Am I really losing 5k calories a day?

[PandaBear]

Hey guys I just recently purchased my fitbit charge HR for that extra motivation when working out but there are some things I'm a bit skeptical about...

First off I guess I should put some details in, I'm male, around 6'0 and am currently 265lb. I was 300lb about 3 months ago and have been dieting and working out casually. But once I hit 265lb it's been slowing down so I stepped it up and started to rotate jogging 3 miles in the morning before work and swimming around half a mile while doing crunches and weights the next day but I'm still stuck at 265lb?

My diet consist of usually a salad with honey mustard for low calories and rice with skinless chicken thighs (nothing on chicken except hot sauce). So my calorie intake everyday is roughly 1250 - 2000...

I average around 20k steps every day from working out/work and average 4500-6000 calories a day according to my fitbit (800-900 calories burned from sleep aparently). So can anyone explain what I'm doing wrong?

I do weigh a lot but it's not a lot of fat since I've worked manual labor jobs my entire life and don't drink soda or eat candy. Just a lot of bored eating when I was younger.

Anyways sorry for the wall of text, I'm new here and want to give as much of information as I can so that maybe I can et a more accurate answer.

TLDR :: If I'm eating 1.5k calories and burning 5k calories a day why am I not losing weight at such a high weight level?

P.S - my friend loaned me his pedometer and they both are fairly close in steps except his doesn't have a calorie burner or heartbeat sensor.

Thanks guys!

[PandaBear]

Double posted accidently, bad internet on phone...

[Incognito]

I could be wrong, but what your fitbit is calculating is based on activity.  However, your body is dynamic and I do believe your body is adjusting to the minimal amount of calorie intake and going into calorie saving or starvation mode.

I think that is why you need to have cheat days to spike your metabolism and jump start it again.  But I could be wrong.

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@PandaBear wrote:
Hey guys I just recently purchased my fitbit charge HR for that extra motivation when working out but there are some things I'm a bit skeptical about...

First off I guess I should put some details in, I'm male, around 6'0 and am currently 265lb. I was 300lb about 3 months ago and have been dieting and working out casually. But once I hit 265lb it's been slowing down so I stepped it up and started to rotate jogging 3 miles in the morning before work and swimming around half a mile while doing crunches and weights the next day but I'm still stuck at 265lb?

My diet consist of usually a salad with honey mustard for low calories and rice with skinless chicken thighs (nothing on chicken except hot sauce). So my calorie intake everyday is roughly 1250 - 2000...

I average around 20k steps every day from working out/work and average 4500-6000 calories a day according to my fitbit (800-900 calories burned from sleep aparently). So can anyone explain what I'm doing wrong?

I do weigh a lot but it's not a lot of fat since I've worked manual labor jobs my entire life and don't drink soda or eat candy. Just a lot of bored eating when I was younger.

Anyways sorry for the wall of text, I'm new here and want to give as much of information as I can so that maybe I can et a more accurate answer.

TLDR :: If I'm eating 1.5k calories and burning 5k calories a day why am I not losing weight at such a high weight level?

P.S - my friend loaned me his pedometer and they both are fairly close in steps except his doesn't have a calorie burner or heartbeat sensor.

Thanks guys!

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[Raviv]

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@PandaBear wrote:

My diet consist of usually a salad with honey mustard for low calories and rice with skinless chicken thighs (nothing on chicken except hot sauce). So my calorie intake everyday is roughly 1250 - 2000...

I average around 20k steps every day from working out/work and average 4500-6000 calories a day according to my fitbit (800-900 calories burned from sleep aparently). So can anyone explain what I'm doing wrong?

TLDR :: If I'm eating 1.5k calories and burning 5k calories a day why am I not losing weight at such a high weight level?

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Your input is 1250-2000 calories and your output is 4500-6000 calories.  So you're functioning at a caloric deficit of anywhere between 2500 and 4750 calories.  You're really active with nothing to fuel it.  That's not good.

Right now your brain is sending signals to your body, telling it to conserve energy and store fat because there's obviously some kind of food shortage and it must protect itself.  You don't want that.

Try upping the calories a bit so you have about a 1,000 or so calorie deficit.  Instead of cutting more calories and ramping up your activity even more (creating an even larger deficit), try changing the quality of your food.  The combination of more/better nutrients and your body not clinging to fat stores for dear life might help in the long run.

By better quality foods, I mean whole, more natural foods.  Cruise the produce and meat section.  Eat eggs, nuts, fruit, vegetables, quality meat and seafood.  Avoid most boxed food.  You don't have to be perfect, just strive for better than yesterday.

[awood08]

@Raviv is right. I kept working out more frequent and increased intensity and leaving my calorie intake at 1200 while burning close to 3000 a day. I hit a wall and stopped losing weight. Once I upped my calories and adjusted my numbers accordingly I started losing again. Good luck!

[Mege]

Hi there!!

I'm wondering about your rice portions. Sumo wrestlers eat tons of rice to maintain their weight, so that could be a factor.

