Is the activity calculations accurate on FITDAY? I log in my activity and it says I am burning more then I am eating, so I should be loosing weight . What's up .

I was just going to post the same question... I am working my azz off! 2x's a day 30-40 minute sessions each and it feels awesome, I was also wondering if it's correct and should i be losing? Im not weighing myself for another week so im hoping for great result's and i plan to continue doing what im doing.. sorry to hog your post and not respond with an answer, we will see if someone can help us

The short answer is that you need to be careful of these numbers as they can be wildly inaccurate. I log my workouts in nutridiary (like fitday) so I can track the time I spend exercising, but I don't assume that the calories burned are accurate. Over time you will start to learn what levels of eating and exercise combine for a weight loss.

Good for you for exercising!!!!!

Lots of folks are finding that if you set your activity level at the lowest setting and then just add your work and exercise usage, you'll probably get a more reliable number.

Fitday says I burn about 1800 calories daily, and that is with a sedentary bed-bound level (and that's w/o whatever exercise I might have done that day). I'm pretty sure that's a ways off. I'm sure if I was a more serious amount of active 1800 would be a bit closer for maintenance. I think their estimates for calories burned during activity is closer, just not the basal metabolic amounts. My guess to how much my body naturally burns with little activity is probably closer to 1300-1500. Maybe if I had a higher amount of muscle mass? Anyways, just my opinion.

Do you add your sleep into fitday under activities. My daily calorie limit lowered a lot when I started doing that everyday.

Miles makes some very good points about muscle mass.

And Valerie Joy? ... no I don't add sleeping. Never thought much about it. I suppose that could make up for the overage we've all been seeing.

Sleeping...very interesting...it does bring the numbers of calories burned down to something more logical....now I have myself set at sedentary and with 8 hours of sleep a night. The deficits are much smaller - but that kinda makes sense if you take into account my long plateaus. Thanks!!

IMO - it seems like being bed bound would burn 0 calories much like sleeping comes up at - but that's just me. Fitday is free - so I still feel like I get much more than what I pay for.

I've been fooling with my activities today and it's been very enlightening. I was losing faster than my deficits indicated I should. But since I've been playing with it, things are making more sense.

I used to use fitday also, and you do not need to add in 8 hours of sleep. When you set your activity level, it figures in 7.5 hours of sleep as part of the "background activities". That said, I do not think that fitday's calorie expenditure estimations are all that accurate, but sleep is already figured in to their calculations. I now use Dietpower, after reading another poster's opinion of it, and I find its calculations to be much more accurate, since it tracks your approximate metabolic rate, based on weight changes, caloric intake, and recorded activities. It does not take into account that weight does not always respond in a predictable manner to the general formula of calories in vs. calories out (plateaus, etc.), but I do find it a much more accurate estimation than fitday.

I ignore Fitday's "activities" section entirely. I don't think it's accurate for me. When I wear my heart-rate monitor which tells me calories burned during an activity, it's usually far less that the Fitday estimate. It's also lower than the estimate that the display on most cardio machines indicate. I've got a lot of muscle mass for my weight, so I don't think that is the problem.

Mel

I tend to completely ignore that section of Fitday, too. Everyone is so unique that I hate when they think they can calculate calories for everyone's individual body using the same equation. Per Fitday, I burn 2997 calories a day (with my activity level set to "seated work"). That's without ANY added exercise or activities. Now, even if I were to exercise for 30 minutes a day, I KNOW I would GAIN weight if I had 3000 calories a day! Even when I change it to "sedentary," it gives me about 2500 calories, but I know I GAIN weight if I go over 2000 calories too many days in a week, so I know these numbers aren't even close to accurate--though I wish they were

Oh, and being sedentary burns more calories than sleeping simply because there is more going on in your body when you are awake. Even sedentary, you burn calories by chewing, changing the tv channel, turning pages in a book, sitting up...being awake means your heart rate is a little faster than when you're asleep, so you burn more calories (not a lot, but more).