Is It Possible to Have a Negative Net Calorie Count Daily?

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  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,866 Member
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    Mr_Knight wrote: »
    That is bio-mechanically sound, but not correct for FitBit unless the FitBit is only being worn for purposeful walking. To account for FitBits algorithms, the typical fudge factor is to reduce stride length by ~35%.
    But it really depends on the individual, and there are plenty of cases where the effective stride length for FitBit is less than half of bio-mechanical stride length.
    See I can actually learn something! And that's interesting. Thank you.

    I am assuming that is because the Fitbit captures a number of shorter steps and non step movement?
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,866 Member
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    uvi5 wrote: »
    Forgive my ignorance. I can get up to 130 and maybe faster, but I know i would not be doing that consistantly. I tested my comfortable rate and came up with 127 steps in a minute.

    I am pretty sure that I didn't mention anything about "ignorance". I believe you said you didn't have a pedometer and I said that you were short of measurement devices.

    127 steps a minute is pretty darn fast. Our muscles unfortunately do adapt and we burn less as we walk more. At the same time because our weight reduces and our fitness increases we are also able to do more!

  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,866 Member
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    Mr_Knight wrote: »
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    So why don't you just state your 4 miles a day caveat instead of just poo pooing people's walking as an exercise activity?
    I have, repeatedly. And you know that, because you've been there.
    I don't recall you stating your walking calorie formula with any caveat. You usually say: "this is how to calculate your calories from walking". Your formula includes no adjustments for speed and no adjustments for terrain difficulty or slope.
    Mr_Knight wrote: »
    And yet you continue to intentionally misrepresent what I've said, while trying to troll me all over MFP.
    You are generally knowledgeable and people do believe what you say. Yet you deliberately make walking sound like a meaningless activity that has no value in most peoples' search for a caloric deficit. I happen to feel strongly that especially when starting out, and very much so in the context of long term maintenance, particularly for older people, walking is one of the best activities to engage in.
    Mr_Knight wrote: »
    You don't speak for Christine. If you knew anything about her, you'd know that nobody speaks for her.
    Really? Have you read Christine's posts in this thread? Does she sound like she is currently sure what to log in terms of her 20,000+ steps a day?
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
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    It's ok guys :heart: I'm confusing myself and probably everyone else. I'll get this figured out eventually. I'm just in information overload at the moment.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,866 Member
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    Mr_Knight wrote: »
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    And I am glad we can agree that at over 10,000 steps people should be accounting for their walking either by setting MFP to Active or by logging the exercise and eating back the net calories.
    No, we do not agree - stop trying to speak for other people.
    That is only suitable in *some* cases.

    Glad that we can clarify our disagreement then.

    I think that at 10,000 steps or more people should be classifying themselves as Active in MFP or eating back the majority of their walking exercise calories.

    In SOME cases this may not work out well for them because of issues that are not directly related to how many calories were actually burned during their walks.
  • macgurlnet
    macgurlnet Posts: 1,946 Member
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    It's ok guys :heart: I'm confusing myself and probably everyone else. I'll get this figured out eventually. I'm just in information overload at the moment.

    Christine...

    For what it's worth, I'm a 5 foot tall gal that has been eating back just about every last one of her Fitbit calories earned (got my Fitbit in January) and I've been losing as expected.

    I typically would get 5000-7000 steps in a day, unless I went out for a run. I am now trying to consistently get 10,000 per day. I'm set at a 0.5lb/week deficit.

    Food for thought :)

    ~Lyssa
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
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    macgurlnet wrote: »
    It's ok guys :heart: I'm confusing myself and probably everyone else. I'll get this figured out eventually. I'm just in information overload at the moment.

    Christine...

    For what it's worth, I'm a 5 foot tall gal that has been eating back just about every last one of her Fitbit calories earned (got my Fitbit in January) and I've been losing as expected.

    I typically would get 5000-7000 steps in a day, unless I went out for a run. I am now trying to consistently get 10,000 per day. I'm set at a 0.5lb/week deficit.

    Food for thought :)

    ~Lyssa

    Thank you @macgurlnet :flowerforyou: That is very reassuring.

    I'm pretty much in maintenance mode now, I'm not bothered if i don't lose any more weight. I've been eating a lot of my exercise calories back over the last week, but I also haven't weighed myself yet. If i have put a bit on, so be it. My scale broke,so will be getting a new one next week...
  • macgurlnet
    macgurlnet Posts: 1,946 Member
    edited April 2015
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    macgurlnet wrote: »
    It's ok guys :heart: I'm confusing myself and probably everyone else. I'll get this figured out eventually. I'm just in information overload at the moment.

    Christine...

    For what it's worth, I'm a 5 foot tall gal that has been eating back just about every last one of her Fitbit calories earned (got my Fitbit in January) and I've been losing as expected.

    I typically would get 5000-7000 steps in a day, unless I went out for a run. I am now trying to consistently get 10,000 per day. I'm set at a 0.5lb/week deficit.

    Food for thought :)

    ~Lyssa

    Thank you @macgurlnet :flowerforyou: That is very reassuring.

    I'm pretty much in maintenance mode now, I'm not bothered if i don't lose any more weight. I've been eating a lot of my exercise calories back over the last week, but I also haven't weighed myself yet. If i have put a bit on, so be it. My scale broke,so will be getting a new one next week...

    I'm in "Gosh I'd like to lose more but there's not much left so I'll give it 8 weeks and see what happens." mode (Want to lose 8 more pounds, who knows if it'll happen) and I get diddly squat for calories if I don't move!

    I leave MFP set at Sedentary though, in case I'm injured or sick and can't get those steps in. Would rather see calories added throughout the day than calories taken away.

    Hopefully your new scale doesn't show you as (much) heavier than your last weight with the old scale.

