Calorie allowance is insane!

[loggamatt]

Ok, I cannot make sense of this calorie allowance. I am a male, 36, 6'3" and just under 300lbs. Today I walked 10,000 steps, but no other exercise. Fitbit says I can eat 3,297 calories and still lose weight (I have it set to the max calorie deficit). How can that possibly be right??

Lets talk that through in McDonalds terms shall we? I start my day with a sausage and egg McMuffin, hash brown, and wash it down with a calorie laden caramel latte. For lunch, lets go for a Big Mac meal with a full fat coke... mmm... delicious! For dinner, I think I'll have a double quarter pounder meal with cheese and another full fat coke. An apple pie as my evening snack takes me up to just over 3,297 calories.

Apparently, I can eat that every day and not only will I not gain weight, I will actually lose weight! If this was even remotely true, I wouldn't be fat in the first place!! lol Insanity...

[Dominique]

You can use this online calculator for a "second opinion" about the calories you’re burning. A step count of 10k would put you somewhere between "light" and "moderate" (as far as activity level). With your numbers, you would burn between 3268 and 3683. It’s usually the case your Fitbit gives a higher estimate, hence the "insane" calorie allowance. Just factor that in, eat something like 2700 and see what happens on the scale (over time). Make adjustments if needed.

[loggamatt]

Thanks, but I have mine set to the extreme deficit, which subtracts 1000 calories from my daily total, as I understand it. So Fitbit is therefore saying that I could eat over 4000 calories per day, with 10k steps, and not gain weight. That can't even be in the rough ballpark of right, can it? I could eat a whole pizza for dinner every day and not gain weight if that's true. This is why I say "insane" - it's not just reading a few hundred calories high, it's beyond crazy high. I mean, what kind of diet says you could eat the calorie equivalent of McDonalds burgers 3 meals per day and lose weight? I'm not getting my head around this...

[Baltoscott]

The first step is ... stop eating all your meals at McDonalds! 😁

I agree it seems high @loggamatt.  But not quite has high as you might think.  You are a pretty big guy and probably can lose weight for a while at 3200 calories a day, but here is another 'second estimate' you might try -- NIH Body Weight Planner.

Using your numbers and a 1.4 activity level (the calculator default which describes someone who mostly sits at work and does moderate physical activity such as walking or cycling once a week), you would maintain your current weight if you ate about 3800 cal/day and could lose 10% of your body weight in 90 days if you dropped down to 2300 cal/day.  That is pretty aggressive, but if you stretched out the timeline to 270 days, you could eat almost 3200 cal/day.  (To your point, Fibit seems to think you get the same loss in about 60 days).  

Neither estimate is likely to be exactly what will happen when you start cutting your calories, but my guess is that the NIH calculator will be closer.  I agree with @Dominique that you ought to start somewhere around 2700-2800 a day for a month or so as that is probably sustainable for you on a everyday basis (as opposed to the 5 days a week that most people actually do when they cut way back).  Give that a shot for 4 weeks and let us know if it is workable and how it moves the scale.  

[Glenda]

@loggamatt   Just my opinion and guesses, not looking at all the charts and calculations etc,  I'll bet you are eating about 3000 calories a day now.  If you ate 2500 calories a day going forward you would lose 2 pounds a week.    In 6 moths you would weigh 250 pounds (50 pounds less).   100 calories a day supports 10 pounds of fat.  According to Better Homes and Gardens magazine this month most  people who start a new regular exercise program usually eat 124 calories a day more.  They don't lose weight.   Don't get on that merry-go round  about exercise a little and eat more.  Forget about calories burned.   People who don't lose weight fast don't have loose skin.  You can't lose or fix loose skin it takes a painful expensive surgery to eliminate it.

[Dominique]

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@loggamatt wrote:

I have mine set to the extreme deficit, which subtracts 1000 calories from my daily total, as I understand it. So Fitbit is therefore saying that I could eat over 4000 calories per day, with 10k steps, and not gain weight.

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Is your Fitbit telling you you are burning 5000+ calories a day with 10k steps? If so, it’s way off. Just keep in mind estimating calories burned with a fitness tracker isn’t exact science. Don’t get fixated on that number and use common sense: you probably know you are not going to lose weight eating 4000+ calories, regardless of the numbers displayed on your Fitbit. Doesn’t mean it’s useless and should be dumped: you can still use it for a number of other reasons, like motivating you to be active enough.

