Basal Metabolism "Lifestyle" observation
 

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

Interesting discovery. I just added sleep to my activity list and it dropped my dailey calories burned too. I agree. you think they would of programmed that into the database.

As far as I know, the 'base' lifestyle is for a full 24 hours and you have to log your sleep to make it accurate compared to other weight loss calculators. For best results you have to log all your activities that are more OR less active than your base. I was doing the activity log for a while but currently I am not, it was just too much to keep up with. Makes logical sense though that logging sleep would drop your calorie burn, when my husband was diagnosed with sleep apnea they figured he was waking up 300+ times a night. So basically no real sleep. Starting on the CPAP machine with no other lifestyle changes caused him to gain 30 lbs in about 3 months.

I noticed this as well. According to this article (link below) on the subject, using a combined method of BMR and counting individual activities is discouraged. It should be one or the other. To do this here at FD you would need to enter a custom BMR of zero and enter all activities, including sleep. Or, you could simply enter all activites, making sure they add up to 24 hours so that it will essentially remove the BMR by subtracting from it.

Calculating BMR and RMR | CaloriesPerHour.com

Hi everyone. Thanks for your posts. This makes a lot more sense to me now. According to my BMR, I have been having huge calorie deficits but really not losing much weight. I wish there was a way to turn off the BMR/base calories for the weekends because I am not working then.

I think (part of) the trick is to make sure your calories are under the base for your body each day. Then when you add some exercise to it, you should still have a good calorie deficit and stay on track to weight loss. Now, easier said than done.

Happy Remembrance Day (Canada) and Veterans Day (U.S.) everyone. Remember why North America is one of the most free and wealthiest places on earth. We didn't get this way because we are so smart or good looking.

On the weekends just add watching TV or some other passive activity, there are quite a few

Personally, I'd always rather under estimate my output, and over estimate my input.. So I put in sleep and try to be a little heavy on the foods that I eat.

I have seen this same topic in the past somewhere in these fourms and if I remember correct, a FitDay person chimed in and said that a normal amount of sleep in included in the lifestyle totals.

Thank you. It would be nice to know for sure (not that it's actually "that" important in the whole scheme of things, I guess). If sleep is included in a lifestyle choice, why have it as an extra activity?

I also remember a post like efduncan commented on but many here (including myself) have found the BMR numbers to be overstated. I took the approach of creating a custom BMR to match my calorie deficit with my actual weight loss. That was before I heard about logging sleep. In retrospect adding sleep may have been easier and possibly more accurate as my hours of sleep tends to vary.

The bottom line is whatever works for you. Track your weight loss and calorie deficit and see if they match (3500 calorie deficit = apprx. 1lb. of weight loss). If not, set a custom BMR or start logging sleep.

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.

Interesting...
 

...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.

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