Budget Questions

[UrricaDee]

Hi All:

I have some questions regarding my calorie 'budget'. Almost every day last week, I was under budget, on average by 1,000 calories. My calories burned average around 2,500 and my intake is on average about 1,600 calories. I find that most days, I am usually around 300 calories under budget. When I weighed myself this morning at the gym, I found that I had gained a pound. I have never been one to go by the scale; I usually go by how my clothes fit. In fact, I did not start weighing myself again until I got a fitbit. I am wondering if I need to make sure that I am in the green for my budget every day? Or if I need to focus more on where these calories are coming from (i.e. fat, carbs, etc). I do not want to go by the scale, however, I want to make sure that I am maximizing this program. 

Current Height: 5'0

Current Weight: 160

Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!

[farmer2]

id say that depends on your goal. a calorie deficit is how you loose weight for sure. so how much you take in is compared to what you loose. i believe that if your judging by the increase of one pound you should use the scale a few more days in a row so you have better info of consistancy. just dont get discouraged

[Mukluk4]

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@UrricaDee wrote:

Hi All:

. I have never been one to go by the scale; I usually go by how my clothes fit. 

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Go back to this, or track your body fat%.  Weight can fluctuate on an hour by hour basis.

[Baltoscott]

Your numbers sound good to me, but you didn't say how long you've been doing this. (A 1000 cal deficit usually works out to a 1 lb loss/week for me rather than the expected 2, but it varies a lot from week to week).  

I usually say it takes 3 or 4 weeks to sort out daily weight fluctuations to see the real fat loss that is going on.  And I agree with @farmer2 about daily weigh-ins. (Do it the morning on an empty stomach after you wake up so you are same physical state as much as possible). The point of that is not to see the day to day difference but to see the trend over time.  The weekly average of those weigh is a better indication of what is happening to your body than the daily changes. If you link your fitbit account to TrendWeight it will do the averaging for you.

[SunsetRunner]

A weighing scale is essential in the process. I know some people say otherwise ( my wife's friend says she just checks her progress with clothes ) but in fact, the weight is something physical that actually exists on the Earth and is directly related to our body mass and the gravity ( if one remembers physics lectures 🙂 ). The gravity doesn't change which means if our weight changes, our mass does as well. That's why I am not siding with those who exclude a weighing scale entirely from the process of losing their weight as this is the only measurable value ( well, simply saying ).

Now it comes to understand what the weight is. We are built of water, fat, muscles, bones etc. All of it adds to our final weight. Depending on our activity the total weight will change during a day.Hence, not every fluctuation of weight means fat gain or loss ( fat, as this is what probably most of people want to lose ). Just mind that 500ml water weight 500g. Drink it in one go and probably ( depends on your scale accuracy ) you will see such change. But it doesn't mean you gain any fat. Understanding how diet affects us is crucial here and the weight loss process is more complex than it looks like.

Calories deficit is definitely related to the weight loss, but not necessary to the fat loss. For example, in the certain case(s), your body may go into the mode of conserving fat while it starts burning muscles. If your deficit is too high and you don't provide enough calories to sustain your body's basic needs - in other words, you are on a very extreme diet and get your body into the starvation mode. You will definitely lose weight but not necessarily the weight you desire to lose.

I'm not sure what details Fitbit uses to estimate calories burnt but I know that the weight contributes to most of the equations. If you don't check it in on regular basis, then you're not updating your BMR and probably the results you see are more prone to an error. I wasn't checking in my body fat percentage though as I didn't know how to measure it ( I started just now ). Before I got Fitbit I just stuck with MFP assumption of consuming 1500kcal a day. The trouble was that with my previous sedentary lifestyle and my body "dimensions" I wasn't burning enough. Even consuming 1500kcal I'm very close to the maintenance. So in my case numbers shown by Fitbit as cals-in/cals-out are pretty accurate and I could successfully shape my diet around them. Moreover, I discovered that my old "sleep whole weekend and eat very big kebab from a take-away" was the cause of the problem ( I can barely burn 2000kcal throughout a day if I do almost nothing but staying in bed or sofa ). 

