Calorie deficit goal and Food Plan

[Scimajor]

I confess to being a bit confused by the Food Plan and Calories In vs Out tiles. I've only been at this for a few days but I always seem to have around 700 calories "left" in my food plan at the end of the day (I have it set to a 1000 calorie deficit).

Assuming I have things setup correctly should I be trying to eat to my goal rather than staying way under it? 

Also, the Caories In vs Out tile always starts out in the "red" and ends up in the yellow. Is this another sign that fitbit is trying to tell me to eat a bit more?

[Collin1000]

If you have a deficiet plan already set up to keep you in negative calories every day, then yes, you should be eating to match the plan, otherwise you're doubling your deficiet. For example, my plan is -500 calories every day. If I eat 500 calories under my plan, that would mean I was actually eating -1000 calories.

In your example, you are at a -1000 deficiet, and you're left with 700 every day. this means you're actually at a -1,700 calorie deficit!! Now, I'm not sure how much else you're eating and exercising, but with a deficit like that, you might send your body into shock mode and it will start holding onto calories more thinking it's being starved. So be careful with that. 

[Scimajor]

Thanks. I suspected as much. It just seemed too good to be true that I could eat around 1500 calories in a day and still be on target to lose weight at a reasonable but fairly rapid rate.

Right now I'm at about 850 for the day. I assume that's too low (man 51 years old 191 lbs)?

I'm also wondering it the fibit is over estimating the number of calories I am burning and steps I am taking (set to non-dominant hand and it is on the non-dominant hand). Today, for example, it shows 8,300 steps and 1077 "activity calories". Now granted I did "work out" for half and hour which invovled continuous running movements for all of those 30 minutes but that still seems a bit much. It takes ALLOT to burn 1077 calories.  

[Dominique]

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@Scimajor wrote:

It just seemed too good to be true that I could eat around 1500 calories in a day and still be on target to lose weight at a reasonable but fairly rapid rate.

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 1500 calories per day sounds very reasonable for a male your size. How many calories do you burn in average per day?

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@Scimajor wrote:

Right now I'm at about 850 for the day. I assume that's too low (man 51 years old 191 lbs)?

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 Yes, 850 calories sounds extremely low for someone your size. I'm about your age (52), smaller than you (67 kg = 148 lbs) and I burn an average of 2600 calories per day. I don't measure calories in, but since my weight is stable, I assume my intake roughly equals what I burn. 850 calories would be one third of that, I'd be starving if I'd had to eat that little!

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@Scimajor wrote:

I'm also wondering it the fibit is over estimating the number of calories I am burning and steps I am taking (set to non-dominant hand and it is on the non-dominant hand). Today, for example, it shows 8,300 steps and 1077 "activity calories". Now granted I did "work out" for half and hour which invovled continuous running movements for all of those 30 minutes but that still seems a bit much. It takes ALLOT to burn 1077 calories.  

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 I agree 1000+ activity calories for only 8,300 steps  in the day and 30 minutes of "real" activity sounds a lot. To give you an idea of the kind of calorie burn I get, see the snapshot below. These are activities I recorded this afternoon: 15 minutes of running, 60 minutes of power walking, 10 minutes of running, for a total of 13,243 steps. I was credited with the full amount of VAM's for them, but they only amounted to 626 calories in total, and that includes BMR calories. Btw, I have a Fitbit One, which I believe gives less distorted calorie data than wrist-based trackers like the Flex or the Force.