calories burned not right

[slowmetabolism]

I have been using my fitbit for several months and I can't make sense out of my calories burned.  I consistently average around 2,000 calories eaten and 2,500-3,500 calories burned, but I don't lose any weight.  The calories eaten is very accurate. I weigh what I eat and compared to another diet calculation program the calories eaten is correct. 

However, the calories burned is always way too high.  I should have lost 15 pounds by now and I haven't lost anything.  Is there a way to adjust the basal metabolism, or how calories burned is calculated to come more in line with reality?  I've played around with the personal vs sedentary setting and that is not it.  I thought the fitbit would eventually "learn" how to calculate my calories burned after several months of giving it my calories in and daily body weight while it tracks my activities.  No such luck.  It just keeps telling me I'm eating 1,000 calories / day less than what I'm using.   Is there a manual way to adjust this?

[SteveH · Accepted solution]

There's no direct way of changing your BMR calories. The best you can do is to tweak your settings for height, weight etc at https://www.fitbit.com/settings/profile until you get the numbers you want.

[Ukase]

The important thing to remember is that Fitbit is using an algorithm; it's all just a guess. 

Even the data you're using to jot down what you're eating and how many ounces of chicken, and the calories those ounces have - guess what? That's a guess. No chicken breast is the same as another chicken breast. (unless I suppose it's the opposite breast of the same chicken) 

If you're not losing weight at a 1000 calorie deficit, make your deficit 1250. Still no lost weight? Make it 1500. Keep increasing the deficit until you get a result you can live with. 

That said, understand that the scale is pretty useless, beyond giving a baseline of how things are going. It doesn't tell you how good or bad you feel. It doesn't tell you if you had to suck in your gut before you buttoned/zipped your pants. The scale isn't everything, and neither are these fitbits.

You'll want to take a picture of the "before". You'll want to take measurements for comparison in a couple of months. You'll want to stick to it, just in case the results are there but you haven't noticed yet.