Have you had success with Fitbit Food Plan?

[GamerGodSP]

So I've been using my since April 2018. I started at 315lbs and now down to 200lbs. My weight lost journey began using very low calorie diets or moderate deficits from 500-1000 calories a day.

I'm very interested in using the Fitbit food plan, because while I have very active days, I sometimes have moderate days and down right lazy days. The thought of having something that only allows me to eat what I can afford to eat that day interest me.

Has anyone had success and lost weight using this system? This would seem so much more ideal than the basic "set your calories and leave it".

Moderator edit: subject for clarity

[Daveg22152]

If you’re referring to the “Help me set a goal” function, then I would steer clear of it. The idea that the Fitbit could monitor your intake and expenditures to help you maintain a specific calorie deficit at day’s end is enticing.

The problem is that the Fitbit seems to overestimate your expenses calories on some activities and will then recommend that you can consume more than you should, thereby undermining your calorie deficit 

It sounds like you’ve had terrific success with your weight loss goals. If it were me, I would be wary of changing your strategy at this point. 

Good luck!

[Dominique]

First of all, congrats for your impressive weight loss! I think the Fitbit Food Plan would have been more useful during your active weight loss than now that you have switched to maintenance, but since you were able to do it without Fitbit, who cares? I would agree with @GamerGodSP  it’s probably best for you to continue to do what has clearly been working extremely well for you. I’ll add that calories out as estimated by Fitbit are often overstated even if your metabolism is that predicted by the standard underlying equation (based on gender, age, height and weight), your actual metabolism is likely lower than that (because of your recent weight loss and its magnitude). Fitbit doesn’t factor that in: it just assumes your metabolism is that of a 200 lbs guy your age and your height who’s maintained the same weight for some time.

I can see the point in using the Food Plan so your intake matches your activity on a daily basis. OTOH, it’s perfectly possible to maintain your weight by having your calories in matching your calories out at the weekly level instead. For instance, let’s say you work out during the week and have rest days during the weekend; and let’s say that you usually socialize / eat out (= eat/drink more) during weekends. Your life would be miserable if your calories in were at their lowest during weekends (when you’re supposed to have fun); it would make more sense to undereat during weekdays in order to be able to overeat during weekends.

[Cscomoky]

I've only been back to using my Fitbit for a few weeks. And this is the first time I've used it to track my calories in / calories out. I set my weight loss goal to the "medium" setting, and I am not seeing much weight loss - just a couple of pounds. 

I realize it's only been a short time, but I am thinking of switching to a "straight calories" goal to see if my weight loss is better that way. I don't really trust the Fitbit to accurately keep track of my "calories out" - it gives me a lot of "credit" for a simple walk, and less "credit" for a tough 20 minutes on the elliptical. I'll let you know if my weight loss is better this way. 🙂

[Dominique]

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@Cscomoky wrote:

I don't really trust the Fitbit to accurately keep track of my "calories out" - it gives me a lot of "credit" for a simple walk, and less "credit" for a tough 20 minutes on the elliptical.

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Energy expenditure (which is what I assume you mean by "credit") is a function of intensity and duration. You can burn more total calories performing a lower intensity activity for a longer period of time than performing a higher intensity one, but for a shorter time.

You can use the Compendium of Physical Activities for comparing the intensity of various activities. For instance, "Elliptical trainer, moderate effort" is rated with a MET of 5.0, while "walking, 2.5 mph, level, firm surface" has a MET of 3.0 and "walking, 3.5 mph, level, brisk, firm surface, walking for exercise" has a MET of 4.3. This means 40 minutes of walking at 2.5 mph (if it’s what you call a "simple walk") would burn more than 20 minutes of elliptical with moderate effort. And 25 minutes of brisk walking would also burn more than 20 minutes of said elliptical.

[GamerGodSP]

Thanks to everyone's input. I don't think I will bother with the food plan. It's crazy because from the estimates it was giving me eating 3-4k calories a day and still losing weight would've been nice.

I'm almost to my goal of 180 so I'm looking forward to eating at Maintenance.

[JimC_99]

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@Dominique wrote:

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@Cscomoky wrote:

I don't really trust the Fitbit to accurately keep track of my "calories out" - it gives me a lot of "credit" for a simple walk, and less "credit" for a tough 20 minutes on the elliptical.

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Energy expenditure (which is what I assume you mean by "credit") is a function of intensity and duration. You can burn more total calories performing a lower intensity activity for a longer period of time than performing a higher intensity one, but for a shorter time.

