Help needed with caloric intake

[Thevelourfog]

For starters I'm a 32 year old male I'm 5'6 and I weigh about 201 and my goal here is to lose about 2 pounds a week until I'm in the 140's. I am currently using a Fitbit charge HR.

So I'm using a combo of MFP and fitbit to track my calories in and out. MFP says I should be eating around 1500 a day with zero exorcise. I walk about 10.50 miles 5 days a week for work.

Fitbit says I burn about 2500-2700 calories a day doing this(I think this sounds high but I have no idea if it actually is or not).

So according to MFP my new caloric intake everyday should be about 4k calories.

This seems really high to me. I looked up my BMR and it's 1938 and using that I figured out I should eat 2.3k calories a day to maintain my weight with zero exorcise.

Can anyone here help me out and yell me about how much I should be eating? I don't want to starve myself on accident and not only sabotage my weight loss but make myself even more unhealthy

[GershonSurge]

@Thevelourfog

Two pounds a week is a little ambitious for a goal. One to one and a half is more sustainable. The easy way is to eat your BMR of 1,938 calories for a couple weeks and see what happens after two or three weeks. Based on the exercise you are getting, you could raise the intake by about 300 calories.  It's not unusual in the first week to gain or lose two or three pounds.

It's important to accurately track calories eaten. Use a scale to measure your food and log EVERYTHING, even a single potato chip you might eat. I suggest doing this for at least a month. Some do it during the whole journey.

The Fitbits can be off by 10-15% in calories burned. The more a person exercises, the more pronounced this difference is. After a month, your profile will show the average calories burned and eaten. Divide the difference by 3,500 to see how many pounds you should have lost. If you lost to few, assume the Fitbit is overestimating calorie burn. If you lose too many, assume the Fitbit is underestimating calorie burn. 

[Thevelourfog]

I've already been on this diet for a while and have lost 80 pounds on it already. Now my issue is I'm no longer losing 2 pounds a week and am only losing 1 pound a week. This isn't what I'm going for so it's becoming frustrating.  So I know 2 pounds a week is more than doable for me.

I have also been weighing all my food for about a year or so now.

My main concern here is how accurate my fitbit's calorie tracking in regards to the exorcise is and if I really should be eating 4k calories a day to lose 2 pounds a week. Because that's what MFP and my fitbit are saying I should be doing and that definitely doesn't seem right. I know you can put your body into a starvation mode which keeps you from losing weight and I'm afraid that's what I'm doing on accident. 

[Esya]

@Thevelourfog

The closer you are to your goal the slower the weight loss will get.

[GershonSurge]

@Thevelourfog,

It would help if you made the calorie and steps charts open to the public. 

I'd like to clarify something. You said your Fitbit says you are burning 2,500 to 2,700 calories a day. Is this the number on your dashboard? Or is it activity calories? 

[Baltoscott]

Hi @Thevelourfog.  I've moved this thread to the "Third-Party Integrations" topic so that it will get noticed by MFP users.

Following up on @GershonSurge's question.  Is that 2500-2700 calories a day fitbit says you are doing showing up on the MFP side as exercise calories being added to your daily calorie budget?  

 Also, to avoid double counting, add exercises on the fitbit side (or just let your tracker take care of it), and add food on the MFP side.

[Thevelourfog]

yes it is showing up as exorcise on MFP

[Thevelourfog]

not really sure how to make my stuff open to the public but i hope this screen shot helps.

EDIT: ok so i found out how to make stuff public and i did.

[Baltoscott]

Making your profile public is helpful.  Looks like a lot of days are missing out of the past 30.  Do you wear your fitbit every day?  The 2700 average burn you see for the past 30 days includes your BMR.  So if your BMR is around 1750 or so -- (here is a link for calculating BMR), fitbit thinks you are doing around 1000 calories of exercise per day.  (The day in your screen shows a higher burn than average at 3200 calories -- again, that includes your BMR).

So hypothetically you need a1000 calorie daily deficit, to lose 2 lbs/week, which means you cna eat about 1700 calories/day.  But I think you said you are closer to a pound/week now, so you can assume that fitbit is overestimating burn a bit, you are underestimating calories consumed a bit, and that there are some errors in the caloric values MyFitnessPal assigned to some of the foods you tracked.  It is also possible that you burn fewer calories than average for your size and age.  The reasons why don't really matter.  To increase the rate of loss you will need to increase the caloric deficit somehow.  You probably don't want to eat eat less than 1700 calories/day since that is about your BMR, so to increase the rate of loss I think you'll have to exercise more.

On the other hand, you ARE losing a pound a week right now, and that is great.  If you are doing that without a lot of hunger and eating things you like, a good strategy would be to stay at the current rate for a while and start thinking about the whole maintenance aspect of this process.  

[GershonSurge]

@Thevelourfog,

Thanks for making the data visible. You are burning about 2,800 calories a day. If you want to lose weight, I recommend starting with a 750 calorie deficit. Vary this based on your results and how you feel.

If you'd like to vary your calories based on the number you burn each day, the easy way is to earn your calories before you burn them and forget the "fuel gauge." Remember, you will burn calories between your last meal of the day and midnight. It will likely be about 75 calories an hour. 

Don't be afraid to trust your own instincts. If you feel you are eating too much or too little, you probably are.

[Thevelourfog]

i guess my major question now would be why the hell does MFP say i have 2700 calories left to eat. I guess im going to have to ask some people on their site about that. i wear it 5 days a week during work. i dont do much on my days off because im to tired after all the walking at work. i will admit i do sometimes forget to wear it at work too but i walk the same route every day at work so its the same amount of steps