Total Calories for woman, wrong in fitbit. Deficit Error

[Sabby777]

Hi There,

I am having serious issues with the Fitbit food calories total in a day. My husband has a Fitbit and doesn't have any issues but I seem to and so does my friend who recently set up this.

I am a woman and my total calorie burn for a day doing nothing should be 2000 calories. Men are 2500. Then any exercise I do in a day should be on top. So if I burn 800 calories in a day then my total calories in a day is 2800 burned. Then obviously if I eat 1500 calories in a day then should be 2800 - 1500 = 1300 calories that i have burned in a day. However the app is saying different. Forget about food at the moment when I look at total calories in a day it is set to 1333 calories by analysing the bar chart.

Now I understand that I you can set food goals then this gives you a deficit to beat. I have turned all deficits off in Fitbit set to 0. My friend has the same problem, he has he's a man and 2500 + exercise should be his total. His total with a tiny bit of exercise is 1850. He has not even added a deficit food plan at all.

My husband does not have this problem at all. He has 2500 calories + his exercise and it works fine.

It is rather annoying as the app or windows dashboard, website all tell me that I have over eaten in a day. Soon as I eat 1400 calories in a day which is pretty low, I am in the red because i have gone over the 1333 threshold.

I have tried to find this information out but have not found any topic apart from making sure you have no deficit set. I have not got any deficit set?

[Rich_Laue]

Hi @Sabby777 

BMR is calculated by a users weight, gender, age, etc, it is not a set amount. 

Your body does not burn all of these calories by 1 minute after midnight, but throughout the day. 

Let's say that the BMR is 1200 calories for the day, or 50 calories per hour. 

Breakfast is at 6AM. 6*50 =300 calories have been burnt.

Eat breakfast of 600 calories at 6am and your body so far has only burnt 300 calories. 

600 in - 300 out therefore at 6am you would be over budget. 

That's OK because their is still 18 hours left in the day. 

Your current over/under is based on the current time. 

To simplify I left off the deficit determined by how fast and how much weight is wanted to be lost. 

I've also moved the thread to weight loss from Apps on the tracker. 

[Sabby777]

I dont think u understand maybe I am not explaining myself correctly. The total calories in the day before exercise is 1300. It should be 2000. I'm not looking on the day I am looking at all previous days that gave gone. When i click on food and see the bar it says weekly calorie deficit -1070 calories. My daily deficit says 0.

There seems to be an error as I have removed all deficits. My husband weekly calorie deficit is 0. His daily deficit is 0.

There is some bug. I understand all what u said. I just want to see my bmr of 2000 calories plus calories I exercise burned for the day. Not 1300 plus exercise burned.

[Rich_Laue]

Are you saying that your BMR is wrong? 

[Heybales]

First - 2000 and 2500 are HUGE rough estimates, for avg sedentary healthy weight female and male.

You start walking about 4000 steps and you are above Sedentary by most calcs if the distance those steps took you are decent.

So those figures are not for doing NOTHING - but average daily activity but not much.

If you are overweight you'll burn more too, if taller, younger, ect.

Second - those values are for TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), NOT for BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate). 

You are using the wrong terms, may have the wrong concept in mind, maybe not.

Third - your TDEE (which if sedentary and average could be close to 2000), is composed of your BMR (which if it is close to 1300, your sedentary is closer to 1625) + NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis daily stuff fidgeting some walking, ect) + EAT (Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) + TEF (Thermic Effect of Feeding not accounting for in Fitbit).

So it depends on what your are considering exercise.

Your math in first post is also wrong, and understanding of it.

"any exercise I do in a day should be on top. So if I burn 800 calories in a day then my total calories in a day is 2800 burned. Then obviously if I eat 1500 calories in a day then should be 2800 - 1500 = 1300 calories that i have burned in a day."

You are close but missing some very easy gotchas.

If you are average sedentary and TDEE is actually around 2000, and you did a workout that burned 800 in the workout by itself, some of those calories was already base burn accounted for, but we'll keep the math simple.

2000 daily + 800 exercise = 2800 TDEE

2800 TDEE - 1500 eaten = 1300 calorie deficit

Somehow you came back around to 1300 burned in a day. No, you burned 2800 in a day.

Your deficit was 1300 to cause hopefully just fat loss (if you don't have more than 100 lbs to lose, you lost muscle mass too, not good for future).

Now - perhaps you are confusing a field for Daily calorie burn GOAL - which is merely a goal.

