Help please

[Mpetrowsky]

Started the fitbit about a month ago and I am amazed by the amount of calories I burn at work. Here is my question... If my bit is 1569 and in my 9 hour shift at work I burn 2350 cal how much should I be in taking to drop two lbs a week? Any help would be great!

[DblGee]

I think as long as you follow the calories you have left on your dashboard you should do okay.  If you really want to lose weight, do it safely and keep it off - focus more on nutritional balance than calories. Good nutrition practices makes your body burn calories more efficiently and gives you even more energy to be more active which burns more calories 🙂 

[flyboy]

The amount of weight you'll gain or lose is very complicated and to ask how much do I eat to lose 2 pounds a week is not a very realistic question.  The simple fact is that calories in and calories out equals weight.  If you take in less than you burn you'll lose weight, if you eat more than you burn, you'll gain weight, all things being equal.  That being said there are some other factors, hydration being a big one, if you're dehydrated the scale will show a smaller number or if you're retaining water either due to your bodies natural cycles or due to injury repair the number will be higher.  Another factor to consider is that muscle is more dense than fat so it is possible to actually gain weight while losing inches off of your body and eventually at a tipping point to gain weight while decreasing in size by shedding fat and adding muscle.  For me as big a factor as what the scale reads is how my clothes fit.  I've seen plateaus and even small weight gains at my peak fitness but still find my pants getting looser and my belt needing new holes to keep them from falling down.  Also I have found that shirts are suddenly too tight in the sleeves or chest. Those are more telling signs for me than the number on the scale moving.  I've "lost" 20 pounds since the first of the year, gained signficant fitness and muscle tone, and decreased my pants size by 2 inches.  It all came down to diet and exercise.  It wasn't fun, easy, or some miracle pill or potion, I eat 500 calories or less for breakfast, 500 or less for lunch, and 750 or less for dinner and I work out for an hour or two most days and some days for 6 or more hours. Fad diets are just that, FADS, low carb, no carb, juice cleans, nothing white, gluten free, South Beach, Atkins, Hollywood Miracle, whatever, they'll all fail one way or another. Eat a clean balanced diet and increase your activity to find the point where you're losing weight at a healthy rate and stick to it.  Change up your workout routine every few weeks to avoid plateaus and force your body to continue to adapt and keep your calories in check and you'll hit your goals.  It is hard work but absolutely achieveable with some self control and dedication.  You can do it.

[DanPamperin]

Flyboy has a lot of really good points that I agree with.  In the course of improving fitness and nutrition/diet, there are bound to be fluctuations.  Generally speaking, there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat.  If you have a calorie deficit of 500 calories per day, you would theoretically lose 1 pound of fat per week.  So a deficit of 1000 calories per day might get you a 2 pound loss.

Again, that is generally speaking, and a person still needs to be taking in proper nutrients and exercising to activate the metabolism to improve that calorie burn.  Please feel free to ask any questions you may have.  And congrats on taking the first step and trying to improve -- most people don't even do that!  You can do it!