FitBit & MFP - incredibly confused
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velvet_moon
Posts: 80 Member
Hello,
I've been using MFP for a while now and have been doing well - losing weight steadily, logging exercise and food correctly, etc. I used MFP's suggested goals and it's suggested a calorie deficit of 400kcal to lose 0.8lbs a week, which comes out at 1200kcals a day.
I bought a FitBit yesterday and unfortunately feel like I've just made everything very confusing, and am finding it quite demotivating. I can't get the hang of this 'adding/losing calories throughout the day' thing, and don't know whether to trust the extra calories it's giving me in MFP or not. I like to plan what I'm going to eat during the day, and find that I just can't with the FitBit because I can't trust that my calories aren't going to change again by the end of the day. The FitBit is also suggesting I aim for a deficit of 500kcal which takes me under my 1200 kcals - yesterday it said that I should have eaten 998kcal!!
Could somebody please explain how this all works to me? Ideally, I'd like my fitbit to just log activity that I do and add it to mfp - but this doesn't look possible. I could override my 'food goals' on the FitBit - I get that - but then surely any extra exercise I do won't get logged?
Very confused and would appreciate some advice, please! At the moment I feel like I've just wasted a fair amount of money
. I was doing so well and I'm actually feeling quite upset about the whole thing (overreaction, I know, but the weight loss was going so well and I was so pleased with it that I don't want to do anything that throws it off).
I've been using MFP for a while now and have been doing well - losing weight steadily, logging exercise and food correctly, etc. I used MFP's suggested goals and it's suggested a calorie deficit of 400kcal to lose 0.8lbs a week, which comes out at 1200kcals a day.
I bought a FitBit yesterday and unfortunately feel like I've just made everything very confusing, and am finding it quite demotivating. I can't get the hang of this 'adding/losing calories throughout the day' thing, and don't know whether to trust the extra calories it's giving me in MFP or not. I like to plan what I'm going to eat during the day, and find that I just can't with the FitBit because I can't trust that my calories aren't going to change again by the end of the day. The FitBit is also suggesting I aim for a deficit of 500kcal which takes me under my 1200 kcals - yesterday it said that I should have eaten 998kcal!!
Could somebody please explain how this all works to me? Ideally, I'd like my fitbit to just log activity that I do and add it to mfp - but this doesn't look possible. I could override my 'food goals' on the FitBit - I get that - but then surely any extra exercise I do won't get logged?
Very confused and would appreciate some advice, please! At the moment I feel like I've just wasted a fair amount of money
. I was doing so well and I'm actually feeling quite upset about the whole thing (overreaction, I know, but the weight loss was going so well and I was so pleased with it that I don't want to do anything that throws it off). 0
Replies
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Your Fitbit burn is TDEE, the number of calories to maintain your current weight. If you eat at a reasonable deficit from that (way more than 1,200 calories), you will lose weight.
Set your goal to .5 lb. per week for every 25 lbs. you're overweight: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/change_goals_guided
Enable negative calorie adjustments: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings
Food is fuel, and we should all be looking for the maximum number of calories at which we lose weight—never the minimum. I was shocked at my Fitbit adjustments, but I lost the weight & have maintained for a year.
Trust your Fitbit!0 -
I would also recommend that you read the FAQ that heybales wrote. It is long, but it will answer lots of questions, including questions you don't know you have. It's in the stickies for the group, but here's a link:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10098937/faq-syncing-logging-food-exercise-calorie-adjustments-activity-levels-accuracy/p1
Since you say that you like to plan what you're going to eat for the day ahead of time, your best approach is probably to use your past average TDEE - as estimated by your Fitbit, once you've had it for a few days of typical activity - to plan your food. Just look at the average burn and subtract off your deficit and use that as a baseline, but then adjust it somewhat if you know you're going to have a more or less active day than is typical.
Mostly, though, don't over-complicate it, don't over-think it and try to trust your Fitbit for a while.0 -
velvet_moon wrote: »Could somebody please explain how this all works to me? Ideally, I'd like my fitbit to just log activity that I do and add it to mfp - but this doesn't look possible.
So the simple version is, log your exercise in Fitbit and after that, use MFP to track your goals.
The reasoning is this. MFP makes an estimate of how much energy you'll burn. It's just a guess though, because it can't actually measure your activity.
Fitbit on the other hand measures your activity and gets a more accurate count of how much energy you've burned. The adjustment you see on MFP is simply the number required to make your MFP estimate match your measured Fitbit value.
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And curious too - did you trust and follow the MFP eating goal without understanding where it came from?
Because MFP didn't suggest any calorie goals - you created them by your selection of activity level and weight loss goal - MFP merely did the math, it didn't suggest nothing. It stops at 1200 actually.
Why did you trust MFP?
So now your eating goal changes based on Fitbit being synced - why wouldn't you still trust the eating goal?0