And unless you have an option you changed - it's usually for daily burn, not exercise by itself, since increased daily activity can burn a lot too.

So forgetting the 2000 since that is a made up figure you saw somewhere and has no bearing in reality unless you are perfectly average - take a screen shot on your phone of the fields, tiles, gauges, figures you are talking about.

You don't appear to be using the exact field descriptions I can see on the web, so perhaps on the app.

But a screen shot would point it out exactly - then people can help.

Besides - if you think this is a bug - you'd have to provide that anyway so tech support had a clue.

Also - if you want to give some body stats - BMR is totally based on calculation (actually everything is, there is no measuring of calories burned) and that can easily be confirmed.

Also, the daily deficit value given, isn't on what you selected as a deficit, but on what your burned minus eaten has caused for the day.

At least from your description not using the exact terms or saying where these values are.

Screen shot will clear up much.

[Be50Gone]

Everything is based on what info you fed the program. In my case my burn rate for doing nothing is 1700. And I am overweight by 50lbs, older and sedentary.  My friend who is about 75lbs over weight, in her 30's and semi active her burn rate for doing nothing is set at 1850. I wouldn't be to hung up on the numbers. Just expend more calories then you eat and you will lose weight. And slower weight loss is better then a fast weight loss as it is more likely you will keep it off, and your skin has a better chance of recovery. Good luck in your journey

[Glenda]

Do you weigh 200 pounds?  Eating 2000 calories a day would maintain 200 pounds.  If that was the case and you ate 1500 calories a day you should lose one pound a week.  Forget exercise.  It is only for better health not weight loss.

[Glenda]

Be50Gone makes a good point.  My husband lost 100 pounds one year and had NO loose skin.  Some people lose faster and have a distressing amount of loose hanging skin and there is no way to get rid of it except for painful surgery.   It is very ugly too.  

[Heybales]

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@Glenda wrote:

Do you weigh 200 pounds?  Eating 2000 calories a day would maintain 200 pounds.  If that was the case and you ate 1500 calories a day you should lose one pound a week.  Forget exercise.  It is only for better health not weight loss.

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So 2 people that are 200 lbs, let's even say the same age, gender, and height to make a compare fair.

1 is a single person that is a desk jockey for work that comes home and plays video games most of the night at their apartment.

1 is a mail carrier with a family of 3 kids and a home to take care of, and works out 4 days a week cycling hard for an hour.

Do you honestly think they both have a maintenance of 2000 daily calories?

How is the burning of calories in the exercise any different than the burning of calories while you sleep, walk, move, exist?

Start throwing in differences in age, gender, and height, even more differences in calorie burns due to different sized organs that are the main calorie burners.

Good point about slow loss being better though. Problem is if you assume someone has a certain maintenance level based on nothing but weight, and recommend an eating level based on that - you can easily be recommending a fast unsustainable amount of fat and muscle loss, causing exactly the problem you describe, and other worse ones.

[Kris111]

Gosh I dont understand, this sounds so complicated.

When you go to settings in your fitbit all you have to do is set your goal (-500 calls a day is one pound, -1000 is 2 lbs and I think 250-300 is half a lb. A week.)

Are you using my fitness pal I stead cuz that seems to complicate things imo.

Anyway after you have/had set your goal all you have to do is go to your food calorie budget icon and it should say what is in your budget that you should be allowed to eat, it's that easy!

Not everyone burns the same amount everyday it depends what you are doing that day so I find fitbits method way easy/simple/proper to follow. That is the beauty of this device. I hate saying "oh I have to eat this number of calories everyday" if you ask me that's stupid your activity level will probably vary !

[Glenda]

@Kris111 @Heybales   You are both right of course.  I was being way too simplistic.  I didn't think she gave enough information.   Anyone who wants advice should say: gender, height, age weight etc.   

[Rich_Laue]

The OP mentions the base line calories needed to keep the body alive is wrong for women. (BMR)

Then compares her number to a males baseline. 

Every women will have a slightly different BMR. 

@Sabby777 says that her BMR is 2000, I simply asked, where did this number come from. 

To go back to the original post. 

If fitbit says you burn 800 calories a day, fitbit has already factured in BMR. I assume the day is not over yet. 

Of course people who do more activity will need to eat more, but the question was about the baseline (BMR) of the body with no additional activity. 

Throughout the day fitbit monitors the calories burnt, this includes the BMR and activity, up to the present time. Then recommends how much to eat based on how fast the user wants to lose weight.