You can use the Compendium of Physical Activities for comparing the intensity of various activities. For instance, "Elliptical trainer, moderate effort" is rated with a MET of 5.0, while "walking, 2.5 mph, level, firm surface" has a MET of 3.0 and "walking, 3.5 mph, level, brisk, firm surface, walking for exercise" has a MET of 4.3. This means 40 minutes of walking at 2.5 mph (if it’s what you call a "simple walk") would burn more than 20 minutes of elliptical with moderate effort. And 25 minutes of brisk walking would also burn more than 20 minutes of said elliptical.

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I was wondering where the MET value came from - Thanks for the info.

[Dominique]

@JimC_99 wrote:

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I was wondering where the MET value came from - Thanks for the info.

METs are used by Fitbit to determine active minutes. They’re mentioned in the help article on active minutes.

[nomarmite]

I've been using the Fitbit Food Plan since July 2018 and lost 45lbs. I used the 'hard' plan (1000 calorie deficit per day), which should result in 2lb weight loss per week. Do the math and you'll see I've lost less than that. Part of the reason is that I've sometimes gone over the guidelines, but rarely by more than 500 cals and hardly ever by more than 1000. Also I think that as explained in the earlier replies, Fitbit overestimates how much you burn to some extent. My weight loss has slowed significantly in the last few weeks, and I think that's because I'm getting very close to goal weight rather than eating more than before. The average calories-in per week feature on Fitbit was helpful in confirming this.

One of the reasons I like the variable plan is that I do have some days where I sit around nearly all day working, then other days when I'm walking a long way or doing a lot of exercise. I find on these busier days I do feel hungrier, so I appreciate the extra calories. I think on a regular diet of x calories per day I would just eat those extra calories anyway but beat myself up about cheating, so it works for me in terms of reducing negative thoughts, which is supposedly one of the main reasons people give up diets. On the sedentary days I'm sometimes only allowed about 800 cals, and TBH I usually go over by 200-300, but not enough to completely sabotage the diet.

My feeling overall is that Fitbit overestimates how much I burn, for whatever reason, but not significantly. Perhaps this is just me and perhaps I have a slower than average metabolic rate. Who knows. 

Overall I would recommend the Food Plan, but not having succeeded with any other method I don't have anything to compare it with. Hope this helps some.

[JimC_99]

I have been tracking since April of 2018 and for me, the Fitbit food plan over estimates for me by  ~350 calories.  my current plan setting is a 750 calorie deficit but I never eat to the goal, I am almost always under.  I have days when I am more active and days when less, so I may try to set the plan to the high setting (1000 deficit) and intake to the goal and see if I still lose.  I expect that the loss will be closer to 1 to 1.5 pounds a week, but that is fine for me at this point.  It will be interesting to see what effect this will have on my calories reduced to lose ratio.  when I started it was a reduction of 2200 calories to lose a pound and now it is 4600 calories to lose a pound. 

[Sergiu37]

For me it's a no go, it's tedious, time consuming and just no fun. And I've also read that we tend to mistake the food logged with 20-30%. Also fitbit seems to over estimate by 20-30% as well (300Kcal for a half an hour walk - really?)

Also I read that if you consume carbs your body consumes around 30% more energy to transform that into fat. 

Putting that all into consideration I just gave up.

But if it motivates you, I'm sure you can try to, somehow, limit the errors after a few weeks to have something a bit more accurate

[Dominique]

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@Sergiu37 wrote:

Also I read that if you consume carbs your body consumes around 30% more energy to transform that into fat.

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I wonder where this came from. Are you perhaps confusing that with thermic effect of food (TEF)? However, TEF isn’t about energy used to transform carbs into fat, and it’s typically high for protein, not carbs. How much of any nutrient gets stored as fat is determined primarily by energy balance. Carbs have their own storage, they don’t typically get stored as fat right away.

[JimC_99]

Carbs usually get converted into sugar to be used and if not needed, converted to glycogen and stored in the liver, muscle and other tissue.   

[gtg947h]

I sort of used it as a guide to lose 40lb; now I'm using it to maintain my weight.  So far it works well and I've found my average daily error to be in the 200 calorie range.  I set a deficit of -250 and it seems to work fine. 

The bigger problem is that my stomach hasn't made the adjustment to lower food amounts yet.  I've largely compensated by dramatically ramping up activity levels (like two-a-day workouts on my days off and lots more walking on work days) but I still can't eat as much as I want to.  Yes, I work out so I can eat more. 

[Heather-McD]

Congrats on your amazing progress!!

I've been using the food plan for a week and so far it has worked perfectly for me, so Fitbit flex2 must be doing an accurate job calculating my calories-out. I'm doing a 750 calorie deficit, and have lost about 2 lbs. It's amazing to me that I can eat 2100 calories on some days and be losing weight. I've done calorie counting before but I'd always aimed for a fixed, much lower number, so the changing amount of available calories based on activity is new to me, and so far so good. You might as well give it a try for a week or two to see if you like it! 

[Ryloki]

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