If you weigh yourself, do it always in the very same conditions ( same light clothes, same time etc. ). I do recommend however to weigh yourself a later afternoon or the evening simply to see how your body works over the course of a day - mind those changes usually will show higher numbers but learning and understanding that rather than escaping from it is in my opinion better.

My recommendations are:

- don't go crazy about few grams up or down

- weigh yourself and feed the app with data - the more accurate data to work with, the more accurate output. If you rely on the data, the app must have something to work with.

- observe yourself, learn how you change when you drink water, how your body changes after eating certain meals - it will affect your dimensions and weight.

- don't go into crazy deficit - may be hard to sustain, will feel more like a torture rather than desired change in life

- certain situations like gym, food, even changing a position from laying down to sitting will affect your weight - nothing to go crazy about.

- don't over exercise

- you may try to measure and update the app about your body fat percentage

Good luck 🙂

[SunsetRunner]

I wrote a reply, posted and it disappeared. What has just happened? It happened before a long time ago as well but I assumed I just didn't post. This time I even edited the message and it's totally gone 😞

Edit: Below original recovered message:

A weighing scale is essential in the process. I know some people say otherwise ( my wife's friend says she just checks her progress with clothes ) but in fact, the weight is something physical that actually exists on the Earth and is directly related to our body mass and the gravity ( if one remembers physics lectures, 🙂 ). The gravity doesn't change which means if our weight changes, our mass does as well. That's why I am not siding with those who exclude a weighing scale entirely from the process of losing their weight as this is the only measurable value ( well, simply saying ).

Now it comes to understand what the weight is. We are built of water, fat, muscles, bones etc. All of it adds to our final weight. Depending on our activity the total weight will change during a day.Hence, not every fluctuation of weight means fat gain or loss ( fat, as this is what probably most of the people want to lose ). Just mind that 500ml water weight 500g. Drink it in one go and probably ( depends on your scale accuracy ) you will see such change. But it doesn't mean you gain any fat. Understanding how diet affects us is crucial here and the weight loss process is more complex than it looks like.

Calories deficit is definitely related to the weight loss, but not necessary to the fat loss. For example, in the certain case(s), your body may go into the mode of conserving fat while it starts burning muscles. If your deficit is too high and you don't provide enough calories to sustain your body's basic needs - in other words, you are on a very extreme diet and get your body into the starvation mode. You will definitely lose weight but not necessarily the weight you desire to lose.

I'm not sure what details Fitbit uses to estimate calories burnt but I know that the weight contributes to most of the equations. If you don't check it in on regular basis, then you're not updating your BMR and probably the results you see are more prone to an error. I wasn't checking in my body fat percentage though as I didn't know how to measure it ( I started just now ). Before I got Fitbit I just stuck with MFP assumption of consuming 1500kcal a day. The trouble was that with my previous sedentary lifestyle and my body "dimensions" I wasn't burning enough. Even consuming 1500kcal I'm very close to the maintenance. So in my case numbers shown by Fitbit as cals-in/cals-out are pretty accurate and I could successfully shape my diet around them. Moreover, I discovered that my old "sleep whole weekend and eat very big kebab from a take-away" was the cause of the problem ( I can barely burn 2000kcal throughout a day if I do almost nothing but staying in bed or sofa ).

If you weigh yourself, do it always in the very same conditions ( same light clothes, same time etc. ). I do recommend however to weigh yourself a later afternoon or the evening simply to see how your body works over the course of a day - mind those changes usually will show higher numbers but learning and understanding that rather than escaping from it is in my opinion better.

