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Calorie burn vs activity

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Hi all,

 

I'm trying to understand my body and how to drop a few pounds and have a question I thought someone could help with. My fitbit data shows that I am very active, in the 98th percentile for very active minutes and distance and 82 percent for steps. I'm at 61 percentile for activity and only 48 for total calories burned. I do have a sedentary job so I'm trying to get up more during the day to hopefully improve the activity number. I just don't understand why I burn relatively so few calories. What should I do to improve calorie burn? More activity doesn't seem to help!

 

Thanks much,

jd

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BMR is the amount of calories you burn for simply being alive. So if you were to stay in bed doing nothing, that is what you would burn. It is typically the biggest part of what people burn. The rest of the calories burned come from being active.

 

2500 calories is not a small amount burned. With my sedentary desk job I have to put in a lot of effort and the rest of the day to hit that number. If you are a woman who is not that overweight it takes a lot of activity to burn that much. You can use this calories calculator to possibly wrap your head around it a bit more. As said BMR is the amount burned when being sedentary and TDEE is the total amount burned depending on how active you are.

 

Using your numbers I estimated a BMR of roughly 1500 calories, which means you burn 1000 calories from being active on top of that. You can either increase that by being active more hours or by increasing the intensity level for the amount of time you already are active (increasing heart rate during exercise).

 

But in your case if you want to lose those 10 pounds I think it is easier to look at your food. Log what you eat and make sure you burn more than you eat. As you only want to lose 10 pounds it is going to be more slow and you will need to be patient with it.

Karolien | The Netherlands

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Calories burned are typically going to be a low number compared to your BMR. It takes a lot of work to burn them. And the more fit you become, the more efficient your body gets so it will burn less while doing the same things. You can either increase the duration of your activity or the intensity (get your heart rate higher up), but don't expect miracles. If you are a small(er) woman, you simply are going to burn way less than other people, no matter how much work you put in.

 

Could you give us some numbers of what you think is "so few calories" and about your height and weight?

Karolien | The Netherlands

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Hi! Thanks so much for the reply! I'm definitely not small. 🙂 I am 5'11
and about 180 pounds. My "ideal" weight is about 170. I have an athletic,
large-boned body so have pretty much always been at the high end of the
weight ranges for my height, which doesn't bother me as I know I'm healthy
- other people tend to describe me as thin. I can gain quite a bit without
it being really noticeable, but I notice. I want to save my knees and hips
and carrying extra weight is just not okay. I've put on about 10 pounds
over the last year (thanks menopause) and don't want that to continue so I
signed up for fitbit premium and have just started trying to track this
stuff. I am a long time runner so have a fairly low heart rate - resting is
around 60-62.

What is BMR?

Thanks again for your reply! It's much appreciated!

jd
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Oh, i missed a question - an example of activity and calories - last week I had about 9 hours of very active minutes and covered 48 miles. I burned an average of just under 2500 calories per day.

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BMR is the amount of calories you burn for simply being alive. So if you were to stay in bed doing nothing, that is what you would burn. It is typically the biggest part of what people burn. The rest of the calories burned come from being active.

 

2500 calories is not a small amount burned. With my sedentary desk job I have to put in a lot of effort and the rest of the day to hit that number. If you are a woman who is not that overweight it takes a lot of activity to burn that much. You can use this calories calculator to possibly wrap your head around it a bit more. As said BMR is the amount burned when being sedentary and TDEE is the total amount burned depending on how active you are.

 

Using your numbers I estimated a BMR of roughly 1500 calories, which means you burn 1000 calories from being active on top of that. You can either increase that by being active more hours or by increasing the intensity level for the amount of time you already are active (increasing heart rate during exercise).

 

But in your case if you want to lose those 10 pounds I think it is easier to look at your food. Log what you eat and make sure you burn more than you eat. As you only want to lose 10 pounds it is going to be more slow and you will need to be patient with it.

Karolien | The Netherlands

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10 lbs from your ideal weight is not something that should make you worry about knees and hips.  Diet is the best approach to get there.

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Thanks, Mukluk4! I appreciate your comment :)! I guess I'm most worried about 10 pounds turning into 20 into 30... I want to get it reversed and especially **ahem** further gain in the bud. I do work really hard on my diet. I have Crohn's disease and have had two resections so my plumbing is not normal. I also have a hiatal hernia. For me, this means regular struggle with SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) - bacteria, yeast etc that is important and good to have in the colon, isn't great in the small bowel or elsewhere - and since I don't have working valves, so to speak, my gut biome is all out of place.

 

For the most part I am very limited on carbs - even many fruits provide too much sugar and I struggle to properly process most grains or dairy (I do eat aged cheeses and some fermented products). For this reason, I end up trying to fuel on proteins and fats - peanut butter, avacado, elk - cooked vegetables. I think that keeping track of what "goes in" will be really helpful and I'm looking forward to using the Fitbit tracker to do this.

 

Thanks again for your support!

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