[loggamatt]

Fitbit is telling me that I burned 3,987 calories yesterday with 10k steps and no other exercise. This just seems crazy to me, as 10k steps isn't unusual for me. So the fact that I've gained weight over time means I must have been averaging over 4,000 calories per day eaten if these numbers are right. I'd have to be eating takeout most days, or eating lots of chocolate and things between meals, or guzzling sugary drinks to hit that kind of calorie consumption surely... and I haven't.

I feel like to eat 2700-2800 per day I'm going to have to actively try to eat more rather than less, which is why I can't wrap my head around this. Who eats more food to try to lose weight?? lol When I've successfully dieted in the past I tried to eat around 1600-1800 calories per day.

I'm going to try to do the 2700-2800 calories per day though, if nothing else but to prove that Fitbit's numbers are way off. Will report back in a few weeks!

[Dominique]

If Fitbit says you burned a tad under 4000 with 10k steps, it’s probably 400-800 above the actual number (wich would not be that bad IMO). With the hardest plan (1000 deficit), you would be eating about 3000 and should be losing weight, though not as much as predicted. Eating 2700-2800 should provide a "safety margin" that should result in weight loss. Keep in mind that there is also a margin of error for calories in, and that many people tend to underestimate their intake, especially when they are new at logging. All the best with your endeavour!

[moriahcat]

I agree that the numbers it gives don't account for body fat composition in the basal metabolic rate, especially for people who may have significant body fat.  I've submitted a request for them to beta using the Katch-McArdle formula for people who have linked smart scales, and if it gets votes maybe they will consider it.

What I did to make the Fitbit more accurately calculate my burn was use the information from my smart scale about body fat percentage and my weight, run it through a TDEE Calculator and choose the Katch-McArdle equation as well as the St. Joer one.  I'm a 5'1 female and there's a 175 calorie difference between the two because my body fat is so high.

Then I used a bunch of sync software between Fitbit, Google Fit, my smart scale, and Samsung Health.  (GFit imports from my smart scale to Samsung Health, I diary my food in Samsung health cuz I've been using it then send it to Fitbit for energy intake).  Set my weight in Fitbit to be a weight that gave it a basic background burn similar to the Katch-McArdle (not quite my ideal weight, but only 5 lbs heavier than what would be "overweight" by BMI compared to what I *really* weigh...), then set a 12 lb goal.  And boom, it's showing daily burn rates on sedentary days and calorie goals that are pretty close to what I'd been expecting, vs being told I should be losing weight eating far more than what's realistic for me.

In order to keep using this trick, every time the smart scale says I've lost about 5% body fat or every 10 lbs I will have to redo the equations, to keep from going into starvation mode or hitting a plateau.  I may have to tell Fitbit I'm gaining weight! lol.  But it is working thus far.

[DCarnuchi]

Actually a 500 calorie a day deficit would lose 1 pound a week. (3500 calories = 1 pound).

[Dominique]

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@DCarnuchi wrote:

Actually a 500 calorie a day deficit would lose 1 pound a week. (3500 calories = 1 pound).

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That’s indeed what’s generally accepted, but who said otherwise in this topic?

[DCarnuchi]

@Glenda wrote. " I'll bet you are eating about 3000 calories a day now.  If you ate 2500 calories a day going forward you would lose 2 pounds a week."  I thought I was replying to her post but it ended up on the bottom where it didn't make much sense. Sorry about that. It was my fist post. I agree with what @Glenda also said. Just set a calorie limit and don't worry about Fitbit's bogus calorie bonus if you exercise extra.    

[moriahcat]

One thing that I found helpful when first starting out -- with or without a device measuring a background caloric burn -- was to spend a week or two not actively *trying* to diet, but logging everything that went in my mouth.

First, I do believe there was some psychological incentive value from simply being mindful of what I ate to eat less.  Learning the value of liquid calories, for example... yeah, was huge incentive to make the lifestyle change of replacing them with (for me, cuz I cheat, flavored) water.  

Second, I weighed myself and tried to keep track of the basic trend over that time, again without necessarily restricting or starting a new exercise routine, and it gave me an idea of if I was gaining/losing/staying steady at a certain calorie level.  

We can try to math it to death, and yes I do track my intake rigorously, but everyone's metabolism is going to be different.  

OP, one other question: if you on the web you go go to foods/log, then look for a blue settings link under the "Food Plan" tab, does it have you as "personalized" or "sedentary"?  Some have said placing it in "Sedentary" mode gave them a more realistic calorie budget.

