Eating a bit less than the 1000cals deficit

[gward84]

Hi, 6ft5 male, 282lbs here.

Started on the long road of losing a few pound again and want some advice.

Im normally burning anything between 3700 - 4000 cals a day, so my 1000cals deficit would mean eating 2700 - 3000 cals a day, but I'm only eating about 2500 a day as I don't want to go over on my sodium. Is this ok or will my weight stop going down at some point?  Any advice? 

Cheers

[Dominique]

You’d first want to establish whether you are actually burning as much as your Fitbit is saying you are (estimating energy expenditure with a fitness tracker isn’t exact science).

Assuming you were 40-yo, you would need the "high activity" level (4 on a scale of 1 to 5) in order to burn close to 4000. That would amount to 20k+ steps per day in average (my own estimate). I’m using this online calculator, which relies on the same equation (Mifflin St Jeor) as Fitbit.

Several community members have found HR-enabled Fitbits tend to overestimate calories burned. If you have one, it may be the case for you.

I’d start eating 2500 and see what happens after 3-4 weeks. If you see you’re losing an average of 2 lbs a week, you’ll know your actual expenditure is more like 3500. If you’re losing more than that, you can increase your intake. 

[A_Lurker · Accepted solution]

Back when I was counting calories (well tracking because I still mentally track) I would eat 1000 calorie deficit up to 2500 calories.  So, if I had a 3200 calorie burn day I'd stop at 2200.  However if I burned 3800 I would stop at 2500*.  It worked fairly well for me.

*I did occasionally eat 2750, but that would be on days I was well over 4000 calories burned.

[Dominique]

I think @A_Lurker’s approach is excellent, in that it allows you to take into account any potential overestimating of calories burned reported by Fitbit (and we know it’s not uncommon for trackers to overestimate energy expenditure) while still making sure you’re eating enough food. Over time, this should allow you to assess your actual expenditure (in relation to what Fitbit reports). Once you’ve done that long enough, you can pretty much go in auto-pilot mode, like @A_Lurker is now doing (mentally tracking and adjusting intake to calories reported by Fitbit).