My (non-expert) recommendations are:
- don't go crazy about few grams up or down
- weigh yourself and feed the app with data - the more accurate data to work with, the more accurate output. If you rely on the data, the app must have something to work with.
- observe yourself, learn how you change when you drink water, how your body changes after eating certain meals - it will affect your dimensions and weight.
- don't go into crazy deficit - may be hard to sustain, will feel more like a torture rather than desired change in life
- certain situations like gym, food, even changing a position from laying down to sitting will affect your weight - nothing to go crazy about.
- don't over exercise
- you may try to measure and update the app about your body fat percentage

Good luck 🙂

[Mukluk4]

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@SunsetRunner wrote:

A weighing scale is essential in the process. I know some people say otherwise ( my wife's friend says she just checks her progress with clothes ) but in fact, the weight is something physical that actually exists on the Earth and is directly related to our body mass and the gravity ( if one remembers physics lectures 🙂 ). The gravity doesn't change which means if our weight changes, our mass does as well. That's why I am not siding with those who exclude a weighing scale entirely from the process of losing their weight as this is the only measurable value ( well, simply saying ).

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Gravity's effect on a mass is only constant in a vacuum.  Your body contains significant amounts of water which can be impacted by the moon, bloating, etc.  If you have a scale that measures mass, then I would agree with you.  But most scales are in pounds.  If you were to check your weight every hour for a day, you'll see some wild variations that are pretty much unexplained.

[SunsetRunner]

@Mukluk4 this was a very simplification. I drew a very simple picture that was supposed to tell, the weight is something measurable ( I don't want to go into details that weight is actually a force etc. ). I agree with that body weight changes throughout a day and both internal and external factors play a role here but didn't want to overcomplicate things.

By the way, I can't get used to using pounds - I always switch to kg 😉

[Daves_Not_Here]

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@Mukluk4 wrote:

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@SunsetRunner wrote:

A weighing scale is essential in the process. I know some people say otherwise ( my wife's friend says she just checks her progress with clothes ) but in fact, the weight is something physical that actually exists on the Earth and is directly related to our body mass and the gravity ( if one remembers physics lectures 🙂 ). The gravity doesn't change which means if our weight changes, our mass does as well. That's why I am not siding with those who exclude a weighing scale entirely from the process of losing their weight as this is the only measurable value ( well, simply saying ).

---

Gravity's effect on a mass is only constant in a vacuum.  Your body contains significant amounts of water which can be impacted by the moon, bloating, etc.  If you have a scale that measures mass, then I would agree with you.  But most scales are in pounds.  If you were to check your weight every hour for a day, you'll see some wild variations that are pretty much unexplained.

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Gravitational variation is something I actually know something about.  Besides my education, I'm an amateur clock-maker so I have the gravity geek thing going on.  The problem with pendulum clocks is the frequency of the pendulum varies due to a number of factors including gravitational fluctuations.  These arise from lunar tidal forces and local changes in earth mass such as the level of the water table.  While these micro-forces very slightly affect the frequency of pendulums, they can only be directly measured with special equipment and are undetectable by standard scales.  A person's flatulence has more affect on their weight than gravitational variation. 

I believe the wild variations in weight throughout the day are due primarily to water, food, waste, and perspiration.  And the 1 - 2 pound weight loss at night is due to the conversion of fat to CO2 and water.

Or so I think.  Trying to bring interesting contributions without coming across as an internet know it all!

[Daves_Not_Here]

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@UrricaDee wrote:

... When I weighed myself this morning at the gym, I found that I had gained a pound...

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I think others here have answered you pretty well.  I believe your weight on the scales will fluctuate daily due to water and stomach contents.  One of the benefits of weighing yourself every day is you can see the fluctuations and realize they are not cause for concern.  If tomorrow you weigh two pounds more than today, and you know you did not consume 7,000 excess calories, then you can be comfortable in assuming the change is only transient. 

[SunsetRunner]

@Mukluk4 I find what you wrote quite interesting and I don't mind you mentioning something that interesting. Reading about a pendulum, it is actually a good metaphor for someone's weight maintaining process - it's indeed like a pendulum both in terms of mass fluctuations and a swinging motion.