To wonder if I'm setting my sights too low with regards to fitbit?

[fitbituser]

I have around 4 and a half stone to lose to get to a healthy BMI, and I am doing a VLCD.

Even though I'm taking in so few calories I don't seem to be losing that much weight, and I wondered if I wasn't moving enough. Since I started the diet I've ensured on my Fitbit that I'm doing 10000 steps a day but should I be doing some exercise as well? The steps are just ones I do anyway (I have young children) - I don't stop myself when I get to 10,000 but I have found during the week when I am at work I only just make the 10,000 if you see what I mean: weekends are sometimes more.

Also, I'm only currently using it to track my steps, what else should I use it for? It's a charge 2.

Thanks :)

@fitbituser

The problem is that the rest of the fitbit uses are for exercise and tracking your calories.

You're not interested in exercise so the heart rate month or, improving your resting heart rate, improving your cardio fitness score... all irrelevant because you don't want to discuss exercise or raising your heart rate.

The food tracker is great for dieting. It helps you adjust to a way of eating with correct portions sizes, and makes you really aware of just how much extra you eat etc. It's a much better way to diet... by adjusting your eating habits for a life long change rather than a crash diet. As soon as you come off the shakes, you will go back to eating your old way of eating and pile he weight back on. You need to completely change your eating habits. The food tracker is a great tool for that, but you don't want to discuss diet.

There is a sleep tracker which is handy for your own knowledge and a period tracker which is also handy.

*heart rate monitor

I'm sure 10k steps/week is better than nothing.

Source that says 10,000 steps is NOT DEBUNKED
FitnessPudding

On the fence
better than nothing
BBC
Gal who would rather weightlift
Fitbit blogger says 10k is just a starting guideline
Diffident blogger

Sources that say 10,000 steps IS DEBUNKED
75 minutes of vigorous & not being sedentary is better
7500 steps is fine instead
Flimsy science, 7500 steps is enough

So that's clear as mud!

When I did a step challenge at work ( which our team won) without changing my diet in any way, I lost about 3 pounds in 2 weeks.
However in order to get over 20k a day, I did literally seem to spend my entire day walking as did half an hour to and from work, another half hour at lunchtime and then another walk in the evening. It was rather time consuming and OP says she has no extra time to exercise. Hence why I'd suggested she do the same steps but faster and use resting heart rate to monitor if she was getting any fitter.

No OP 4lbs is about right.

thenewaverage this is not quite true, is it: If I do a day and only get 6k steps in it basically means I have laid on the sofa all day and done nothing. With Fitbit, 2000 steps is roughly a mile. 6k is therefore 3 miles. If you lie on the sofa all day you won’t walk that, unless you are waving your arm around all the time in an aggressive way, which will be using calories...

Hi OP
You can set it to remind you to move, by buzzing on your arm when you haven't done many steps that hour. I find that quite helpful.
It can also tell you if your activity was in the fat burning range etc based on your heart rate.
I think you can also log your food and water on there. There is a Fitbit community forum , I'm sorry I can't find the link but maybe with some googling you'll have better luck than me!
Best of luck with your weightless and fitness

Cardi well technically no it's not true but the only time I got as low a step count as 6k was a few weeks ago when I had norovirus and literally moved between the sofa and the toilet all day. My Dh only ever gets 6k a day and that's in a full, exhausting day at work. The point I was making is that 10k steps is a representative figure of a moderate amount of activity for an average person. If I'm not getting anywhere near 10k steps then i'm not particularly active. Similarly, if i'm getting 15-20k steps in every day then I'm a consistently active person. I was commenting to the person who said that 10k has been debunked, but the theory behind it still applies surely? 10k daily = moderately active.
6k daily = fairly sedentary (eg driving a lot, office work etc)
15k daily = active
It's completely irrespective of how much 'exercise' you do, it's about daily activity going about your business. I personally am a busy person, I'm always on the go, and I very rarely hit less than 10k steps unless I'm ill, hungover, or spend the day at someone else's house where I just don't move about so much if at all.

Plus cardi 6k steps is not really 3 miles. The majority of steps are not full strides. I ran 13.5km in 12,900 steps on Tuesday, so let's call it 1m per step. When I'm filling the dishwasher or browsing in Tesco, or cleaning, my steps are not 1m per step. Fitbit doesn't differentiate re:steps but it does differentiate with heart rate/activity minutes which is why it helps to correlate the two pieces of data

Not enough calories and buckle up for the hair loss that's coming your way very soon.

I lost 3 and a half stone over around 6 months but due to my error in understanding how myfitnesspal works I was netting around 600 cals a day, sometimes dropping to 500.

3 months in my hair started thinning and coming out in clumps while washing. It was months later after bumping calories to near maintenance and upping protein that the loss has stopped and i'm finally seeing new growth

I should add that I lost my weight with diet alone and normal walking, no extra exercise because I loathe it

4lb loss in a week is plenty. You didn't become obese, overnight, and nor can you become slim and healthy, overnight.

600 calories is far too little! It’s not vlcd it’s starvation! Even on optifast you still eat about 900 cals

Read this article by Dr Stacey Sims, nutrition expert for female athletes:
"“Don’t fast. Please, please, don’t do intermittent fasting”
Someone brought up the topic of fasted cardio at the seminar. Have you purposely gone for a run without eating anything? Dr. Sims found most women she worked with fasted to achieve a leaner body. However, fasting actually does the opposite. With already elevated cortisol levels in the morning, the added stress of being in a fasted state results in the build-up of more cortisol. High cortisol promotes fat storage in the area where we least want it, in our belly!"
I wouldn't believe any severe diet plan that didn't specify that it had been trialled on women as well as men, I'm sure many don't and presume that 'women are small men' which we obviously know.

I would combine it using the app my fitness pal and genuinely recording what is going in (it can link with the fitbit)

It calculates the calories you need for weight loss/balance/gain - allows extra if you do exercise etc - and tells you off if you have less than 1000calories a day

I

I've never heard of the diet your doing so I can't comment. Personally I do slimming world and have lost 2 stone 7 in 3 months. I've recently started trying to get more out of my fitbit, my goal is 10k steps. What I find helps me is doing challenges with friends. I find I'll walk the long way round to places to get more steps in to beat my friends (or at least not be the bottom), there's also solo challenges, I've done all of those which I've enjoyed. I also now combine taking the children with me either together or at weekends sometimes they'll come out one at a time. E.g the youngest came out for a walk to the shop with me whilst eldest was with dh. Later me and eldest went for a walk (eldest a bike ride). The eldest on the bike ment I had to pretty much power walk so I didn't fall too behind.