Cannot set calorie deficit goal

[Sph123]

I am trying to set up a calorie deficit but every time I do it reverts back to a number of calories.  I have restarted my Fitbit, deleted and reinstalled app multiple times, offloaded data.   I am

clicking on my profile in the app and going to food goal under nutrition and weight, setting a calorie deficit and confirming my choice. It will show goal as calorie deficit but as soon as I leave that screen it reverts back to a daily calorie goal.   I also don’t have the ability to set a goal weight, only body fat goal.   My phone is running most recent iOS so I think it may be an app problem.  

[sallieshouse]

Google has been cutting their coding staff and leaning in to leveraging AI for their coding. My guess is their AI heavy coding was flawed and they are struggling to undo the mistake. I think we will be seeing this kind of issue more and more as tech companies reduce their staff and increasingly rely on AI tools without enough human oversight.

[RJack61]

Can someone explain the math to work out the calorie deficit? I might be thick but can’t seem to wrap my head around it based on the numbers I see on the app.
Sent from my iPhone

[KRHS]

I can't see if anyone has answered you or not yet - they're probably more eloquent than I  - but essentially it's Calories Burned minus the deficit you want = the number of calories you can eat.  Fitbit tells you how many calories you have burned at any given time, which will change as the day goes on and you continue to burn calories.  If you have a rough idea of your daily calorie burn, you can just subtract the deficit from than, and that will give you a calorie limit for the day, which you can then fine-tune depending on if you exercise more (and burn more calories) or less. 
The forum rules say I cannot use certain numbers in my post otherwise I could tell you what kind of calorie deficit is associated with Easier, Medium, Kinda Hard or Harder.  If you go through the steps of trying to set a calorie deficit, you'll see those numbers so you'll know what you want.

[RJack61]

Thank you

Sent from my iPhone

[GradyL]

thanks for the update, at least we know they are, hopefully, working to resolve the issues 

Moderator Edit: Formatting.

[Horuswaspretty]

I have just tried resetting the calorie deficit and it seems to have worked! I’ve closed the app a few times and it’s still showing. Not confident it will stay, but is it working for anyone else?

Still a couple of issues as the progress bar on the home screen isn’t working and it’s lost my weight lost since start date. But the calorie deficit looks to be working. 

[momice]

Still not working for me. I just tried to set the calorie deficit, and it reverts back immediately to a total calorie goal I don’t want. 

[PinEdinburgh]

Just tried it and unfortunately it’s still not working for me. I can’t see any update waiting for me but could you possibly have had an update – they might be rolling them out in sequence in some way?  

[Horuswaspretty]

Last update showing as 13th March. My wife has just tried and it is not working for her. Very strange.

[GradyL]

I wanted to lose a pound a week which means I need to burn 3500 more calories in 7 days than I eat

Example, last week I burned  14,000 calories but only consumed 9,000, leaving me a total deficit of 5,000 when I got weighed at the end of the week I had actually lost 1.5 lb ‌👍‌

hope this helps 

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very odd

Moderator Edit: Formatting.

[KRHS]

Mine's still not keeping a calorie deficit. But it has changed my fixed calorie goal, which I could at least work with, to another number entirely - 970 calories! I had it set considerably higher. I switched to Cronometer and will see how all this plays out in the meantime but I need some reliable way to manage my weight loss goals and with numbers/goals that change themselves without warning, Fitbit is not it right now.

[phaskitt]

Not working for me

Sent from my iPhone

[K-Mich-123]

Mine just got worse. Now it switched itself and says my calorie goal for the day is 900 calories and shows all my past weeks as over daily goal. This is getting ridiculous. 

[CptKirk]

Same issue here. I noticed the issue last week.  When I try to edit my food plan it tells me an error occurred or that the website is currently under maintenance.

[Roregio2004]

Hi! Anyway, it’s still not working… they haven’t fixed the problem. Just a simple calculation that will ease our calorie deficit anxiety …
Sent from my iPhone

[Emily.Emily.Em]

Mine seems to be holding my deficit goal now which it hasn’t been doing for weeks so I wonder if it’s finally fixed?! 

[Blaydo]

Mine only holds the deficit for a micro second, then reverts to total calories 

[GradyL]

Just tried my calorie deficit and it’s still not working 

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it sounds like they might be working  on in the background, fingers crossed that they are actually trying to sort this problem out now. Can’t wait to get back on track 

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mines the same 

Moderator Edit: Formatting.

[GradyL]

mines the same 

Moderator edit - formatting

[KRHS]

Maybe this explains some of the delay in getting our calorie deficit issue fixed - apparently Google Pixel products are having difficulties too. Pixel watch users are having crazy inaccurate step counts (some doubled and tripled), inaccurate calories burned and calories eaten - sounds like their situation might be way worse than ours. Their latest update from a few weeks ago screwed up a lot of metrics, this according to a TechRadar article from yesterday, 3/20/26. Sounds like Fitbit/Google has their hands full already trying to fix things.  Not sure what this means about where we sit on the priority list, and as maddening as it is, at least we can get by if we have a rough idea of our daily calorie limits.  

Also - if what I've been reading is correct, their Pixel products rely on the Fitbit app for all the health-related data, as our Fitbit trackers do.  I doubt it's a coincidence that both the pixel and fitbit experiences fell apart about the same time.