    ~Lyssa
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
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    Haha every single "new scale" thread I see has them weighing more then their old ones!

    My jeans aren't any tighter, and I'm still getting the "don't lose any more weight" lectures from hubby. So hopefully I'll be all good
  • FitForL1fe
    FitForL1fe Posts: 1,872 Member
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  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,866 Member
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    My scale broke,so will be getting a new one next week...
    Sorry to hear that Christine.
    You can't compare across scales as there often is variation.
    Out of four scales I've used during the past 12 months (3 at my place and 1 at my parent's place) I've seen a variation of up to 0.3lbs between them. The seriously out of whack fourth one is actually off by 1.5lbs to 1.8lbs depending on which other scale it is compared to.
  • uvi5
    uvi5 Posts: 710 Member
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    PAV8888 wrote: »
    uvi5 wrote: »
    Forgive my ignorance. I can get up to 130 and maybe faster, but I know i would not be doing that consistantly. I tested my comfortable rate and came up with 127 steps in a minute.

    I am pretty sure that I didn't mention anything about "ignorance". I believe you said you didn't have a pedometer and I said that you were short of measurement devices.

    127 steps a minute is pretty darn fast. Our muscles unfortunately do adapt and we burn less as we walk more. At the same time because our weight reduces and our fitness increases we are also able to do more!

    Noooo, I did not mean it to come off that way :smile: I just felt confused and you are making sense. I appreciate what I learned from you today, big time :smiley:
  • SherryTeach
    SherryTeach Posts: 2,836 Member
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    I use a heart rate monitor to measure formal exercise (treadmill, trampoline, and cycling). The numbers are lower than the corresponding MFP estimates for my gender, age, height, and weight, but they are not half. But as others have said, you do need to net your required calories. I'm still a little stunned at working our for four hours a day.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,866 Member
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    I'm still a little stunned at working our for four hours a day.
    ...while only eating 1200 calories and netting NEGATIVE to boot!
  • 3dogsrunning
    3dogsrunning Posts: 27,167 Member
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    PAV8888 wrote: »
    I'm still a little stunned at working our for four hours a day.
    ...while only eating 1200 calories and netting NEGATIVE to boot!

    2 hours of swimming! Without rest.

    OP are you training for something? Swimming makes me ravenous. I've done 1 1/2 workouts, but not a steady swim (it was really fun when I got my Garmin and actually tracked how much swimming vs rest I do during some workouts). Even the Ironman triathletes I swim with don't usually do continuous 2 hour swims.
  • Dnarules
    Dnarules Posts: 2,081 Member
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    Mr_Knight wrote: »
    FitBit is ****ing evil. Those steps (even assuming its accurate) corresponds to roughly 15km. At 180 pounds, 15km of walking nets you 500 calories.

    Except that fitbit is not giving her 1170 calories just for those steps. If she is set to sedentary, it is giving her a large adjustment based on the fact that her TDEE is higher with all those steps. Fitbit estimates TDEE, and not just exercise sessions. That number is based on her whole day and includes BMR, etc.

  • tracie_minus100
    tracie_minus100 Posts: 465 Member
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    I guess it's possible to be in the negative everyday...but why would you want to do that to your body?!
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
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    Dnarules wrote: »
    Mr_Knight wrote: »
    FitBit is ****ing evil. Those steps (even assuming its accurate) corresponds to roughly 15km. At 180 pounds, 15km of walking nets you 500 calories.

    Except that fitbit is not giving her 1170 calories just for those steps. If she is set to sedentary, it is giving her a large adjustment based on the fact that her TDEE is higher with all those steps. Fitbit estimates TDEE, and not just exercise sessions. That number is based on her whole day and includes BMR, etc.

    I just upped it back up to Lightly Active, so who knows what will happen now...
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,866 Member
    edited April 2015
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    I just upped it back up to Lightly Active, so who knows what will happen now...
    Hey Christine, based on Lightly Active and your activity level you should still be losing!

    I just run your numbers and if you are at or below 140lbs with your 5ft 8" height you are at a BMI of 21.3 or less, and already in the 10th percentile for your age group. i.e. 90% of women your age and height weigh more than you!

    I realize that you are still having fun on your way to your goal; but, lest we forget, the most important phase of your weight loss is just around the corner: maintenance!

    I mean the fun and games of getting there are good, but maintenance is where it will all pay off, or not, and let's face it, for most of us it won't pay off and we'll be back for more rounds of this!

    While I am far from the point of having to worry about it; I figured that I should look into this ahead of time! :smiley:

    Basically I keep hearing about something called reverse dieting. People apparently implement this in an attempt to both find their correct maintenance level and, possibly, in order to mitigate the effects of adaptive thermogenesis and to slowly boost their basal metabolic rate closer to where it should be, so that they can eat the most amount of food (and fuel their workouts) without re-gaining fat.

    Now my understanding of how this works is that people gradually up their calories 100 or 200 at a time in an attempt to only let their weight bump up a little bit over the first few months of maintenance (and something about strength related exercises which I do not yet do :wink: )

    But, often during this process they continue to lose weight, and often overshoot their goal on the way down, before coming back up to it.

    A quick estimate based on your walking is that you may still be at a 1000 Cal, or even larger, deficit, so if you go through this whole process of upping your calories (or reducing your walking) a little bit at a time (and waiting a week or two to see results)... you may be looking at a good 2 to 3 month long process.

    At 131lbs you will be in the 4th percentile for your age group with a BMI of 19.9. Are you leaving yourself enough time to enter maintenance the way you would like to, or do you have a different plan for entering maintenance?

    If that's the case, what do the Maintenance Group mavens think about your plan compared to the reverse dieting approach?

    Inquiring minds and all that :blush: