I wanted to know how many calories I should be eating daily while trying to lose weight.

[SunsetRunner]

I am currently trying to lose weight and have been keeping track of my progress with my Fit Bit Charge 2. I wanted to know how many calories I should be eating daily while trying to lose weight. I am a male 6 Foot tall and 291 ponds. I have made good progress so far considering I used to be 380 pounds.

[WavyDavey]

Hi @SunsetRunner,

Welcome to the forums, and congrats on your progress!

I don't have a specific number for you, but I would say, whatever you're doing now, keep that up as it appears to be working, in terms of calories.

If the weight loss stalls, we have many threads and tips here about breaking through plateaus. What's your target goal weight?

[SunsetRunner]

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@WavyDavey wrote:

Hi @SunsetRunner,

Welcome to the forums, and congrats on your progress!

I don't have a specific number for you, but I would say, whatever you're doing now, keep that up as it appears to be working, in terms of calories.

If the weight loss stalls, we have many threads and tips here about breaking through plateaus. What's your target goal weight?

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My weight goal is 170 pounds.

[kaneohegirl]

depending on your fit bit it will tell you how many calories you can consume a day... I have the Charge 2 and mine tells me what I have and if I enter my foods in the log it subtracts it and tells me what I have left.

I do have a friend that is of similar height as you but heavier thats getting ready for Bariatric surgery but his dr wants him to lose some weight told him to stay below 1800 calories a day and to take at least one meal and cheat a week or he'd go crazy

[Dominique · Accepted solution]

@SunsetRunner: congrats for your achievement! Your Charge 2 will estimate your energy expenditure (calories burned) during the day, based on your personal information and your activity as detected by it . The stress is on estimate. Your personal information (age, sex, height, weight) is used to calculate your metabolic rate, using a standard equation called Mifflin St Jeor. In your case, that equation may  overestimate your metabolic rate (by up to 15%). This is because with the 90 pounds you lost in a relatively short period of time, your metabolic rate is lower than that of a guy of the same age/height/weight as you who has maintained his weight for a longer time. Try eating 750 calories less than what your Charge 2 says you’re burning and see what’s happening on the scale. Adjust your calories up or down as needed, after a few weeks. Depending on when and how fast you lost the 90 pounds, your optimal goal for the near future may be to maintain your current weight rather than push for further loss. For a rationale to that approach, check the Losing All Your Weight At Once video.

[idahoerics]

I'll second Dominique: the issue is consuming some reasonable amount less than you expend, resulting in a long term, sustainable calorie deficit. I used a calculator produced by the US National Institute of Health here: https://www.supertracker.usda.gov/bwp/index.html to figure out what I was burning, and settled on a target of around or slightly less than 2K Cal/day, but I weighed 195.