I have Fitbit with a calorie deficit, working out and not losing weight

[Cazza-O]

Hi, I’ll give a little background. I’m a 34yo female, 157cm (5’2), 65kg (143lbs). I previously didn’t do any exercise and I’m on a journey to lose excess fat and get fit. I was previously doing keto eating 1,300 calories a day for about a month along with intermittent fasting and that didn’t really work. So I shifted to more balanced eating in a calorie deficit of 500-600 calories per day. I workout a minimum of 6 days a week doing F45 and been doing that for another month. I was eating around 1,500-1,600 calories per day with my BMR around 1,300. I got a Fitbit Charge 4 to monitor track my deficit and I have been eating within the zone. I previously was eating lower carbs and now I’m upping my carbs a little more to provide a more balanced diet. I stopped drinking alcohol (well mostly) and I cut out refined sugars. The scales won’t budge and I’m not noticing much change in my body. Is anyone experiencing the same thing? Is it that I am doing the right things but it’s just going to take time? I’m happy to keep going and waiting for results but I just want to ensure I’m doing the right thing. I know muscle weighs more than fat but surely I’m not putting on that much muscle that quickly with the rate I should be losing fat. Thanks in advance!

Moderator edit: subject for clarity

[WilsonFitbit]

Hello @Cazza-O. Nice to see you participating in this community forum! 

Thank you for sharing your experience. Note that you can get great results if you commit yourself to do specific workouts to lose some weight and tone your muscles.

Here are some ways to burn fat quickly and promote weight loss: 

1. Increase Your Cardio: adding cardio to your routine may be one of the most effective ways to enhance fat burning. Running, walking, cycling and swimming are just a few examples of some cardio exercises that can help burn fat and kick-start weight loss. Also, aerobic exercise can increase muscle mass and decrease belly fat, waist circumference and body fat. 

2. Add Probiotics to Your Diet: increasing your intake of probiotics through either food or supplements may also help rev up fat burning and keep your weight under control.

3. Squeeze in More Sleep: going to bed a bit earlier or setting your alarm clock a little later can help boost fat burning and prevent weight gain.

On a side note, figure out how many calories you really need, and reduce that number. For instance, 500 to 750 calories per day, in order to lose 1 to 2 pounds per week. Just don’t dip below the bare minimum, your body needs 1200 calories per day for women, or 1500 for men.

I hope other users can comment on this posts and provide more realistic tips. 

See you around. 

[Heybales]

Got a lot of info here for ya. Hopefully it doesn't make you take a nap.

Well, you have the right idea - eat less than you burn, and sounds like by reasonable amount right now.

Doesn't even require exercise, though when you burn more it does allow you to eat more - that can make it much easier to adhere.

Plus as you said - you want to get fit.

I will suggest when you get to 10 lbs left to healthy weight - go to 250 cal deficit. That's reasonable, and less risk to losing muscle mass.

Since there are no fast fat loss magic methods, it's merely trying to be as accurate as you can on both sides of what you burn, and what you eat.

Get that nailed, and you can adjust from there, now and later.

What are F45 workouts?

I'll put it this way - HR-based calorie burn formula is ONLY a decent estimate for steady-state aerobic exercise, same HR, no intervals.

The farther away your workout is from that - the more inflated calorie burn will be reported.

Also inflated is anything at the bottom of the aerobic range, like slow walking, or at the top, before going anaerobic.

Interval cardio like true HIIT, so-called misnamed HIIT workouts, strength training, slow walking - all those will be inflated calorie burns.

And even for steady-state aerobic - many things can cause elevated HR beyond what the workout requires and is just causing inflated calorie burn estimates - dehydrated, hot, tired or stressed, meds or stimulants, or just long workouts (called HR drift).

Also, if your HRmax estimate on your Fitbit stats is wrong (like your HRmax is actually higher than estimated by 220-age, and you have a better chance of being more than 10 bpm off than being within 10 bpm of right), then the formula is wrong and that direction would be inflated calorie burn.

Also if your stride length setting isn't true, and Fitbit thinks you are going longer distance than reality, your daily activity calorie burn would be inflated too.

