calories to burn to start losing weight

[CRSunrise]

I think everyone has a baseline calories that they burn, regardless of whether you do anything or not. If that's the case, my baseline is 2,168. If I burn anything over that, is that considered my calories out? So far today, I've burned 2,301 calories. 

Any ideas?

[Dominique]

Maybe what you call "baseline" is what is known as BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate)? It’s what you burn when doing nothing at all. As soon as you start doing something, you will burn more than that. There are various formulas to estimate your BMR. One of the most widely used is Mifflin St Jeor. It depends on sex, age, height and weight, and it’s more or less the one used by Fitbit.

If you burned 2301 calories today, chances are your BMR is lower than 2168, because most people would burn more than 133 calories from activity during the course of the day, even if they are very inactive. Or how did you establish your "baseline" was 2168 calories?

But to answer your question: in order to lose weight, you need to eat less than you burn, for some period of time. Your Fitbit should tell you how much you burn each day (it’s not going to be the same every day, as your activity level will likely vary from one day to the next).

[CRSunrise]

Obviously as midnight, I start out at zero, but it has a line of 0 to 2168. I've now burned 2645 calories. Would I have to burn like 1750 additional calories to equal half a pound. Although my food says something about a 299 deficit even with my 2645 calories.

[Dominique]

Hmm, maybe you should have a look at the Fitbit Food Plan Demystified...

[aps10]

I highly doubt your BMR is 2168 calories a day.  Probably 800-1000 less per day.

[Metagg]

I've lost 35 pounds since August 2015.  I had the most success using the fitbit 1000 calorie/day deficit plan.  The pounds just fell off as I kept track of my food and made sure I burned enough to hit my goal.  Once I hit my goal weight at 180 lbs, I decided to set a new weight goal of 165 lbs, but at a slower rate, the 500 calorie/day plan.  I've pretty much been stuck at 180 lbs for the past 4 months.  fitbit seems to be over estimating what I burn when I exercise enough so if I eat a little more than usual on a day and try to burn off those extra calories using fitbit figures, I'm not actually hitting my true 500 calorie deficit goal... it's closer to 0 deficit or a surplus of calories.  I'm likely to switch back to the 1000 calorie/day deficit plan just to compensate for the erroneous fitbit estimation of calories I burn.  

[SunsetRunner]

Are you sure that number is your BMR? Could you have mixed it up with your TDEE?

BMR= What your body burns if you spent all day in bed and did nothing.

TDEE = Total Daily Energy Expenditure, which means ALL the calories you burn per day, including exercise.

[emili]

I guess you have the answers you were looking for. Just in case here is a link to an online calculator that can help you determine your approximate calories out. http://www.iifym.com/tdee-calculator/. from there you would determine what a comfortable deficit for you is and subtract it from the number you calculated for tdee. What you get is what you would eat to every day to lose weight. If you want to eat more, you would then move more to burn off the extra so you don't ever go to or over the number. Let us know how you are doing...