Need help understanding calorie deficits.

[Beauty05]

So I don’t understand the calorie deficit that much. I know your supposed to eat less and exercise more, but let’s for example you eat like 2,335 calories a day and the deficit is to reduce by 630 calories. So you you should eat 1,705 calories a day. Do you need to exercise until you burn all 1,705 calories? Or do you just burn 630 calories a day? To lose weight? Please help!!!! Thank you!! 

[lavabelle]

Every body regardless of exercise burns calories, this is your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate). Your BMR is how much energy (calories) your body burns without any exercise. Your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) is your BMR + Exercise.

To create a deficit if you do not do any exercise and are pretty much sedentary, you have to create a deficit using your BMR. i.e 1735(BMR) - 500(deficit) = 1235 calorie to eat, if you do this every day for a week, you should lose approximately 1 lbs (3500 calories = 1 lbs)

To create a deficit if you are a bit more (or a lot more) active, you can find your TDEE and create a deficit using that number. i.e. 2287 (TDEE) - 500 = 1787 calories to eat. if you do this every day for a week, you will lose approximately 1 lbs.

I made up the number for the BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) and TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), there are also different ways to calculate these numbers, but basically you will need to know your weight, height, age and gender and lots of calculators available to help find what yours is.

It's a bit more complicated than this in reality, different people will have slower or faster metabolism and burn more or less calories doing the same activity, so it's really a range.

For simplicity's sake, many people just figure out what their BMR is and set that as their calories for the day, and any exercise you would do or activity would create the deficit. Over time you will know if this is working for you or not and you can adjust it up or down to meet your goals.

[Dominique]

If you’re wearing it, your Fitbit should tell you how much energy you expend everyday (= how many calories you burned). For that, it uses your personal information (age, gender, height, weight), so make sure thase are correct in your profile, together with the movements, impacts and heart rate (if supported) detected by it. Note that this number (calories burned) is an estimate.

In order to lose weight, you need to eat less calories than you expend. You can use Fitbit’s Food Plan to log your intake. When you set up the plan, you tell it what your goal weight is and how fast you want to reach it (you can choose from five different options that range from "Easier" to "Harder"). Fitbit will set up the deficit needed to reach your weight goal with the pace you selected. Make sure the pace you select is realistic: for instance, if you burn 1700 calories in average everyday, don’t select the "Harder" option (deficit of 1000 calories) which would only let you eat 700 calories.

You can also choose not to log your intake, and eat based on calories burned and the number displayed on the scale (this is what I do), assuming you weigh yourself regularly (I do it every single morning).