don't follow fitbit's calorie counter

[rshe]

There is no way a person can consume the amount of calories that they fitbit dashboard says you burn and lose weight.  It is WAY OFF target.   A two mile walk doesn't burn over 1,000 calories and you can't lose weight if you are eating as much as it says you can.

[Heybales]

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@Mudd3r wrote:

Hi, New to all this. I also am having trouble with logging food. I have signed up for My Pal Fitness. I do not understand how to link the two? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks Kat

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http://www.myfitnesspal.com/apps?app_category=activity_trackers

Click Connect on Fitbit - follow the instructions.

[joella]

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@msfarkee wrote:

I was on MFP for a month tracking calories,  got a Fitbit and  now I prefer it's calorie login.     I don't have to sinc the  2 sites and jump back and forth.  

And of course (contrary to the OP) you can add/create a food.  

If a food is not on the dropdown,  I enter it and then favorite it.     I am getting a list of everything I eat right on the food login page   under my FAVORITES and  alot of times  I don't even enter a food --it is already there and I am sure of the calorie count because I entered it myself.     (this makes it so easy to use)

MFP is a great calorie site  and I like the Success Forum.   It has over 8000 foods or something like that but I don't need that at all so it is irrelevent to me.   ( MFP created  some of  its huge data base of food with its own members  so I don't mind putting in things I eat  here on Fitbit.)    I liked MFP but now I have a Fitbit and don't need 2 calorie counting sites.        (ps-no connection to Fitbit).   

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Thanks for this info. I am getting feed up with lack of synching and think it would make life easier if I just log on one site and forget the rest. I have loved MFP, but the synching issue is just getting so annoying.

I have lots of items in MFP, has anyone found a way to get those over to Fitbit??? A gal can dream can't she??

[reivory]

Make sure you put your weight loss goals into the fitbit app.  That's how your calorie/burn vs calories in are calculated.  It doesn't matter whether you are eating or excercising you should lose weight based on moving more than you are eating and making certain you have a calorie burn defecit.  

[BJC1]

You can easily personalize your food log by adding your favourite foods/calorie content to the list.

[dctexas65]

I am getting ripped off!  My two mile walk only netted me 235 calories!

[Heybales]

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@dctexas65 wrote:

I am getting ripped off!  My two mile walk only netted me 235 calories!

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Did the device say you walked 2 miles, or you know you walked 2 miles?

In which case, how far did it think you walked?

And you may not understand, that info above is very incomplete, and you really can't tell anything from it, whether good or bad.

How long did the 2 miles take too - that's required info.

Because it's pace and weight that give calories.

[whome]

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@dctexas65 wrote:

I am getting ripped off!  My two mile walk only netted me 235 calories!

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Why do you think you burned more than 235 calories by walking 2 miles? As I recall, about 100 calories per mile (walking or running) is about average so 235 sounds about right to me.

[BigPapa08]

I have looked at my suppose to be FitBit totals and BMI! The problem with this dashboard, it does not let you adjust it in any way. I am building muscle by lifting heavily almost everyday, they do not take this into account when BMI is calculated or caloric intake is calculated. I am using this as a tool for myself, so my suggestion to most people out there pay attention to how clothes fit, not neccesarily what a wrist accesory or scale is telling you. 

[Heybales]

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@BigPapa08 wrote:

I have looked at my suppose to be FitBit totals and BMI! The problem with this dashboard, it does not let you adjust it in any way. I am building muscle by lifting heavily almost everyday, they do not take this into account when BMI is calculated or caloric intake is calculated. I am using this as a tool for myself, so my suggestion to most people out there pay attention to how clothes fit, not neccesarily what a wrist accesory or scale is telling you. 

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And that is exactly why BMI was invented as a useful thing for populations as a whole - never as an individual stat to be useful for anything.

Your side of the bell curve example would have been balanced by an extreme on the other side, and the averages still would be useful - for populations.

But you give the insurance industry anything to do with numbers and a potential relationship with health - and they'll run with it.

Then Dr's who didn't really understand the application and implications started using it too.

Yep, use BMI as rough indicator until you know better - but realize that in some countries, in some insurance plans, it will matter. So have a smarter Dr that will take the results of a good bodyfat test and sign off on fact you are healthy weight. Do NOT let them do stupid handheld or foot BF unit, unless it has athlete mode and/or shows positive results from test they can use.

[BigPapa08]

With my experience in being fit over the last year, not saying I am any type of an expert, I hate those machines cause they are pretty off. Prefer the water test or BodPod tests, because the calipers can be slightly off. 

[101Mom]

The calorie counter is a best guesstimate if there is no restaurant or label listed on Fitbit. When I have not liked or agreed with a particular calorie count, I've gone to either the restaurant website or to a calorie website to find out. I have been amazed at some of my favorite restaurant calorie counts on items I thought were good or a small splurge. I then put those number in my Custom list for retrieval if I needed to use them again. If I go to a restaurant, I'll type in their name and see what, if anything comes up. There can be major calorie differences between restaurants for the same food item do to how it's made.  I use two different apps - one Fitbit and one other to see how they compare. So far they haven't been too far off.

