficult, complex topic.  Thank you, @SebringDon.

[elderwanda]

I notice that your "Edit Plan" button on the web app is not permanently greyed-out, and that you can actually use it to edit the plan.  Mine is just a grey button that turns pink when I hover over it, but nothing happens if I push it.  I wonder what that's all about.  I need to go to my iphone app if i want to edit my plan.

[Calathea77]

Your article says that a starvation diet is a bad idea.  I entirely agree.  Now please stop my Fitbit from suggesting that I should only be eating 708 calories a day, or at least give me the option to remove the calories tiles from my dashboard.  It is pushing a starvation diet on me, and it's actively dangerous.  When I originally decided to diet, I dug out MyFitnessPal and set my calorie allowance at a sensible 1250 (I'm small, inactive due to disability, aiming for slow weight loss of 0.5ln/week).  Despite not having authorised it that I know of, it automatically connected with Fitbit, and Fitbit overrode that allowance and changed it to around 700.  Eating such a VLCD (Very Low Calorie Diet) would put me in hospital.  Please set a minimum calorie allowance in place, adjusted for gender, so that this doesn't happen. 

More importantly, give people the option to hide all calorie-related tiles.  There are a lot of people out there with eating disorders who would find it extremely stressful, if not downright harmful, to have an activity tracker encouraging anorexia.  I don't have an eating disorder and I'm still finding it stressful.  I eventually worked out how to disconnect it from MFP, as it was unpleasant to eat a sensible amount for the day and be told I was 550 calories over budget.  Especially when I was only there to check my sleep stats for the night!

While you're at it, the app assumes that going more than 50 calories over or under budget is a big deal.  No, it isn't.  Plenty of people cycle their calories on a regular basis, and keep an eye on what the average for the week is. My calories last week ranged from 1042 to 1447, averaging 1240.  That's a stable eating pattern.  Some people practise Intermittent Fasting in a pattern which involves restricting calories primarily on two or three days a week, and are healthy on it.  Again, hassling people over normal eating behaviour is stressful and likely to worsen any psychological problems people have with eating.  If you think people with eating disorders are a small minority not worth taking into consideration, think again.  Eating disorder rates are high, even in childhood, and far higher amongst people who are dieting.

I would suggest setting automatic minimum calorie allowances for men and women, making them customisable but with a warning if they go below a certain number (some people will temporarily be on 500 cal diets prior to weight loss surgery, for instance, but only under medical supervision and for a short time), checking your algorithms because they're evidently calculating calories burned wrong (it thinks I should be gaining weight on a calorie allowance which is causing 0.5-1lb/week weight loss), and making it optional to hide all calorie-related info.  In fact, a box you could tick to hide the lot would be amazing, as well as making individual tiles hidable.  A lot of people find the best way to tackle their fitness is to focus on exercising, and to ignore calorie-counting because it stresses them out so much it causes binge/restrict cycles.  Also let people decide at what point they want their calorie intake flagged up as over or under.  50 calories is ridiculous.

[SleepyBiker]

Extremely Helpful! thank you very much!