Fit bit question

Merkavar

So i would post this in the tech section but i cant create a post there for some reason.

so i have a fit bit surge connected to my my fitness pal account. so only had it a few days, so far it has adjusted my energy goals based on my steps, so far so good.

but today i didnt wear my fit bit because i was digging, chopping etc and didnt want to damage it. I was digging and chopping trees on and off for 6 hours. i thought i would put that in my phone, mainly to record it, at a low estimate of the KJ burned.

so then fit bit puts an adjustment in myfitness pal that essentially eliminates the exercise i put in. I put the exercise as 1000kj and fit bit put in -1008 kj.

Is this normal? is this because for that 6 hours it recorded no activity/heart rate? or is this just a massive coincidence?

one of the main forms of exercise i do is kick boxing and i am not wearing the fit bit watch while getting kicked and blocking punches. so will it always cancel out the energy burned if im not wearing the watch.

just confused by new tech, i feel like im turning into my dad.

amusedmonkey

Fitbit works by starting at your basal metabolic rate (BMR) and lets you earn your way up to your current predicted burn on MFP and above. It always cancels out the first 3000 or so steps assuming they are the basic minimum before giving you calories above sedentary. It does not deliberately cancel out your workouts, it's just in this case your exercise calories happened to be very close to the bare minimum Fitbit considers sedentary level of activity.

Merkavar

the fit bit adjustment seems to take into account the exercise i entered into MFP.

0 exercise, the fit bit adjustment is -820
1000 exercise, the fit bit adjustment become -2900.


like the fit bit adjustment over writes everything else. its just i wasn't wearing the fit bit when i exercised.

Just confused. why does the adjustment based on steps made, seem to take into account the exercise i entered.

yarwell

Set MFP to not allow negative calorie adjustments and the problem may go away.

Merkavar

yarwell wrote: »

Set MFP to not allow negative calorie adjustments and the problem may go away.

no, i want negative adjustments.

what i dont want is for the adjustment that as far as im aware is based on steps taken, to adjust its self based on exercise done.

so MFP sedentary target energy number is say based on 4000 steps. and according to the fit bit i did 3500 or 4500 i want the number in MFP to be adjusted up or down based on the steps. maybe one day im extra sedentary and the next im more lightly active.

what i don't want is on a day i do 3500 steps and do kick boxing for the fit bit adjustment to reduce my energy target based on steps and for some reason to reduce my kick boxing energy to zero as well.

so what i seem to be seeing would look like this.

7000 kj target for the day in MFP. I did 1000 less steps than what MFP considers sedentary so the fit bit adjusts the target down to 6500 with a negative adjustment. So far this makes sense to me and is what i want.

But say in the example above i also went to kick boxing and entered exercise of +500kj. What the fit bit seems to be doing is adjusting the energy target not by 500 based on the 1000 less steps i took but by 1000kj, so that 500kj of exercise less 1000 fit bit adjustment = 500 decrease of the energy target.

maybe i have just gone insane, or maybe i am misunderstanding what im reading in the app but i am thoroughly confused by this.

amusedmonkey

This is interesting. I have the One, so maybe the charge is different. It never overwrote exercise for me. Are you adding them in MFP or on the Fitbit website?

Merkavar

amusedmonkey wrote: »

This is interesting. I have the One, so maybe the charge is different. It never overwrote exercise for me. Are you adding them in MFP or on the Fitbit website?

adding them to MFP. it said in the instructions to do it that way.

i removed the exercise i had entered. not the fit bit adjustment is -900 instead of -2600.

I am just stumped by how this is meant to work.

Merkavar

I had another look. the fit bit adjustment isnt just based on steps.

its KJ burned according to fit bit, and KJ burned according to MFP including exercise and the adjustment is the difference. to make the KJ limit in MFP match the KJ limit in fit bit.

thats a little lame imo. i cant wear the fit bit all the time. so if i exercise with out the fit bit on it seems to cause the issue. because according to the fit bit i only burned 7000 kj and adjusts MFP accordingly.

i dont know i think i need to do more research into this. its like the fit bit is going to over complicate things for me.

amusedmonkey

Have you tried logging the exercise in Fitbit? I do that for my treadmill workouts (which are much better there than the generic ones here) and they seem to translate into adjustments here just fine.

Merkavar

So what about swimming?

How do you record swimming KJ burned in mfp? If the fit bit will then include the swimming and adjust/eliminate it.

Still haven't had a chance to look it up yet

WalkingAlong

I've never used either app in KJ units but in calories, manually logging activities without the Fitbit on (or with it on) is supposed to work fine. If the sites are linked, I think you can enter the activity on either. For swimming, you manually enter it like any other non-tracked activity. I don't know if yours is acting up or if you perhaps have one site in calories and one in KJ or are reading the results wrong, but they usually work together ok.