[Trooper]

I have been a calorie counter for over ten years. I used to use the Calorie Counting book, The Calorie King. I can tell you that most of what they have is accurate. Sometimes, thou they can be off. That is why you to have add the food nutritional information in the system so that you can use it again in the future. Because everybody burns calories at different rates with excercise it would probably be real hard to figure out. I guess they just go by statistics on that one. My problem with the Fitbit was that I would excercise 3 miles, and it would only give me a few minuets of activity. Made me mad!! Now I primarily use it to count calories. I do like the idea of knowing around how many calories I burned if I walked 2 miles. Once again, Fitbit is probably using Scientific data from years of Weightloss Research that other research geeks  did in the 70's and 80's at Harvard. And I am not an expert at any of these stuff. I just  work at a place where our job is now wholly relying on statistical data from years of research to try to predict if someone is going to recidivate and go back to jail. Some of it is dead on, and a lot is dead wrong!! Please feel free to add me to your friends list. 

[josephz2va]

I don't follow the in vs out scale. Too many calories to consume. Best to stick with what a dietitian would recommend on the quality of calories and how much calories to consume. Avoiding bad quality which are donuts, chocolate, candy, power bars, protein shakes And Dr. Oz ads. Consuming good quality foods from "foods to build lean muscle" on Google and portionalizing the foods correctly lose weight and tone up.

I burn up to 3,900 calories and more daily which is the goal run but only consume 1,200-1,700 calories which is my set diet intake.

The quality of the calories burned and quality of calories eaten are important to actually master in versus out Which you need high intensity workouts, personal training workouts which are on Fitstar part of Fitbit, and weights now and then.

[UVcat]

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@josephz2va wrote:
I don't follow the in vs out scale. Too many calories to consume. Best to stick with what a dietitian would recommend on the quality of calories and how much calories to consume. Avoiding bad quality which are donuts, chocolate, candy, power bars, protein shakes And Dr. Oz ads. Consuming good quality foods from "foods to build lean muscle" on Google and portionalizing the foods correctly lose weight and tone up.

I burn up to 3,900 calories and more daily which is the goal run but only consume 1,200-1,700 calories which is my set diet intake.

The quality of the calories burned and quality of calories eaten are important to actually master in versus out Which you need high intensity workouts, personal training workouts which are on Fitstar part of Fitbit, and weights now and then.

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I found Fitbit's estimate of my burned calories to be pretty accurate, in the sense that when I logged my food and used Fitbit's calculated deficit, I lost about the amount of weight I'd expect, on average.

If I understand your post, you're running a deficit of 2200-2700 calories every day. I guess it depends on how much you have to lose, but it's hard for me to imagine that anyone (dietician or otherwise) would recommend eating 1200-1700 calories while burning 3900. I think eating a donut every now and then would be healthier than that.

Are you losing 4-5 pounds a week? If not, something seems amiss?

-UVc

[josephz2va]

Varies on the activity from 4:00 am to 8:00 pm or as late as 11:00 pm for some as far as burning efficiently goes. Majority of my day is in my chair like most of us today. I only received 239 out of 960 minutes for 16 hrs yesterday. 24% active. So 76% lazy.

But the food is also what counts. The quality consumed vs quality burned. I binged a lot a while back holding 260 and 35% fat. From beer downing by as much as a pitcher and bacon cheeseburger meals from Applebee's. Tons of danger doing that.

[josephz2va]

I went from 193 Saturday to 190.8 today and 17%. Still have the next 5 days to shoot for 185.

[UVcat]

Yeah, everyone's weight fluctuates from day to day, sometimes by many pounds. That's water, mostly. That's why real weight loss can only be quantified by taking averages over weeks, ideally longer. If you're not losing 4+ pounds per week, averaged over a few months, then your deficit is not 2000+ calories a day.

While I agree that being overweight is not healthy, that doesn't mean that eating at an extreme deficit is healthy. 

-UVc

[Malenka]

Finding  a problem with the custom food database: one cannot enter a unique food and have a decimal place in the calorie value.  For example, if a food is 1.34 calories per gram, I can only enter 1 or 2 calories per gram.  If I try to enter 1.34, a window pops up stating that I have entered "negative calories" or words to that effect.  One solution is to record it as 100 grams with 134 calories and thereby avoid the decimal, but why have the additional arithmetic step of moving the decimal around when entering consumption?  It is easier for me to stick with CalorieKing for food logging.

[CandGsMom]

This is an interesting thread.  Yes the fitbit has shortcomings.  However, effective weight loss requires many tools.  None are magic bullets.   This is only one tool and should not be relied upon solely.  Use it for what it is worth and keep finding success wherever possible. 

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@rshe wrote:

There is no way a person can consume the amount of calories that they fitbit dashboard says you burn and lose weight.  It is WAY OFF target.   A two mile walk doesn't burn over 1,000 calories and you can't lose weight if you are eating as much as it says you can.

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[DEBBYDO]

I use myfitness pal to log food then sync to fitbit.  I haven't yet had a day where my cal in / cal out was in the green so don't really take much notice of this.