This weeks deficit

[StephyCara]

I'm a bit confused about the week's deficit.  It is currently saying that I have -1,946.  Does this mean that I have this amount to eat and I should be closer to zero?  I prefer to look at calories on a weekly basis as I sometimes go over (with social occasions) and then can be under on good days when I am working out.  

It just get's confusing as it was showing as a minus sign on Tuesday this week when I looked but I'd gone over by 300 calories the day before and was only half way through the day when I checked on the Tuesday.  Is it because I have my settings to personal so it is trying to work out how much I would have burnt at the end of the day so the -300 something is a guestimate of this?

Any advice and thoughts would be much appreciated.

Thank you. 

[ThatGreen · Accepted solution]

What number you should have there (and what to do about it) depends on whether you are trying to maintain, lose or gain weight.
I have a negative number and I know I'm in a deficit. So I would assume a positive number would mean you're over. If you're maintaining, you should be around zero.

If you hover over the bars in the chart, you can see the in/out for each day as well as the calories over/under.

It would also depend a lot on if you track your food immediately or once or twice a day. I personally track in MFP and manually enter my number at the end of the day, which gives me a huge deficit when I check the tile on my Dashboard during the day because it also counts the calories as the day progresses.
For example, I've burned roughly 1800 calories so far today, but my input for food is still at 0. This inflates my already negative number by 1800. It's basically telling me I have -5700 calories (deficit) for the week, while the numbers for Monday through Thursday would say I had -3900.
When the day is over and I enter my calories eaten I get an adjustment of my actual daily deficit as well as my total deficit.

Hope that helps

[StephyCara]

Thank you for your response. That really helps a lot. My problem, I think, is  I assumed that this deficit was 'after' the reduction of the deficit you have set on your profile. For instance, I'm trying to lose weight and have set my deficit to -500 calories a day. I actually don't mind if a couple of days in the week are -250 calories to allow a little leeway. Going by your post I'm guessing I would need the figure to be no less than -3000 per week to achieve this. The figures do jump about a bit but this could be Fitbit trying to guess how many calories you're going to burn for that day. I also use MFP but have this set to sync automatically with Fitbit so my food calories get carried over. I tend to enter things in advance with a few last minute changes. 

Thanks again. 

[ThatGreen]

Yes, if you were to be on a strict -500 calories per day plan, you would have to have -3500 at the end of the week, but if you do two days as -250, -3000 for the week would be correct. Happy to see that there are more people out there that are flexible about their deficit.

The figures in the bars at least seem to update to whatever your calorie burn is every time you sync. I'm assuming since you have MFP connected, that will also update every time it's synced.

Happy to help