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Just making sure I got this right

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joehempel
joehempel Posts: 1,761 Member
in Social Groups
So, log food on MFP, don't log cardio on MFP when you are wearing FitBit, log Strength on MFP and delete what FitBit provides?

It's all confusing to me.

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  • fatjon73
    fatjon73 Posts: 379 Member
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    Personally I log all food on MFP and let FB do all my other work...even strength........

    Read this thread for a good starter using FitBit...

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10098937/faq-syncing-logging-food-exercise-calorie-adjustments-activity-levels-accuracy/p1

    will give you much info to get you going...
  • joehempel
    joehempel Posts: 1,761 Member
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    Thanks!

    I did read that before I posted, and was still sort of confused. I don't even know if I'm going to use this thing all that much. I've got 30 days to decide
  • sarahmichelef
    sarahmichelef Posts: 127 Member
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    I've only had my FB linked to MFP for about 10 days but here's what I've been doing, per a combo of the "official" instructions from MFP and heybales' instructions:
    1. wear my flex all the time
    2. set MFP to "sedentary"
    3. Log food on MFP
    4. Track non-step-based exercise (spin class, the elliptical) using RunKeeper (which isn't linked to either FB or MFP) and manually enter those workout data into MFP.
    5. Let the FB track all other activities (general living of life, any walks I take)
    After a week of this, I have learned that I generally burn about 300 calories above sedentary level and when I got on the scale a week in, I weighed 3# less than I had the last time I'd stepped on the scale. I feel like I have a better handle on my intake versus output than I have in a long time.
  • retirehappy
    retirehappy Posts: 4,752 Member
    edited April 2015
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    MFP for food tracking, all exercise step or otherwise gets logged into Fitbit.

    K.I.S.S. - works for me.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    joehempel wrote: »
    So, log food on MFP, don't log cardio on MFP when you are wearing FitBit, log Strength on MFP and delete what FitBit provides?

    It's all confusing to me.

    The mere act of logging the strength on MFP or Fitbit, automatically deletes what Fitbit saw - so that's not an extra step.

    And in the scheme of things, you aren't really doing any extra steps either.
    Just in a different app if you chose too, but you can log the strength in MFP - which was needing to be done even if you had no Fitbit.

    Confusion may be on why this way.
    Because calories burned walking steps has no correlation to calories burned strength training.
    How many steps doing heavy deadlifts?
    None, or a coupe, in say 1 min.
    Calorie burn for a couple steps - nil, almost sleeping level calorie burn.
    Did you burn more than sleeping - oh yeah!

    The reason this is important - you merely need to eat less than you burn daily to lose fat weight - eating too little will cause muscle mass loss too.
    So you want decent estimate of what you burned.

  • CM9178
    CM9178 Posts: 1,265 Member
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    Fitbit, unless it is the HRM doesn't track calories burned for any exercise that isn't step based. Log those on the MFP side.
  • joehempel
    joehempel Posts: 1,761 Member
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    I got the Charge HR, but I'm returning it. I wanted it to monitor my HR on my runs because I'm using the 80/20 method and zone training, but the display just doesn't stay on and I don't' want to mess with it on my run. If I can't just look at it then it's pretty worthless to me. I hate chest straps running and was hoping this would be great. While the HR was on par with the chest strap during the run, I hated even more the fact I couldn't just look at it.

    I don't need a step counter, and I don't need a sleep tracker to tell me my sleep sucks (I can only afford 4-5 hours a night on a good day).
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
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    joehempel wrote: »
    So, log food on MFP, don't log cardio on MFP when you are wearing FitBit, log Strength on MFP and delete what FitBit provides?

    1. Food & water only sync one way—from MFP to Fitbit. MFP sends aggregate meal data to Fitbit.

    2. No need to log any step-based activity—your Fitbit is tracking it for you.

    3. Log non-step exercise either in Fitbit (that's what I do) or in MFP—never both. Your Fitbit burn is TDEE, and exercise logged in MFP overwrites your Fitbit burn during that time.

    4. Don't delete anything. Your MFP default calorie goal is activity level minus deficit. Adjustments are Fitbit burn minus activity level. If you follow your MFP calorie goal & eat back your adjustments, you're eating TDEE minus deficit.

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