Hello, I'm Monica Reinagel, and you're listening to the nutrition divas quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous.

Lots of people these days are using diet and

activity trackers. Things like My Fitness Pal and Fitbit to log in their food intake

and their exercise.

After all, there's an old saying that you can't manage

what you don't measure.

And yet, it seems to be backfiring.

I am getting email after email from people who are using these trackers and they can't

understand why they're not losing weight.

They're entering in every morsel of food that they eat.

They're logging in every activity and according to their trackers they should be

shedding two or three pounds a week and the scale hasn't budged or worse they've

actually gained weight. Well today I'm going to explain exactly what I

think is going on. Now here's how these trackers work. You start every day with a

certain number of calories to spend and that number is based on your height, your weight, age, sex, activity level,

and then of course your goals,

whether you're trying to lose, gain, or maintain your current weight.

Calories are then subtracted from this balance as you log your meals into the

Diet Tracker over the course of the day and ideally you don't get to zero too early in the day but if you do there's a solution

let's say it's 5 p.m. and I'm down to my last 400 calories. But wait, I can take an evening run, log it into my

app, and now I've got 840 calories to spend on dinner. How awesome is that?

Now the general

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