Calories burned and consumed

[Lkool]

I have my Fitbit calorie goal set to a deficit of 500 calories.  Most days In order to meet my goal of a 500 calorie deficit my Fitbit app tells me I need to consume 4000-4800 calories.  This seems pretty high, I'm 6'3" 255 and pretty active.  I usually exercise about 10 hours each week, but that still seems high. It's a ton of food, especially when you stay away from junk.  

For a while I was hitting 3500-4000 calories but now I am down to 3000-3500.  So most days my actual deficit is around 1500-2000 calories. Does anyone else see huge numbers like this?

[jdidds]

Depends on your lean muscle mass. Although it does seem quite high, I agree. I use myfitnesspal for my calorie tracking. I'm a little bit taller as you, although about 25lbs lighter and have high muscle mass. 

I'm at a 500 calorie deficit and sometimes myfitnesspal tells me to eat another 1000 to 2000 calories per day on top of my current cutting diet of 2350 cals. I'm also pretty active.

Best bet is just to go by your scale and see the progress on a week to week basis. Adjust as needed. I wouldn't put too much emphasis on your device unfortunately. 

[YojanaFitbit]

Hey there @Lkool! Nice to see you around! 

I must agree with @jdidds, in regards of how the calories assumption works. Your Fitbit Account will use your profile information (age, weight, height and gender), how active you are and how much food you're consuming. In your case I think that it sound correct. Taking in count your body complexion and that you're pretty active.

It will depend also, which Food Plan you're using, your past activity history is taken to estimate your calorie burn for the day and increases or decreases if you're more or less active than usual.

Catch you later. 

[jdidds]

Update on this. I upped my calories to 3000 like fitbit was telling me I should eat. It seems that fitbit is actually pretty darn correct in it's calorie adjustments. Now I'm losing 0.5kg per week as I want to. Before, when I was on 2350cals a week, I was losing a lot more and probably muscle (sometimes as much as 1kg per week or more). What I do is take what fitbit tells me, and reduce by 100 per workout. So if I do both strength and then a cardio session after it, I adjust by 200. So 100 if I was just doing strength on that day.. I find this then is more accurate and keeps me within my weekly weightloss goal. 

On another note. If you're overweight, and I mean by a lot, it seems to be acceptable from what I've read that you can reduce calories by as much to produce a 1kg per week weight loss. As your body WILL use the fat. If though, you are more like me and aren't overweight, you shouldn't chance it as you will lose muscle mass and you really don't want that.  Aim for 0,5kg per week. I'm doing this now and having great results!

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @jdidds, thanks for replying with the feedback of your case. I'm glad to have you back!  I totally understand your comment, whenever you want to lose some weight it's best to take care of different factors so you don't start loosing your muscle mass. It's great to know that you're getting such amazing results, keep up with the good attitude and eyes on the price.

I'll be around!