Totally confused! Net and Total Calories (Weekly Goals)

lartishs

i am totally confused on my total weekly calorie goal compared to net for the week. I wear a Fitbit hr to tell me my cals burnt . For example my total cals for last week of 7 days is 12453 and the net is 9212 for 7 days. So that is 3332 difference. I am roughly burning around 2000 cals a day from what the Fitbit indicates. I thought the Fitbit takes into account the exercise I do. I have set map on lightly active.
Which should I be basing my goal on Net or Total?

heybales

You shouldn't be basing your goal on anything - eat what MFP says to eat.

Without the Fitbit MFP is estimating your daily burn by your BMR and your selection of activity level with NO exercise done - right or wrong.

Then MFP takes a deficit.

By having Fitbit sycned, MFP is correcting it's estimate, and it happens to use the exercise diary to handle that calorie adjustment.
But that adjustment could be NO exercise and merely increased daily activity.

But once the daily burn is adjusted based on Fitbit's daily total at whatever point you are looking - then the same deficit is taken.

With Fitbit, the concept of NET really doesn't apply anymore, as I mentioned, it's not just exercise. So really forget the weekly net stuff, doesn't apply anymore since increased daily activity and exercise are all mixed together on Fitbit already.

So just eat to the goal that MFP gives you, that includes a deficit from whatever Fitbit says you've burned plus what MFP things you will continue to burn until midnight.

One kicker though by selecting Lightly Active. While that does cause your adjustments to be smaller through the day - and allows better planning perhaps, it also means that MFP has an assumed higher burn rate per minute.

So if your active day stops at say 9 pm, and you sit and sleep until midnight, and you reached your eating goal at say 9 pm - the next morning on first sync MFP is going to be corrected that you did NOT burn that higher rate from 9 pm until midnight - so you will actually have gone over goal.

But - if you always become inactive about the same time - the difference will always be about the same.

So you leave that much in the green for the last stuff you eat. Knowing that on correction the next day, MFP will lower it's daily burn, minus deficit, and you'll have met your eating goal.

lartishs

Thank you very much for explaining. Just one more thing should disable or enable my negative adjustments?

Sued0nim

lartishs wrote: »

Thank you very much for explaining. Just one more thing should disable or enable my negative adjustments?

enable

woodybush

Now I am totally confused about this. Am I right in thinking that if my daily life is sedentary, and my Jawbone says I haven't moved enough, then I will lose calories for that day?

What if you only get 1200 calories? Will it still take calories away?

Sorry if I sound stupid - I just have don't understand!

yarwell

woodybush wrote: »

Now I am totally confused about this. Am I right in thinking that if my daily life is sedentary, and my Jawbone says I haven't moved enough, then I will lose calories for that day?

What if you only get 1200 calories? Will it still take calories away?

Sorry if I sound stupid - I just have don't understand!

That happens with a Fitbit if you have negative adjustments enabled. Don't have a Jawbone. Not sure if it goes below 1200, I think it probably does but don't know for sure. The adjustment won't be big, I don't have them turned on but I can see it takes about 3000 "steps" or equivalent to get me a positive adjustment when set to sedentary.

heybales

woodybush wrote: »

Now I am totally confused about this. Am I right in thinking that if my daily life is sedentary, and my Jawbone says I haven't moved enough, then I will lose calories for that day?

What if you only get 1200 calories? Will it still take calories away?

Sorry if I sound stupid - I just have don't understand!

You will only get 1200.

Here's what literally happens. Say your BMR is 1600 and selecting Sedentary is 1.25 x BMR = 2000 estimated daily burn no exercise.
You selected 2 lb weekly weight loss (perhaps not reasonable), or 1000 cal deficit daily.
2000 - 1000 = 1000 eating goal, but MFP stops at 1200 as failsafe.
So 1200 on Sedentary days no exercise. Or 800 cal deficit.

Let's say you were sick and slept all day, so device reported to MFP you burned 1700.

Device 1700 - 2000 MFP = 300 cal negative adjustment

Eating goal 1200 + adj -300 = 900, but failsafe is 1200 - so that's what you get. So 500 cal deficit actually.

And frankly, if sick, much better idea for little to no deficit when body could use extra food to fight off or recover from whatever.

What happens the next day as you are more active but still can't exercise.
Device 2200 - 2000 MFP = 200 cal adjustment positive

Eating goal 1200 + adj 200 = 1400 eating goal. Or same 800 cal deficit.

dubird

I ended up having to do something different for mine. I have my calorie goal set in MFP. It's based on a couple of weeks average burn according to my Fitbit, minus any actual exercise I do, then minus a deficit. This way, if it's a normal slow day, what MFP says will be fine. I have turned off negative adjustments because Fitbit calculates your daily calories over the course of the day based on how much activity it's registering. Having negative adjustments means that MFP kept changing my calorie goal and I was getting confused!

So, essentially, I figured out a good daily calorie goal for me based on Fitbit and what MFP and other calculators said, and that's my MFP daily goal. Period. Weekends are usually less activity than work days, but it averages out over the week. When I do exercise and burn more than expected, then Fitbit will add that to MFP as extra calories earned for the day, which means I can eat a little more that day. This took a few weeks to figure out what I needed, but once I got it worked out, I was losing weight again.