So you could have Fitbit reporting you are burning say 2100, and therefore you eat 1600 - on paper appears to be 500 cal deficit.

But in reality you didn't burn that much, so your deficit is actually smaller.

Which now brings up the other place for potential easy errors.

What your diet is really doesn't matter for weight loss, only for your ability to adhere to it. So good choices realizing you need something you can sustain until goal weight and beyond - why train for a way of eating you won't continue. That's why people lose weight every year among other reasons. Amount of deficit also plays into this and stress on body.

But how you log what you eat does matter big time.

Do you log everything that goes in your mouth by weight?

Because calories is per gram, not by volume, or "about 2 servings per package".

You used metric so that may be easier for you, but have to ask.

Also, do you confirm the label in your hand really matches the database entry about to be used - inaccuracies can show up.

Between those 2 you'll likely find the reason for no scale weight loss.

Try to correct those 2 sides and find the reason, and you can have a system that will keep working going forward no matter the changes (like you burn less when you weigh less, your workouts may get harder anyway, ect).

Now, a method that requires no corrections, but will not be useful for when changes come, but will work.

Eat less. The reason for no loss would be from inaccuracies you are actually eating more than you think, burning less than you think - and you actually have no deficit in reality.

Eat less. But find an actual real 500 calories to cut from your diet.

Then continue with the other inaccuracies, no changes needed.

Problem with this method is when changes occur, you really have no clue how much you were really eating or burning, and being a woman you literally need a month of weight data to have anything meaningful to react to.

I'd suggest find the issues and correct so you have something useful in the future. You'll likely still need to adjust, but much less.

1 other potential I didn't touch on because it didn't sound like your prior eating level was that extreme, and because you said besides no scale weight change, there has been no change of measurements or not much. Some of those changes could be just firming up muscle.

And that would be gaining stress induced cortisol water weight - body can slowly gain upwards of 20 lbs - think how many weeks of no scale change that could hide. But that doesn't sound like your case, normally when body is that stressed it's still losing fat, so measurements are going down, but the water weight is coming on. Very bad state for body to be in - backfires in many ways.

Now, water weight you could be gaining, carbs store with water in the liver and muscles - those carbs you are using for your workouts to be good and strong. So that is good water weight, part of natural body process for how it works. Can only gain so much though.

Also, if workouts are still intense, could have some inflammation as body is healing, again, natural good process.

So confirm only using valid weigh-in days to minimize known expected water weight fluctuations:

Morning after rest day eating normal sodium levels, not sore from last workout. That gives you 1 potentially valid day since you workout 6 days a week.

I'd suggest log them all in a weight trending app so you can be very aware of water weight changes through the month - but only log valid days.

If you eat the odd high sodium meal on that rest day - not valid login for Fitbit, only the trending app, put in a note about the food.

Oh, as good as the mantra sounds that muscle weighs more than fat (it doesn't, a pound is a pound), it takes a lot of hard specific work to gain muscle, and in a diet that just isn't going to happen especially for a woman. oh if only it were that easy!

Until your body has fully used what it's got it's not going to want to build more, and in a diet that ability just isn't there at any meaningful level.

You can always lose fat a lot faster than you can gain muscle. And losing fat isn't fast either.

Sadly do diet and exercise wrong you can lose muscle easy enough, most diets cause upwards of 20% loss because people do it wrong.

You sound like you want a good reasonable sustainable approach you can adhere to - good job.

Get some tweaks taken care of and you'll likely find the issues and have a good method moving forward.

[Cazza-O]

Thanks so much for the response! 
F45 is 45mins of HIIT including warm up, it alternates between cardio and weights. I started tracking the training in my Fitbit under circuit training, which is saying I’m burning on average 250-350 calories per session. If it is that perhaps the Fitbit is overestimating my calories burned, does that level of calories burned sound reasonable? My BMR around 1,300 seems to be right as a few resources have claimed this, but I’m now wondering if I am actually in a calorie deficit with the additional calories I am burning due to my perceived increased heart rate. Interestingly enough, I wear a chest strap (Lionheart brand) during F45 and while heart straps are supposed to track your heart rate more accurately, their app suggests at least a calorie burn of 200-300 more than what the Fitbit is telling me. I’ve reached out to F45 to try and get a better understanding of what this factors in and no one is able to give me a justified response. 

