How accurate did you find the Fit Day Daily Calories Burned to be?

[DecemberBlue]

Hey all- I originally posted this under a different category and while I received some great responses I was hoping for more feedback and after reading some of the posting under this category, felt my question would be a more appropriately placed here.
I'm sure many of you have encounter of BMR/RMR & Total energy expenditure calculator that differ by many hundreds; I know I have, leading to my question. Have anyone found that when they put in their daily living activities and calories burned via exercise (i use a heart rate monitor to get closer to accuracy) and take what they eat out of it; it works for them and have been losing weight. Basically do you believe that the activities section of Fit Day is close enough that it has helped you lose the expected amount of weight by a certain time period? please let me know. if you found yourself having to make adjustments to the total calorie expenditure. what types of adjustment was it? Thanks in advance!

[farahb7]

Hi, there are so many experts here, that can answer your question more accurately. for me, i just deduct the exercise directly from food calories, to get to the calories defitioncy that i need to lose the weight. say for example if i have 1200 calories from food intake, i'll make sure to exercise and burn at least 500 calories a day, so my calories balance stays at about 700.
hope i didn't confuse you more??!!

[kerrithrelkeld]

my personal experience has been that obviously, its just basic math. 3500 cals = a lb. so i only log my food ( i don't always make it to the gym like i intend to so i dont log my activities daily). but i can almost always tell when i'm about to lose another pound b/c every couple of days when my calorie difference between eaten/burned gets to 3500 i actually do lose that weight. So its been very easy for me to predict my weight loss w/o logging my activities. But as far as how many cals are burned in activities, i really couldn't say. This website is probably more acurate them the monitors on gym equipment, etc. b/c you've entered your profile & it calculates your height/weight/age/activity level, etc. when estimating your calories lost, so i would assume it pretty close. Probably not the answer your looking for, but i hope that helps! So far I'm down 27 lbs from April just logging calories alone and like I said I can almost predict from my food journal when i'll lose my next pound.

Good Luck,
Kerri

[DecemberBlue]

Thank you for your responses!

Kerri: so then how do you know how much to eat? without going over to under? I know some people keep to 1200; so without going under that?

[Lizzycritter]

There's two ways to figure what calories you should be eating to lose weight. The first is to google "Weight loss calculator" and enter your stats, see what that tells you. I'd do a couple of them and make sure you're getting similar numbers. The second method is to log what you normally eat for a week to get an idea of what you've been eating to maintain your current weight. Take that number and decrease it by 10%. As you lose weight and plateau, drop it another 10%.

For me, Fitday's "lifestyle" calorie guidelines are too high unless I log my sleep.

[kerrithrelkeld]

Literally, all I do is log my food & pay attn to cals eaten on the graph vs. the cals it tells me I burn naturally. So it tells me based on my lifestyle i'm "naturally" burning (w/o doing exersize) 2700 cals per day, so to lose weight i should reduce the cals i eat by 1000.....so at the max i shouldn't eat more than 1700 cals a day, but b/c some weeks i don't get to the gym like i should i eat less cals during those weeks. For example i'll alternate one day allowing myself 1000 cals max, the next 1200 cals and on a "bad" day i go to my max of 1700 cals. At least thats what works for me. It sounds unhealthy to eat so few cals on my lower days, but on those days i'm filling up on fruit and veggies & lean chicken or fish. So i'm not starving myself or feeling deprived, i'm eating the same amount of food but choosing low cal options. I also cut my calories low like that b/c i have hypothyroidism and i've read on multiple websites that i need to reduce my diet by another 200 from what it tells me i can have in order to burn cals like "normal" people w/o thyroid disease. That means my max should actually be 1500. idk, i've just been going by my food/calorie graph & it works for me. That may be confusing, but i hoped that helped!

[scarlettwebb]

but that's just me. Even thought I exercise a lot (45 min at least per day)and eat very little (800 to 1000 a day) I have never been able to lose as much as they say I should, not by a long shot. It's like half what I should be.