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@jivegal4 - is your food plan set to personalized or sedentary? I tend to use my computer more than my phone, so this is how you check on a computer. I think when you look at the difference on mine you'll likely be able to figure out how yours is set up.
On your log, hover over the little gear-like icon on the top right of your food plan. You should see this:
Personalized will look at your past history and set a number at the beginning of the day. It should go up during the day as you exercise. Sedentary assumed at the point where you are looking at your food plan that you will lay back down for the rest of the day.
My numbers for both right now are: Personalized - 1968, Sedentary - 928
This is the basic number that you should eat. Now, 928 calories for me would be a disaster, however, I have my deficit set to -1000 calories. So, this means that the software thinks that totally prone I'm going to burn 1928. They should be basically the same rate as this is an estimate of your RMR. I don't think it really matters which one you use. I have a mental calories burned target for the day (3500) so I use the sedentary setting. As I log food it will give me an estimate of where I'll end up if I simply stop and do nothing for the rest of the day. This tends to motivate me more. A quick note, if I were ill and/or injured I would likely ignore the -1000 calorie deficit as you need to recover/heal. Eating below your RMR is usually not recommended. My opinion is that except for an occasional low day this shouldn't be done long term.
Okay, the other indicators are the same on the phone and the computer. Note that the numbers are slightly higher as some time has passed and I continue to burn calories while sitting here typing.
I actually had to turn on the one that looks like a fuel gage. I frankly don't use it. I logged a food I haven't actually eaten to give an example. I've eaten 80 calories (and if you look on the left one, it's expecting 940 as my complete intake for the day... again, assuming I do nothing more) yet burned only 784. At the moment it considers me under (I should eat more). This one is more complicated, although I understand basically how it works (math is my thing). It's 9:30 am (9.5 hours out of 24) - so I should have consumed 39.6 % of my calories for the day. If I've eaten less I'm under, if I've eaten more I'm over. When you have your settings set to sedentary this metric is less usefull. Also depending on your eating and excercize patterns it can swing from under to over in the blink of an eye and back. If your set to personalized it is more helpful, but again, depending on when you eat your calories you may be under for a lot of the day.
I look at the one on the left more, but I also understand that the number is crazy low in the morning. If I've had a less active day I occasionally will have dinner and go over my calories earned (for lack of a better word). So, at the moment I can eat 940 calories and I've logged 80. I can continue to eat calories.
LOL - I'm not sure that is more clear. I also realized that I don't really look at any of the numbers until later in the day. I go about my life, eat what I want, and sort it all out mid-afternoon or later. If I've had a crazy busy day I may have a more substantial snack in the afternoon. If I've been at my desk, or a complete slug on the weekend, I'll eat less until I force myself to get up and move some more. Even after 8 months of successful weight loss I admit that my natural state is rest. As much as weight loss and fitness are about building new habits I have 50 years of bad habits to break. For me at least it's not a simple process.
Completely off topic from what you asked, but there's a saying that it takes 21 days to form a new habit. It's a bit of an urban myth: http://jamesclear.com/new-habit
Best AnswerThank you so much for your response! Just a quick Question, do you have the FitBit Charge HR? I cannot find the options you are talking about.
I am still struggling with when I sync to my phone or laptop the calories drop? I took pics to show you. 928 was before it sync'd then it went down to 290
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No problems, most of us want to help. My apologies as I thought it was more of a calories left to eat issue, not the calories burned on the tracker. I do actually wear a Charge HR and I've never seen that happen. Let me clarify that - I own both a Blaze and a Charge HR. I have seen that happen a week or so back when they were both physically close to my laptop (was in a hotel and the dresser was right beside the desk in the second hotel, didn't happen in the first one). I came back from a long walk and lost thousands of steps. As I don't know what my calories burned were, I may have gone backwards on them as well. My solution was to put the second tracker in the bathroom and that solved it. At home I'm wearing one and the other sits about 15 ft away from where I use my laptop (and keep it plugged in to charge). If you don't have a second tracker I would definitely contact support. Calories burned and steps shouldn't go down during the day.
As to how to get to the food plan on your laptop, from the Dashboard, click on Log.
Then just hover your mouse pointer over the gear icon until the personalized/sedentary box shows up.
Today (for me) if I choose Personalized I'm told I can eat 2563 calories (this uses my past activity). If I choose Sedentary I'm told I can eat 2151 calories. This assumes I'm going to do nothing else today.
Let's see, I planted 200 anemone bulbs, 20 hyacinth bulbs, 16 tulip bulbs, and 21 daffodil bulbs. I should have done more but I called it a day to come in and make dinner and do some laundry. I should boot up my work laptop and do some work, but probably won't.
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