Weight loss

[Mberardo]

I am a little confused on the weight loss feature incorporated with the Fitbit charge 2. If my goal is to loose 1.5 a week how do I know how many calories to cut back on and how do I use it within the app. If I need x amount of calories a day just resting... and I burn x amount... does the app automatically cut the calories back telling me to go ahead and eat the amount of calories shown on my screen or do I need to mentally say okay I'm stopping 750-1000 calories short of the amount it's telling me to eat today 

[Sheila10]

I am also confused on calorie intake.  Help us

[Megnicmom]

I am confused as well. This section is to complicated to understand at times. Did anyone ever answer this question?

[Esya]

If you set up a food plan, the FitBit will tell you how much you can eat without you having to mentally substract numbers. As some people are confused, let me talk you through how to set it up and how I advice people to use it.

In the app go to the tab Account (right hand bottom) and on this page select Nutrition & Body. On the next page click on Food. This takes you to the options to set up a food plan. You can fill in your current weight and your goal weight and at what rate you want to be losing. Once you have set this up, FitBit will tell you how many calories you can eat, while taking this plan into account. You don't have to do any additional math yourself.

Start by following this plan for 4 weeks and after 4 weeks see how your weight changed (2 weeks if you are male). Seeing calories burned and calories in are all estimations, the outcome might actually differ from the plan you set up, but it should be a very good starting point. If you are not losing weight, increase the calories deficit in your food plan. If you are losing too fast or want to go slower, decrease the calories deficit in your food plan. Again stick to this new plan for 4 weeks (due to hormonal cycle women can only see if the plan works after 4 weeks, men typically after 2 weeks).

After 4 weeks you can evaluate again and adjust again if needed until you find the right balance for you. To get the best results you have to be consistent with your logging. Track exercises, but also log your food intake to the very last detail (drinks, creamers in drinks, licks, bites etc. etc.).

There are 2 settings in the food plan: sedentary and personalised:

Sedentary will calculate the calories burned for the rest of the day as if you spend the day being sedentary and add calories burned when you burn them through being active. So the food you are allowed to eat will be for a sedentary day until you become active and then those calories will be added to the amount of food you can eat.

Personalised will calculate the calories burned on average over the last period and assume you are going to burn the same amount again that day. It will adjust the amount of calories burned during the day to what you actual burn. This can result in the estimations for the day being higher than you actually might burn.

Sedentary setting tends to result in eating below your food plan where personalised setting tends to result in eating above your food plan. Try them both out to see which setting suits you best.