If you're stuck, just keep trying variations that might get you unstuck. Having a higher calorie day each week is a really good suggestion. Green tea with Stevia and increasing your water intake are simple to try out also.

Just keep going!!

[PandaBear]

Thanks so much for the fast responses everyone!

I measured out the rice and it's roughly 2 cups of cooked Korean rice which I wash thoroughly before cooking. Along with a peice of chicken about the size of my palm.

I guess I'll try keeping a bag of nuts on me and munch on them throughout the day at work and try that out. Any suggestions on nuts?

Also what are your opinions on whey protein shakes for breakfast? (I am not a breakfast person, but I can chug one of those for breakfast if need be.)

[Mege]

Unsalted almonds and walnuts are both good choices. I have four different types of nuts in my desk all the time 🙂

I make whey smoothies before I go to the gym - not everyone likes the orange/vanilla combination, but I love it. 4 oz vanilla skyr, 4 oz orange juice, 2 handfulls of frozen berries, green tea powder, vanilla whey powder (20g of protein!) and benefiber (orange flavor).

I have read that the morning protein boost is really important to weight loss, so the whey makes it easy to do even if you don't feel like eating early in the day.

[Raviv]

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@PandaBear wrote:

I guess I'll try keeping a bag of nuts on me and munch on them throughout the day at work and try that out. Any suggestions on nuts?

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It depends on what you like and what philosophy you use.

I love cashews, but they're one of the highest carb nuts around.  I could easily binge on them and make almost no progress.  So I have them when I'm at a party or something, but I don't buy them for myself.

Almonds are good, and if you want, there are tons of recipes on the internet about how to season them so they're even better.

I'll have dry roasted peanuts sometimes too, just because you can get them almost anywhere and I can have just a few.

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@PandaBear wrote:

Also what are your opinions on whey protein shakes for breakfast? (I am not a breakfast person, but I can chug one of those for breakfast if need be.)

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I know I said whole foods are best, for the most part, but I do have a low carb whey protein shake for breakfast maybe twice a week.  Isopure has a pretty good chocolate one, and Combat makes some interesting flavors that aren't perfectly natural.  But life isn't perfect, so...

I use them because I otherwise wouldn't have anything more than iced coffee with whole milk for breakfast, which sometimes happens too (like today).  Some days I just know I need more protein, and it's a good way to get it and then not have to worry about it so much later on.

[Heybales]

I only comment on it because I've seen others express surprise that they were supposed to measure their say pasta before cooking.

For serving size - are you weighing the rice prior to cooking and basing your serving size and calories off of that - not after cooked?

Any estimates of serving size after being cooked are merely for convience, and not required, and no where near as accurate as the label serving size was based on.

Because amount of water can vary greatly - they can only guess. But dry is much more known.

And volume measurement is highly suspect.

Do you measure or weigh out the quantity to be cooked - that you then scoop your 2 cups from?

There is a way to do it with more than just what you'll eat if you like to make up a bigger batch at once.

And I agree with others - that potential calorie burn sounds totally realistic for your height/weight and sounds like activity level.

Then again - Fitbit is estimating that for healthy body that is average matching yours.

If by eating too little in your efforts, you could have changed that formula to unhealthy body and no longer truly burning that amount.

The body will find a way to adapt to craziness.

[Kcpiper]

Check this out.  I had a similar issue.

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Charge-HR/Extremely-high-calories-burned-per-day/m-p/913666#M47394

[Kasparas]

I'm a dietitian and a climber and have fitbit.

What is to do with calories the simple watch on your wrist is never gonna be accurate.

Mine says I'm burning 5k-6k a day and I eat around 3k. That's been going on for 6months ... I should be technically dead but I'm not and actually I put on 4kilos past that time.

My suggestion - look at your steps, maintain your sleep and heart rate but do not look at the calories. They shouldn't even be on there 

[Heybales]

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@Kasparas wrote:

I'm a dietitian and a climber and have fitbit.

What is to do with calories the simple watch on your wrist is never gonna be accurate.

Mine says I'm burning 5k-6k a day and I eat around 3k. That's been going on for 6months ... I should be technically dead but I'm not and actually I put on 4kilos past that time.

My suggestion - look at your steps, maintain your sleep and heart rate but do not look at the calories. They shouldn't even be on there 

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For every person like you that says this is crazy count must ignore it - you'll find equal number that know how to do the math as you and can see their rate of loss exactly matches what the numbers say it should be - therefore it works great for them.

So blanket statements are as useful as the calorie count is for you.

The devices at default setup can be good estimates for average person with average activity levels and types of workouts.

Once they are tweaked and used better (like stride length, manually logging some workouts that HR-based calorie burn is terrible for, HRmax value) they can become good estimates for wider audience.

But for some they will always be off.

If your maintenance is that high, you are far removed from average user in general.

Then again - it could simply be you get almost 20K steps daily, and the default stride length is off and that makes a terrible compounded error once calories is calculated from distance. In that case a simple correction could help you.

Then again - you could be a daily multi-hour CrossFitter that is understandably rather sedentary outside the workouts - and a HR-based calorie burn is always going to be badly inflated and correction won't be possible.