Calorie Differential Report

One of the neat features on Sparkpeople.com is their calorie differential reports. If you have not used it, you may find it a very helpful tool. It can be a little confusing at first so this post will give a tutorial of sorts.

First, let's find it.

Hover your mouse over My Trackers and scroll down the drop down menu to Reports. Click. 

There are so many neat reports here. VERY worthwhile to check them out! Such a neat resource especially if you track all your food and exercise on sparkpeople.com.

Today we are interested in the Calorie Differential. They have both a weekly report and a daily report. I am going to give info for the Daily but of course, the week gives you the weekly total. 

I am showing a really good day below.. and then will give some explanations.

 In this chart you can see that on this day, I burned way more calories than I ate. 1046 more calories according to sparks. YAY. I burned some calories just by living. Based on my age, sex, height, and weight Sparkpeople gives an estimate of 1930 calories that I burn just in daily activity. Your number will NOT be the same as mine.

On this day, I also did some exercise and entered it into sparkpeople's tracker which calculated my approximate burn at 320 calories.

So my total calorie burn for the day was 2250 calories.

Since I ate at the bottom of my suggested Sparkpeople range my deficit was 1046. What does that differential MEAN anyway???

To lose a pound of weight, you need to burn 3500 calories MORE than you take in. This part is hard science. So if you burn 500 calories a day more than you eat (a -500 calorie differential) at the end of the week you should have a one pound loss. If you burn 1000 calories a day more than you eat (a -1000 calorie differential) at the end of the week you should have a 2 pound loss.

But why doesn't it work just like it says???

Unfortunately things are never so simple. First of all, each day will and actually should vary some. This is why the weekly differential report is neat as you can see how you are doing over a week's time.

Second, the BMR or estimated burn (basal metabolic rate) when you are not working out (mine is 1930) is an estimate.. a quite good one, based on science and averages, but it is general and not specific to YOU. Every person is different. Some people have higher metabolic rates, some lower. Mine is less than what they estimate according to outside evaluation. (And experience) Your metabolic rate is determined by so many things, from muscle mass to genetics to your stress level to amount of sleep, etc.

The accuracy of the report is also HIGHLY dependent to how exactly you record your food intake. If you are not measuring food, you are likely off in calories. Sometimes significantly.

And weight loss is rarely linear. Even if you eat and exercise just right... some weeks you will lose more and others less based on other factors too. Are you retaining water? Building muscle? etc.

So use the differential. Watch it. Learn from it. And be motivated by it. It DOES work. And it helps! A lot. Knowledge is power. :)

Let's SOAR!