Not sure I can believe the 'Calories left to eat"...

[jhunt]

I'm a 38 year old male. 6ft, 195 pounds. My goal is to lose 10 pounds and this is input into my fitbit. It shows that my daily calorie deficit is - 750.

Today's stats are below:

Steps: 16,812

Cals burned: 3,274

Calories eaten: 2,105

Cals left: 1,656

So I get that the more I work out, and the more active I am in a particular day, the more calories I will be able to consume and still be at a deficit. But it seems strange that I'd be able to consume 3,761 calories worth of food, and still be at a -750 deficit, which will allow me to lose the 10 pounds.

Am I missing something? Reading my fitbit wrong? Is the device wrong, or not properly calibrated?

[Inferno10808]

That's a great question and I've also found it to be odd.  I used MyFitnessPal to lose over 50 pounds in about a year (1 pound a week) and I found that even there the numbers just didn't make sense with how much I should eat.  Just started using Fitbit recently and it gives very similar calorie suggestions.

In my opinion, Fitbit and MyFitnessPal are really good for getting your calorie ins and outs.  But when it comes to "calories left", I think it's misleading.

Try this website:

http://www.healthycalculators.com/calories-intake-requirement.php

It will allow you to figure out how many calories you should eat daily based on your age, height, current weight, average weekly activity, etc.  Also, it's important to know how fast you wish to lose those 10 pounds.  Remember, each pound is worth 3500 calories.  So you could spread the deficit out over 6 weeks or a year.  Really depends on your personal goals.

Again, I would just use Fitbit to help you determine your calorie ins and outs, but don't really on it's suggestion for calories in.  My guess is if you wish to lose 10 pounds in 6 weeks, you'll probably need to eat roughly 1800-2000 a day.  I have very similar stats as you, 38 male, 6'2", 175.  (I used to be 230).  And I was eating a bit less than that a day to get where I am now.  But I also wasn't nearly as active as I am now.  If you're doing 16,000 steps a day, that's great!

Hope this helps...good luck!

[MauraWhat]

What time are you working out?  I think it estimates how many calories you have left to eat based on how active you've been so far, AND assuming you'll stay at a similar level all day.  So, if you do your workout in the morning it may be prorating your whole day and thinking you will burn way more by the end of the day than you actually will.

[jhunt]

Since getting the fitbit (Christmas) I've been working out in the AM. I manually input my calorie burn because where I work out (orange theory) we use hr monitors and they track calories based on age/sex/heart rate. I assume that to be fairly accurate. 

So this AM I burned 642 calories working out, in 50-60 minutes. Obviously no one could be that active all day. So I guess my question is how to set up the device, or if the device can is or can accurately track for me. It's a pretty cool device, and it keeps you pretty honest if you really use it and track food, etc. 

[whome]

You can see how many calories Fitbit expects you to burn for the entire day by hovering your curser over the "dinner plate" tile. I assume this is the one you refer to regarding calories left to eat. You can then figure out how many calories Fitbit expects you to burn per hour by subtracting the calories burnt so far total and dividing that number by the hours left in the day. For me this is about 60 calories per hour, which is what Fitbit figures as my B/RMR (basal/resting metabolic rate). If it doesn't work out that way for you, check if you have "calorie estimation" enabled. I do not. 

You can see what Fitbit calculates as your B/RMR by going to your "activity log" graph and seeing what it shows for your calorie burn during a sleep/inactive period.

Hope this helps - good luck

[jhunt]

It seems like my iPhone and my laptop are not 100% synced. I've been logging my food on my phone but it says on my 'plate' that I have not logged any food. Which I have. 

[jhunt]

Do I need to log food/exercise on both my phone and my computer? Or do I need some kind of update? I certainly don't want to log things 2x.

[whome]

I don't know about Iphones, I have an android phone. But, I can say that, IMHO, you are better off using MyFitnessPal (MFP) for logging food. It will sync with Fitbit and has a much better (more extensive) food database. Sometimes, there is a bit of a lag in the syncing but it is seldom a real problem for me.

[jhunt]

Just got the myfitnesspal app. I guess I'd hope that I could get the fitbit app all synced and just have one place to input. I'm a one stop shopping kind of guy.

[whome]

You will find that a lot of people around here use MFP for food logging and Fitbit for exercise logging. Fitbit will import the food data (meal totals) from MFP if set up properly so it really shouldn't take that much "extra" effort, lol.

If I may, I look at it this way - If this is the biggest hassle I have to deal with today, it is going to be a VERY good day.

Good luck

[jhunt]

I totally agree. It's just a pain getting it all set up. I'm being less active sitting here trying to get it all synced! It's like, if I'm going to use it, I just want to make sure that I'm using good information/input and not consuming 2,000 extra calories per day just because my fitbit tells me I can..

[tealily]

I find the 'calories left' can be a bit misleading, especially if I've done a lot of exercise early on in the day (as it makes estimates based end of day caloric expenditure based on how active you are at that point in time... ). After I stop exercise I notice the 'calories left' usually drops down quite a bit.

Like almost everyone above I use MFP for food tracking, but often manually subtract calories eaten from calories burned (via fitbit, because of the cuter display <3) to get an objective idea of where I'm at. Example posted below.

-----------

from jhunt's posted data

Cals burned: 3,274

Calories eaten: 2,105

= 1169 difference at time of measurement

- 750 desired weightloss

= 419 calories remaining

[kaelarenee7]

That number seems way off. It's probably just a glitch in the system.

I usually work out in the morning so something to keep in mind is that when you work out in the morning, if you're not doing as much throughout the rest of the day, the calories left will go down even without logging food. Sometimes I have to be in bed by 7-8 pm because I work early the next day and on those days I usually end the day with my Fitbit showing 100-200 calories left to eat because I know I won't be moving much for the last 4-5 hours of the day and by the time it hits midnight, Fitbit will show less calories left to eat. It's dissapointing to go to bed in the zone or under for calories, and wake up over budget.

I'd be curious to know what time of day those stats are from, because if it's from earlier in the day the calories left to eat would probably go down just as the day progresses without adding more food, but if it's toward the end of the day, it's definitely way off. Fitbit's essentially saying that you're probably going to burn a total of 4,500+ calories for that day based on those numbers in order for you to eat that much more and have your 750 calorie deficit.