[Glenda]

@Dominique @DCarnuchi  I did and I was wrong.  You are right.  

[loggamatt]

But I just don't understand why we're all ok with paying for a device that gives you incorrect information. If you bought a car and posted on a forum "I feel like I'm going faster than the speedometer says I am..." and people replied "oh, yeah, that figure is usually way off! You can be going, like, 30mph faster than that says you are" you would be horrified and looking to return the car. But we all seem ok with saying "all those widgets on Fitbit that calculate calorie burn for you? They're way off, just ignore them, pick a calorie limit and stick to it." I mean, I could have set a calorie limit and stuck to it without buying a Fitbit in the first place 😝

Anyway, I've started now eating around 2,500 calories per day with 10k steps. This is about halfway between what Fitbit tells me I can eat, and the amount of calories I've aimed to eat in the past when dieting. I don't believe for one second that I can lose weight eating 2,500 calories per day, so I think I'll either maintain or gain a little. So I'll give it 2 weeks, and when I'm proven right throw out the Fitbit, put a normal watch on again, and knock my calories down to 1,600-1,800 which is what I think I need to in order to lose weight. And before anyone says I'm just not logging correctly, I intend to be really scientific about this. Any food I eat will either be weighed, or if it's prepared food typed in from the nutritional info on the packet. No restaurant food unless they're a restaurant who publish calories so I can type them in.

[moriahcat]

Eh, I'm not *that* okay with it.  I still wish that Fitbit would consider allowing a user to choose the BMR the device uses, or give the option of calculating it with the Katch-McArdle equation. 

But I am enough of a technogeek that I could link several apps together, so I don't have Fitbit tracking my weight, just my burn.  As I said, by telling Fitbit I weighed much less, I get a much more realistic calorie burn.  It's measuring correctly for me.. .as long as I feed it data more like a slightly overweight person wanting to lose a little, vs a technically obese person wanting to lose a lot.

Plus, I was looking for something that would tell me my HR during machine exercise at the gym.  A chest strap was $10 less than this Charge 3, which was on sale.  The chest straps are more accurate, but as I need a stopsemfromfloppin while I work out, they are a little uncomfortable for me.  For $10 more and a little technical frustration, I'm getting something that tracks my sleep and (with my tweaks) gives me an idea of what I'm burning on lazy days, as well as telling me how long I stay at a cardio heartrate when I exercise.  It's worth it for me.

[loggamatt]

It's a shame that a consumer device makes you go to that much effort in syncing together different things, and manually fooling the algorithm by typing in the wrong weight in order to make it work though. Very few people will go to that much effort. Most people will just go "wow! I can eat 3000+ calories today?? Off to Pizza Hut I go!" then gain rather than lose, and give up. The whole thing seems very misleading.

I find this screenshot confusing too (bearing in mind I've only just started logging food, so the weekly averages aren't accurate yet). On the days I have logged food, the bars show that I burned more calories than I consumed. Yet the smaller calorie bars are red, which is labelled 'over'. How can that bar be 'over' if it's smaller than the calories burned bars, and the dinner plate graphics above show I had calories left each day?? Baffling.

[Baltoscott]

@loggamatt - On  that the days your ‘calories eaten’ bar is in red I think it is because although your calculated burn is higher than what you logged, it is not higher enough to meet your goal.  Said another way, if you are going for a 1000 calorie a day deficit (trying to lose 2 lbs a week), and your only manage a 900 calorie deficit, you didn’t meet your goal.

[loggamatt]

This makes no sense to me... I set my target weight with an extreme -1000 calories per day deficit goal. I thought when Fitbit told me how many calories I have left to consume in a day, it had already subtracted those 1000 calories. As shown by the dinner plate graphics in that screenshot, every day ended with Fitbit telling me I still had calories left over. Yet you’re telling me I didn’t actually have calories left over because the red bars show I didn’t hit a 1000 calorie deficit. I really am not understanding something here... ? Am I supposed to subtract a further 1000 calories in my head to any daily target Fitbit gives me?

[loggamatt]

Alright, another screenshot. If I hover over Wednesday it says I logged 2,447 calories eaten, my burn was 3,787 calories, meaning my deficit was -1,340 calories. As my target deficit is -1,000 calories per day, this should show I have eaten under (yellow) my target calories, not over (red) my target calories surely in any sane world? 😝