I believe my calorie intake is accurate, I measure everything and I’m tracking in MyFitnessPal which syncs up to the Fitbit app (love this feature). I’d be surprised if I’m far off with the calories in, it’s the calories out I can’t be 100% confident in.

I appreciate hearing some truths about muscle as it seems to be an excuse I get from trainers regarding why I’m not seeing the scales drop. Fine, I may be putting on muscle but it sounds like I should also see some movement in the scales, even by a small amount. I track my weight daily and while it fluctuates despite weighing myself at the exact same time and manner every morning, my average at the end of the week is the same each week and has been for a month. 

I have started to increase my carb intake, so I’ll keep an eye on my sodium intake as well.

I’ll give it one more week to see if it’s my body adjusting to the increased carbs and if there is still no change, I’ll make the assumption I’m not in a calorie deficit and reduce my calorie intake.

thanks so much for the feedback!

[Cazza-O]

Thanks Wilson.

I will give the probiotic suggestion a go, I believe I am doing everything else.

With my HIIT is it accurate for me to track on my Fitbit as circuit training? 
thanks

[Heybales]

The workout label you happen to give to an Activity Record is irrelevant for it's calorie burn - it's just a text label.

Call it Dog Sledding and the HR-based calorie burn will be the same.

You had one sentence I really have to clarify to confirm you understand.

"while heart straps are supposed to track your heart rate more accurately, their app suggests at least a calorie burn of 200-300 more"

A HRM is ONLY a Heart Rate Monitor - your chest strap or Fitbit - gives a HR reading to something else. That something else can display it, or in this case throw it into a formula and estimate a calorie burn.

Being more accurate for reading HR (if it is - did you actually compare avgHR between the two?) has no bearing on what they come up with for calorie burn. While there are several public research studies funded by like Polar that gives a formula that is undoubtedly used by others, they also tweak them with other public study's info.

If the Fitbit loses accuracy at higher HR's (it has been shown to do that for some people that don't read well via optical), then your chest strap would have a higher avgHR and indeed same formula would give more calories. If they even use the same formula - but you'll never find out, secret sauce.

That rate of burn sounds possible - but I have no idea how hard you are going compared to your potential. Which is why a good value of HRmax matters in the formula. 150 out of 160 is pretty intense, 150 out of potential 200 isn't.

45 min though and it includes what, 5 min of warmup and cooldown each, so 35 min of intervals?

Also, HIIT is a use case I described as being inflated calorie burn - no way around it.

There is NO direct correlation between HR and calorie burn - there is an estimate that can be decent in specific use case.

Your BMR is estimated by gender, age, height, weight - there are only a few formulas, the fact many places would agree on that calculation is not surprising. Some are better estimates when going into obese and over range, they all cluster well when close to healthy weight.

And vast majority of people are within 5% of calculated, even with thyroid problems (which makes one tired for daily activity, not base metabolism differences) - unless people have dieted foolishly for awhile and body is left with adapting to protect itself from further damage. Another reason for reasonable deficit.

So here in the US, measure means volume - cups, spoons, ect - and is inaccurate for calories.

Weighing means, well, by weight. I'm assuming you mean you weigh everything, as that is easier in metric lands. But I've got many that don't actually, so.....

MFP database must be confirmed that the entry you are using matches the label in your hand for info per serving.

And then you divide correctly weight of what's eaten by serving weight and use that many servings.

You don't enter workouts in MFP, right?

It won't cause a problem except requires 2 extra syncs, and with common syncing issues with Fitbit that is best to be avoided.

Plus if you enter am or pm wrong - you have double-counted a workout, so it just gives a chance for user error best to be avoided.

But yes it is nice to have MFP corrected for what Fitbit reports you have really burned for the day - when that can be trusted anyway.

How many steps outside of exercise do you usually get, pretty active?

Actually it's distance that is used in calorie burn calculation, steps is just used to get distance, so what distance outside the workouts do you get?

