Decreasing height to make BMR burn more accurate.

[punchxcore]

Has anyone tried this with any success? I'm 5'6" 165 lbs and I have not been losing weight for the past week. Yes, I know weight loss is not a linear process, though it's not normal for me to go a week without any weight loss. Yes, I use a food scale and weigh all my food in grams and I never go over my sodium limit. I'm pretty OCD about logging and weighing my food. I've even tried dropping my calories 100-150 calories with no luck. I get 15-20k steps a day, and generally have a 750-1000 calorie deficit by the end of the day, so I SHOULD be losing weight even if it's very small amounts. My only thought is that my Zip is grossly overestimating my calorie burn, and my BMR is lower than what it's saying I burn. I have been relying on my Fit Bit to achieve my deficit and it's simply not working. MFP tells me to eat 1880 calories to lose 1lb a week. Most days I eat closer to 1800.

[Dominique]

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@punchxcore wrote:
My only thought is that my Zip is grossly overestimating my calorie burn

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FWIW, @GershonSurge found the exact opposite when comparing the Zip and the Surge.

Adjusting your height would alter your BMI in your stats. What you could do is pretend you’re older. Play with an online calculator that uses the Mifflin St Jeor formula for BMR until you find a level that you think would reflect your actual BMR. 

[GershonSurge]

Dominique, thanks for the mention.

punchxcore, I firmly believe in the calorie equation, and I am also OCD about counting calories. It's easier because I'm retired and almost always eat at home. If I even grab a potato chip or something I log it.

While keeping meticulous records, I found it takes about a 2,800 calorie deficit according to the Zip to lose a pound and a 3,500 calorie deficit on the Surge. It will vary a bit based on the type of exercise, but given the number of steps you are getting, these numbers should be in the ball park. There have been weeks when I didn't lose weight, and I run a high deficit. Many days, it's over 2,000 calories. I get the deficit by exercising, not by fasting.

Most of my exercise comes from my early morning walk/slow jog. (It's hard to tell the difference.) Then I burn the rest of the calories from work around the house. That way, even if I don't lose weight, the chores get done.

Looking at your charts, it appears you are doing everything right. You seem to have hit one of those discouraging plateaus that happens to all of us. One way to avoid the discouragement is to track total calorie deficit on a spreadsheet, or even manually. By tracking the cause instead of the effect, you can be successful almost every day. The weight loss will eventually follow the total deficit. 

My diet is starch based with some fruits and vegetables. No animal products and no free oils like olive oil, etc. On most days, I eat less than about 6% fat. On those days when I exceed this, I can expect a plateau for a few days. The same thing is true if I have something salty. I'm never hungry except for normal hunger before meal time. I vary when I eat based on when I get hungry. I seldom eat in the morning until I've burned about 1,500 to 2,000 calories. (I know this goes against conventional wisdom. I don't have any sugar problems, and I don't know the dangers involved with this for those who do.)

[SunsetRunner]

I always had a sneaking suspicion my zip waaaay overestimated, which was proven by my weight loss or lack thereof. I also meticulously weigh and log everything i eat in MFP, and most days I'm between a 500-1000 calorie deficit.

I recently got an Alta, and I have to work a ton harder to get the steps and calorie burns zip gave me. Tomorrow I'm going to wear both my zip and alta and see what the difference is at the end of the day. I did do this when I first got the Alta for a couple of days, but i forgot to put the zip on after my shower and when I got up in the morning both times, so didnt get accurate info. From what I remember the zip was around 2000 steps higher at the end of the day, but didnt check calorie burn doh!! 

I'll report back tomorrow night. I'm in Australia, so it'll be your morning... I think.

[punchxcore]

My weight loss seemed so much easier when I used my cheap pedometer that I got at Walmart. I ate the calories MFP told me to and I aimed for X amount of steps per day. I never logged exercise through MFP. The problem was it had a reset button. I work in a veterinary clinic and if I was holding an animal on the table, my hip often was pressed into the side of it and would reset at some point during the day. So I thought having a Fit Bit would be great since it doesn't reset. I should wear my Fit Bit and old pedometer one day and see what the discrepancy in steps are. Last year I got down to 158 lbs using my old pedometer.

I did change my age to lower my BMR but I had to increase it by quite a bit to lower it a few hundred calories. So we'll see. Something isn't adding up. Whether it's overestimating my steps or my calories.

[punchxcore]

So I upgraded to a Charge HR. It'll be interesting to see what my calorie burn tomorrow will be after a full day of using it. I got my HR about halfway through the day. My hope is that it will be much more accurate in terms of calories burned. I'm hoping it burns less calories than what my Zip told me. It would definitely put my mind at ease that I've been doing everything right, and my data just wasn't accurate.

[USAF-Larry]

Make sure you have set it up with your info - sex, age, height, weight - so that it can more accurately calculate your BMR and calorie burn, @punchxcore. The Charge HR is a more accurate in calorie burn, since it use the heart rate in addition to the other factors to calculate the calories.

[Dominique]

Congrats for your new Fitbit! In addition to what @USAF-Larry said about personal info, also make sure you have set up the dominant vs. non-dominant hand correctly (since it’s your first wrist-mounted Fitbit).

You may want to wear all three devices (Walmart pedometer, Zip, Charge HR) simultaneously for a few days, so you can see how their steps compare (since you were able to equate your "dumb" pedometer’s steps with the caloric expenditure required by your weight loss, which I think was mostly a happy coincidence).

Logically, the Charge HR should be the most accurate of the three for estimating your expenditure, but there’s a margin of error with any such device.

[punchxcore]

@Dominique, I have it set up to dominant and wear it on my non-dominant hand. I've read that doing so decreases sensivity to false steps. So hopefully I have it set up right.

[Dominique]

If I were you, I would first try to set it up the way it’s supposed to, regardless of what you have read. What works for one person may not for another one. For instance, you found your Zip overestimated calories burned while @GershonSurge found the exact opposite behaviour.