Weight loss v calorie target.

[Kevin_Skinny]

Hi All.

This is my first post so be nice to me 🙂 My question is this, I am always under my calorie budget and over my exercise/active target, Should i loose weight more quickly this way or by keeping my calorie intake in the target zone. I am averaging 1000 calories a day deficit but loosing weight very slowly, what can i do to speed things up. 

[Dominique · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the community, @Kevin_Skinny! Don’t worry, we try to be nice to each others here!

An actual daily deficit of 1000 calories should result in a weekly weight loss of 2 pounds, in average / over time (weight loss is not necessarily fully linear). If you are losing much less than that, again, in average / over time, this means your estimated deficit is smaller than the actual deficit. This could be caused by your Fitbit overestimating your energy expenditure (not uncommon, and estimating energy expenditure with a fitness tracker isn’t exact science), or by you underestimating your dietary intake (again, not uncommon), or any combination of both.

If you have been logging your intake and monitoring your expenditure for long enough (e.g. 3-4 weeks or more) and it becomes obvious your estimated deficit is smaller than the actual deficit, you may want to increase the calculated deficit obtained in Fitbit so as to get your actual deficit closer to where it needs to be for your goal.  

[Kevin_Skinny]

Thank you so much for your reply and for being nice to me lol.... This now makes much more sense. In the 4 weeks i have had my Blaze i have lost 9lb with an average calorie 1000 to 1300 deficit so this is about rite and inline with your thoughts. I think i just got carried away and expected more as the numbers looked very good. I also think as my tracker gets more info it may get better/more accurate at crunching the numbers.

Cheers Kevin... 

[Dominique]

Actually, 9 pounds in 4 weeks is very close to what you would expect with a daily deficit of 1000 calories, so if your average deficit was - say - 1200 calories, you’re only off by less than 200 calories. Very good IMO and I wouldn’t change anything. Many people would be more than happy if they were able to lose an average of 9 pounds per month. Even if you have a lot to lose, I’d rather slow you down at some point, so you "only" lose 10% of your body weight (that’s a lot!) in one stretch of weight loss, as explained in the Losing All Your Weight At Once video that I keep mentioning again and again (sorry to long-time members if that makes me sound like a broken record), because it makes a lot of sense to me. 

[Kevin_Skinny]

Thank you again, This has been so informative. This is the first time i have trained with a tracker to guide me' so it is a very different experience to what i have been used to. I will for now continue as is and not look quite so hard at the figures. 

Regards, Kevin.