Regarding muscle, those types of workouts are high carb burn - therefore it's training the body to store more carbs in the muscles, with attached water as I mentioned. There may be some small muscle added, say ounces worth, but your bigger gain is storing more energy source for the workouts, carbs and water.

Interval workouts aren't setup to build muscle but rather improve the cardio system to handle anaerobic activity better. Progressive overload is how muscle is added after you've tapped out everything you already got - and that's by weight moved, not by speed and lack of rest caused during the workout.

Try this, or thinking about it may be enough.

Do 50 bodyweight squats fast regular tempo. Tough?

Next day do it holding your breath. Finish?

Was that tough on your muscle because it was heavy, or they didn't have oxygen to keep going?

Which is going to ask them to grow, which is going to ask them to store more carbs, to meet the challenge next time?

[Cazza-O]

Thanks for all the insight. 
To clarify, the chest strap I use for F45 gives me the average heart rate and has its own ‘secret sauce’ calculations for calories burned. So I am shown a graph of my heart rate and provided with the final number of calories burned which is 200-300 calories higher than the Fitbit. Not ideal as I cannot do a comparison like-for-like with the Fitbit. 

I don’t enter workouts to MFP, I enter only food which links to the Fitbit that has all my workouts.

[Heybales]

Sure you can compare to Fitbit, where a logged workout also shows avgHR, calories burned, distance seen.

Just compare avgHR and maxHR - that'll show up real quick if the Fitbit is missing something.

Fitbit you can also view the HRmax in your settings - can you on the other device, most you can.

If it's not using a HRmax figure, throw their calorie burn out the window.

Does it have your gender, age, height, and weight also?

Then it's likely using it whether it displays it or not, or allows you to change it or not as Fitbit does.

[Cazza-O]

Brilliant! I’ll check that comparison out. It will be interesting to see if they are similar. Yes it factors in age, weight, height and gender. Thanks so much.

[Glenda]

As usual Heybales amazed me.  He mentioned stride length as maybe being incorrect and causing inaccuracy in the calories used.  This is highly likely when the little person is only 5'2" tall.     So technical but everything works better for the average person.  5'2" is at the 99th % in short.  Sorry!  But I'm that also.

[Glenda]

I forgot to add,  that 1200 calorie minimum is another thing that works for the other 98% of the population but is silly for someone 5'2" tall.  Does anyone really think the same rules apply to some man 6 ' tall and someone so little.   Ridiculous.   And all the studies show that people who begin an exercise program to lose weight eat more and don't lose weight.   Diet better at the grocery store.  Buy lower calorie food, like 50 calorie tortilla instead of 200 calorie versions.  Beyer ice cream for 110 calories per serving instead of 300 .If you exercise plan the extra eating before the exercise.

[ada91604]

I'm new to fitbit (day 3!) and not an expert, but I did use IF a number of years ago to lose 25 pounds, most of which I've kept off (the pandemic is a challenge). It looks like your first attempt was IF + keto, and I wonder if combining the two was why you didn't have success. The IF version I used was Alternate Day Fasting, which uses your current weight as a starting point. It uses the Harris-Benedict calculation to determine your current caloric needs, based on height, weight, gender, age and activity level. Then every other day (or 3 or even 2 days a week), you reduce your calories to a percentage of what you require to maintain your current weight (I've read that staying under 500 seems to work almost always).

This is definitely the best diet for me. The 500 days were torture at the beginning, but I could tell myself that I could stand it because the next day I could eat whatever I wanted. And with time, eating only 500 calories became easier because I learned to eat foods that kept me satisfied for a long time (I often started the day with oatmeal or a sugar-free protein shake), and I could work in a few little treats too, like a tablespoon of half-and-half in my coffee, and a square of dark chocolate for a dessert.. So, as Glenda above suggested as a better approach, this method starts out where you are, rather than being a one-size-fits-all. In addition, it allowed me a lot of choices even on the fasting days - I could spend that 500 calories however I wanted - and I think that's why it worked so well for me. I'm planning to start again, to lose those five pandemic pounds I gained back, and more. It worked for me, but I also believe that everyone is different so it may or may not work for you.

[cwagner58]

A lot to process but very useful information.  ty