Charge HR Exercise and Daily Activity

cnkan0119

I used my HR for the first time yesterday to see how many calories I burned while working out. With my daily activity (not very active) I was told that I had an additional 800plus cals to eat additional to my daily calories on MFP. Only 205 of that came from my workout. This seemed excessive to me. Do you really have to consume the additional calories that are burned from activities using the fitbit or can I just eat back the calories burned from the actual exercise?

joelschneider45066

Mine does the same, however I ignore those "earned" back outside of my work-out period. So for example, during 30 minutes on the elliptical I will burn like 350 calories, which I log in MFP. The additional 500 or so that FitBit gives me, I don't eat those back - i only eat back the 350 .... so far it's been working for me .... don't know if it's right, but like i said, working so far ...

ColwellCat

If that was a relatively standard day for you, up your activity level on MyFitnessPal. I found I had to do that a couple of times until an average day (workout aside) didn't have a significant adjustment in either direction.

heybales

So MFP calculated your daily eating level on a rough estimate of what you burned daily with no exercise - your selection of Activity level.

Obviously when you do more you burn more, take off the same deficit - and you eat more. And still lose at perhaps a wise rate.

So now you have MFP trying to start it's math with a better daily burn estimate from the Fitbit - why wouldn't you want the math to be more accurate?
Why did you get the Fitbit then to see exercise calories if it really doesn't matter?

That calorie adjustment is NOT just exercise, it's the difference between MFP's rough daily burn and Fitbit's better value.

If MFP had that figure up front - you'd never even know because there would be no adjustment on non-exercise days.

Would you eat the daily goal given in that case, if no adjustment was apparent?
Nothing has changed because you can see it, except mentally thinking it's different.

mangrothian

Just as a heads up, if you link you fitbit up to MFP, you should have your daily activity level set to sedentary. It will lower your amount of starting daily calories, and then fitbit adds anything beyond sedentary onto that.

heybales

mangrothian wrote: »

Just as a heads up, if you link you fitbit up to MFP, you should have your daily activity level set to sedentary. It will lower your amount of starting daily calories, and then fitbit adds anything beyond sedentary onto that.

Actually no, it would be best to set it to whatever you discover your true daily non-exercise calorie burn is with the lowest calorie adjustments.
If you always get 100-200 cal adjustments on non-workout days, it means you are not actually sedentary at all.

That way you can plan your day better and have smaller adjustments.

Planning is of utmost importance to long-term weight loss.

In fact if you have 4-6 workout days a week, might even be smarter to go up a notch higher and have ever smaller adjustments on majority of days, and except the slight negative on non-workout days.

The other benefit to picking the correct activity level, if you have a lot to lose and 2 lbs weekly really is realistic, then you may actually get your eating goal to a 1000 deficit from planned daily burn.
If you pick sedentary and are given 2000 daily, eating level will be capped at 1200.
But if truly lightly active and are given 2300 daily, eating level will be at 1300.
Then more activity will be added to the eating goal, maintaining that 1000 deficit on the 2nd example.