Lightly active or active?

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  • cocobot2013
    cocobot2013 Posts: 46 Member
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    ** how do you plan your food for the day if you do afternoon workouts?
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    After a couple days it's pretty easy to know what the workouts burn and how much more you'll get to eat. So you eat a tad more prior perhaps to ensure you get a really strong workout, and then perhaps some afterwards if no meal close by, or if there is a meal - bigger dinner or snack before bed.

    If you do the Fitbit - use that best estimate.
    Sync with MFP (hope it works if you use the apps only) - let MFP correct it's estimate of daily burn with Fitbit reported daily burn - and eat to your daily goal.

    Fitbit is going to be underestimating your daily burn already - so eat all the adjustment that shows up.

    And depending on which model - you may need to manually log some workouts on Fitbit anyway to correct for bad estimates of calories burned.
  • cocobot2013
    cocobot2013 Posts: 46 Member
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    A nicer snack before bed sounds good :p but I was gonna get the fitbit charge! Do you only eat back exercise calories or do you include the step tracking calories too??
  • cocobot2013
    cocobot2013 Posts: 46 Member
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    I ordered the fitbit charge HR this afternoon!
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    cocobot2013 wrote: »
    A nicer snack before bed sounds good :p but I was gonna get the fitbit charge! Do you only eat back exercise calories or do you include the step tracking calories too??

    You'll want to read this to understand what is going on. Fitbit is providing a daily burn that includes daily activity and exercise combined.
    MFP only estimated daily activity. It is correctly everything with better estimate at once.

    Because strictly speaking as to what is happening - the question doesn't have an answer. But you eat the daily goal given on MFP.
    And you manually log strength training on Fitbit as Weights. Because HR-based calorie burn is inflated.
    If only 15 min lifting 2 x weekly, who cares. If 45 min 6 x weekly - that matters.

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10098937/faq-syncing-logging-food-exercise-calorie-adjustments-activity-levels-accuracy
  • cocobot2013
    cocobot2013 Posts: 46 Member
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    What do you mean the HR burn is inflated?That all confuses me right now cause I have no idea about a fitbit lol hopefully when it comes in that will answer all my questions about it though! Thank you so much for posting that, it will be really helpful! If I have any questions that go unanswered about it is it alright to ask you for advice on it?
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    That FAQ answers questions you may not even think of. That group the FAQ is in is great place for advice and usage and issues and experiences and challenges to get friends on both sites.

    The inflated aspect has to do with the fact that the formula that takes HR and calculates calories from it is only valid for steady-state aerobic exercise, same HR for 2-4 min.

    I was referring specifically to lifting. Lifting is anaerobic if done correctly, and no where near steady-state - your HR is up and down constantly. But never down to the level that standing resting requires. Therefore inflated for what is really needed.

    Like stand or sit and take your pulse right now.
    That's the level of HR needed for that much activity, which isn't much.
    Now you take that HR between sets of lifting.
    It'll never go that low unless you rest for a way long time. The HR is elevated not because of level of effort right then, but recovery from the hard part. But sitting or standing you are burning the same as now sitting or standing, HR is inflated you would say from what is needed for that level of effort.

    Like watching a moving and getting scared to death and HR is racing. You aren't burning more calories than just sitting there normally, HR is bad indicator then.
  • cocobot2013
    cocobot2013 Posts: 46 Member
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    Should I have just ordered the fitbit charge then? I want the one that's most accurate and easy to use.:( I'm nervous now that I'd eat back too many calories if it increases my burn from getting scared or when I get anxious. Which do you recommend?
  • segacs
    segacs Posts: 4,599 Member
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    cocobot2013 wrote: »
    Should I have just ordered the fitbit charge then? I want the one that's most accurate and easy to use.:( I'm nervous now that I'd eat back too many calories if it increases my burn from getting scared or when I get anxious. Which do you recommend?

    I think you have to know what Fitbit is and isn't tracking.

    Fitbit Charge won't be any more accurate for lifting than any other Fitbit, because all it can monitor is steps and heart rate. Neither of those things accurately measure calorie burns for things like lifting.

    Best with lifting to just estimate really low calorie burns. You don't burn much when lifting anyway, unless you do a ton of it. And that's not the main goal of strength training anyway.
  • cocobot2013
    cocobot2013 Posts: 46 Member
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    But just for regular day to day kind of thing I'm nervous that it'll give me more just daily burned calories than just the charge? Because of the heart rate and getting nervous anxious or excited? Also do you set your activity level as sedentary if you add calories from the fitbit?
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    HR-based calorie burn is only used for exercise when the HR goes up enough and steps are high enough to indicate that's what is going on.
    Plus if you have naturally high or med induced higher HR, after a week it'll see what it calls your resting HR is higher, and then adjust what is going on.

    Otherwise the daily slower stuff is step based calorie burn.

    And that's the way it should be.


    And ditto above comment - when you manually log Weights on Fitbit first time, you might be surprised how little you get compared to cardio, or what was there before you replaced it. Still counts, just not huge.


    The MFP activity level used just depends on what you desire and what side effects you can adjust to.

    For instance, if set to Sedentary and even your daily life is well above, with exercise even more - then you'll get big calorie adjustments as MFP corrects it's guess of your daily burn, and therefore adjusts your eating level to match.

    If you can deal with those adjustments and reach your eating goal - no problem. Or you learn that you'll have easy 400 say to makeup by end of day. Not too hard. During dinner and evening snacks you learn to hit your mark.

    Then again, you may want to see daily goal start at more honest higher level to plan your day well with smaller adjustments, so you select higher activity level.

    The issue there is at night when your active day basically stops (TV and sleep), say 4 hrs before midnight.
    MFP is still estimating hourly calorie burn at higher level which isn't really happening, combined with Fitbit's reported calorie burn up to then.
    So if you met eating goal at 8 pm, upon first sync the next day MFP would discover from Fitbit you didn't burn that much final 4 hrs, adjust your eating goal down, and you would have gone over your eating goal.
    That amount of difference won't change if the evening routine doesn't change much - so you just learn to be under goal by whatever the difference is. Knowing the next day it'll adjust back down and you'll meet goal.

    The negatives of either method can be easily dealt with, and once figured out, you won't even think about it.

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