How does the deficit in calories work?

[Friend2most]

I don't understand how to figure out how much I am supposed to be eating! On a regular basis on me Fitbit blaze it shows I burn about 6000 calories. So what should I be eating? 5000 calories? That seems crazy to me! Any help would be appreciated!

[Dominique]

6000 calories is huge. You would be really tall, heavy and very active in order to burn that much. You can double-check your energy expenditure with an online calculator such as this one. See what kind of activity level it takes (according to the calculator) in order to reach 6000 calories. Your average step count would be a rough indicator of your activity level (for instance, 10k or less would be "light activity").

You obviously need to eat less than you burn in order to lose weight, but you first need to assess whether calories burned reported by your Fitbit are accurate enough.

[SunsetRunner]

Make sure your height, weight.. is set correctly on the edit profile page. On fitbit.com , go to:

https://www.fitbit.com/user/profile/edit

* Mind the save button.

Whatever the food plan says that's left to eat, if feeling needing to force feed yourself in the moment, regardless how many calories left, listen to your body and see how it goes. No need to force feed those possible unnecessary extra calories if feeling fine and not hungry (could have logged less than actually eaten) or the body not needing more in the moment when it has all nutritients it needs.

Calories matter, nutritients matter to. Possible to be satisfied on lower calories overall if eating natural foods overall (fruits, vegetables, eggs, meat, fish, potatoes,..).. the foods our hunter / gatherer ancestors ate that come directly from nature without a label.

They can be prepackaged like a fresh salad but has to be consumed soon rather than still being able to eat in x year(s)..

There's a setting on the food log page (computer / fitbit.com / account) which can be changed to increase the accuracy.

Change setting on Food Log Page

On the Food Log page, standard a setting is used to base the calories allowed on personal history, when being more or less active the calories can increase or decrease alot.

Change to sedentary when desired to increase the accuracy, when being more active, the calories to eat will increase.

---

[Friend2most]

I am 5'9" tall! And 263 pounds. I walk/run about 12 miles a day plus weight lifting.

[Dominique]

OK, assuming you’re 30, your calculated BMR would be 2143 and your TDEE at the highest activity level "only" 4072. If you were 40, the TDEE would come down by about 100 calories.  I think it’s quite likely Fitbit overestimates the calories you burn.

If you log your food intake and weigh regularly under the same conditions, you should be able to determine your real energy expenditure after a while, using the 3500 calories = 1 pound approximation.

[josephz2va]

Check a couple of figures in the Fitbit Settings to check are:

Account - ME - Edit Profile:

Age

Height

Weight

Male

Advanced Settings - Stride Length

(Blaze and Surge auto set by GPS)

Walking by inches (Stride Length on Fitbit.com)

Running by inches (Running Stride Length on Fitbit.com)

Blaze and Surge and any newer devices released have GPS built in to change your walking and running lengths automatically as long as the Smartphone is connected to the Fitbit successfully.

Fitbit - Exercise Shortcuts

Walk

Run

etc

One other thing that does affect the calories to be 6000 is if your Heart Rate sensor is super high. Like close to 220 BPM-Age. Depending on the Fitbit and Individual's actual Heart Rate, sometimes the sensor is off by a fortune. Sometimes it's not accurate like on my elliptical Fitbit kept reading 170 BPM and the sensors on the elliptical read 140. And I'm not going mad on the machine at all.