Basal Metabolism "Lifestyle" observation

[efduncan]

rpmcduff has it right, If your going post your activities and calories for a few weeks, and your being honest with your self, you will see the dividing line on where you will get weight loss and not. You should be able to know if you are dropping weight or not without a scale.

[HankG]

...on past fat loss programs I've used FitDay on I've been able to be extremely accurate on the calorie balance calculations compared to actual fat loss over periods as long as four months. These were dramatic fat loss differentials, so it may be more important when trying to hold a steady weight or have a gradual weight loss.

[HankG]

Originally Posted by mecompco

Found something interesting (new to me, at least) after I've started logging my "activities" daily. The base lifestyle metabolism is listed as 24 hours, so if I'm interpreting this correctly, the "calories burned" is based upon, in my case, a setting of "seated work w/some movement". Now, if I put my 8 hours of sleep in as an activity, I "lose" a whole lot of calories burned.

One would think the software would, by default, account for less than 24 hours of "work" per day. Perhaps it does and I'm just reading it incorrectly?

Thoughts?

Michael

I think I may have solved the mystery. I have been using the PC version of Fitday forever, so it didn't occur to me that the website version doesn't break down how it arrives at the BMR computation. In the PC version they have a "My Metabolism" tab where you can refine the "lifestyle" computation. In there you can clearly see that it accounts for sleep. For example, for me if I set both the PC app and the website to "Seated" they both show a lifestyle caloric expenditure around 2580 for me. On the PC you can see that is broken down into:

• 8 hours sleep
• 13 hours seated light activity
• 3 hours light to moderate activity

So, if you add eight ours of sleep to your activities list, you will be double counting sleep. It's a shame when you throw the website to premium mode you don't get the additional granularity on the lifestyle calculation, or the ability have different metabolic profiles for weekends and weekdays.

[mecompco]

Originally Posted by HankG

...on past fat loss programs I've used FitDay on I've been able to be extremely accurate on the calorie balance calculations compared to actual fat loss over periods as long as four months. These were dramatic fat loss differentials, so it may be more important when trying to hold a steady weight or have a gradual weight loss.

Originally Posted by HankG

I think I may have solved the mystery. I have been using the PC version of Fitday forever, so it didn't occur to me that the website version doesn't break down how it arrives at the BMR computation. In the PC version they have a "My Metabolism" tab where you can refine the "lifestyle" computation. In there you can clearly see that it accounts for sleep. For example, for me if I set both the PC app and the website to "Seated" they both show a lifestyle caloric expenditure around 2580 for me. On the PC you can see that is broken down into:

• 8 hours sleep
• 13 hours seated light activity
• 3 hours light to moderate activity

So, if you add eight ours of sleep to your activities list, you will be double counting sleep. It's a shame when you throw the website to premium mode you don't get the additional granularity on the lifestyle calculation, or the ability have different metabolic profiles for weekends and weekdays.

Hmm--thanks for the input--that sure makes sense.

I think I will continue to add sleep, though as I think FitDay may be a little optomistic in figuring my calorie burn. I've tried other calculators that put my daily basal metabolism burn at around 2750. On FitDay, with 8 hours of sleep and seated lifestyle and daily tasks w/20 minutes of exercise I get right around 3000 calorie burn at my current weight.

With a daily deficeit of 1400 to 1500 calories my average weight loss is pretty close to what the numbers predict. I have noticed that my weight loss has slowed with the first 100 lbs gone, but I know that is to be expected. When I first started at 400 lbs plus I was showing about a 4000 calorie burn.

Regards,
Michael