who's calorie count do I believe?

[Smitti85]

Hello,
I am just starting with fitbit and I decided to use my fitness pal to go along with it. Well I'm having an issue with calorie counts. I want to loose 100 lbs, but I have both set up for my first goal of getting out of the 200s. So both are set to loose 40 lbs at 2 lbs per week. My fitness pal is giving me 1490 calories per day, and fit bit is giving me 1542. I know there isn't a huge difference but what one should I take as accurate?
Thanks

[Hannah_L2M]

Hi Smitti85. I am a dietitian and I would say to just aim for a range like 1450 to 1550. Both apps, my fitness pal and fitbit, use the recommended equation to estimate calorie needs: mifflin st jeor. If you want another reference you could check out the NIH Body Weight Simulator. Hope this helps.

[Smitti85]

Thank you so much Hannah! Would you be able to answer something else for me?
Right now I have logged my breakfast, lunch dinner,and exersise for the day. I have synced my fitness pal with fit bit and all my information I have entered into my fitness pal is showing up correct in fitbit and the other way around BUT calories remaining in fitbit is 235 but in my fitness pal is 460. What one should I go by?

[whome]

This sounds like something that could be affected by what activity level you have set yourself at on MFP and whether or not you have "calorie estimation" enabled on Fitbit. But it looks to me (IMHO) like you are just starting out on this whole thing. If so, you might want to just aim for something in between the two numbers that MFP and Fitbit are giving you until you get enough information logged to establish trends - a couple of weeks at least and if female maybe a couple of months to establish a baseline to refer to.

Good luck

[Hannah_L2M]

My best suggestion is to pick one program's estimation and see how your weight loss trends. And if you have calories remaining at the end of the day just try to tune in and see if you are still hungry.

Calorie estimation is a tool, it's not perfect (as you've seen between programs). Use the estimated numbers to guide decision making. Your calories needs and how many calories you burn do vary day to day around a general number/range. Hope this helps.

[Smitti85]

Thank you both for your help!

[Heybales]

Ditto's to NOT trying to follow 2 roads to the same destination, even if you think you have both settings the same.

Even if a man isn't driving, that's just asking for frustration. Let MFP be your diet/eating goals, Fitbit being the exercise/daily burn goals.

For one big thing, MFP does NOT include exercise in the daily maintenance figure, from which it takes a deficit for your eating goal. So initial goal is merely daily life no exercise, and that's the only day it would apply to.

When you actually do the exercise and log it, daily maintenance goes up, and therefore so does eating goal.

Fitbit synced to MFP allows correction of that daily maintenance figure (since you could only select from 4 levels), so then you can truly eat less than you burn. Which is all that is needed to lose weight.

But hopefully by a reasonable amount to sustain only fat loss, not by big amount to cause muscle mass loss and fail in the whole endevour either during the loss or in maintenance. As so many do fail then and gain weight or more back, but more fat then.

One kicker though, if exercise is not step based, you need to manually log it in Fitbit so the daily burn is more accurate picture.

That way eating goal is still reasonable.

Oh, and that initial difference is the fact MFP uses Mifflin BMR as basis to math, Fitbit uses something close but undisclosed to it, unually within 10-30 calories. Once BMR is brought to daily burn, that can turn in to 15-50 off.

But neither matters, because as soon as you burn more than that initial sedentary estimate, the math starts on what your reported burn is.

Oh yeah, to the difference during the day of how much left to eat - confirm MFP is getting a recent sync form Fitbit regarding daily burn.

Go to Exercise tab in MFP, the calorie adjustment entry has an "i" there to click on, it'll tell you when and what the calorie amount was. If not recent, then you got a sync still coming or in error. Either sync the Fitbit again to account, so there is new figure for Fitbit to send over to MFP, or wait.

But confirm that is showing recent calorie adjustment.

Then you can meet your daily eating goal.