Question regarding Fitbit positive calorie adjustment

drewlfitness

I have a question regarding calories being added back from Fitbit synchronization.

Yesterday, I had 16,000 steps in Fitbit. Nothing else. No other exercise logged within Fitbit. I log my exercises within the Myfitnesspal app only.

Within Myfitnesspal, once the synchronization completed and Myfitnesspal could see my steps, about 1,200 calories positive adjustment were added to my total calories remaining, within Myfitnesspal. Again, I had not logged any exercise in Fitbit, so it's not like it was adding calories back as a result of burning calories from exercise.

My question is, why would so many calories be added back to my remaining calories in Myfitnesspal? Does it think that I really burned that many calories from the 16,000 steps that Fitbit counted? Even though those steps, were just me hustling around my house, doing little chores, which were not hard work by any means, and didn't feel like a workout or anything even close to a workout?

Is that really how it should be? Otherwise I might decide to disable synchronization, because I'm trying to lose weight by eating at a deficit, and this throws everything off, unless it truly is accurate that simply based on step count, that so many calories be added back.

Anyone who has looked into this and can offer input would be appreciated.

autumnblade75

It's possible that it is correct. I would guess from the data given that you have MFP set to sedentary, and the 1200 "extra" calories are from your true activity level - which is not sedentary, if you're taking 16k random steps throughout the day just puttering around the house. If you always take so many steps that you don't count as exercise, you could consider re-evaluating your activity level in MFP, so that you start with a higher number, and your Fitbit doesn't have to add them in for you.

nutmegoreo

This depends on a few different factors, but I suggest logging your activity into your FitBit rather than in MFP, and then let FitBit do the adjustment. Otherwise, you are telling MFP you have worked out, and FitBit counts the steps taken during your workout, creating a double dip in the exercise cals earned. I could be wrong, that was my understanding when I read the info on synching the two accounts.

Several people say that they trust the FitBit burn, and others do not. You could start with eating 50-75% of those calories back, and monitor over 4-6 weeks to see what your results are from that. Then adjust according to your results. There's always a margin of error on trackers and calculators, plus measurement error in food tracking. Results would be your best indicator of what works for you.

drewlfitness

autumnblade75 wrote: »

It's possible that it is correct. I would guess from the data given that you have MFP set to sedentary, and the 1200 "extra" calories are from your true activity level - which is not sedentary, if you're taking 16k random steps throughout the day just puttering around the house. If you always take so many steps that you don't count as exercise, you could consider re-evaluating your activity level in MFP, so that you start with a higher number, and your Fitbit doesn't have to add them in for you.

Well I never considered that. I actually have it set to "lightly active", and most days I do not actually have that many random little steps. Very interesting though, thanks for the feedback. Perhaps I will change to "Active", but then increase my weekly weight loss goal, so that the total calories that I should be eating per day doesn't change much, but perhaps less calories would be "added" from steps.

drewlfitness

nutmegoreo wrote: »

This depends on a few different factors, but I suggest logging your activity into your FitBit rather than in MFP, and then let FitBit do the adjustment. Otherwise, you are telling MFP you have worked out, and FitBit counts the steps taken during your workout, creating a double dip in the exercise cals earned. I could be wrong, that was my understanding when I read the info on synching the two accounts.

Several people say that they trust the FitBit burn, and others do not. You could start with eating 50-75% of those calories back, and monitor over 4-6 weeks to see what your results are from that. Then adjust according to your results. There's always a margin of error on trackers and calculators, plus measurement error in food tracking. Results would be your best indicator of what works for you.

Good idea, I might need to start doing that because what you said makes some sense. Although, in this scenario, I actually didn't have any "exercises" that I specifically performed that day. All I did was chores around the house, which simply accumulated steps. I didn't log "chores" in Fitbit or Myfitnesspal. The only thing it had to make any determination of calorie adjustment was step count and only step count (and heart rate monitor if that actually affects it).

RoxieDawn

Fitbit will give you a set amout of calories burned for just taking steps. If you look at your Fitbit graphs in the app, you can see what Fitbit choose to give you as average calorie burn for steps (such as it knows if you were moderately active or highly active when you took those steps). Since it is not HRM calories (steady state_ cardio based on heart rate) it will give you a calorie burn you can use as an estimate using its own calculations where the HRM would give you something different.

I would not add your exercise in MFP.. otherwise I am not understanding why you are using the Fitbit unless you are capturing steps only, and perhaps steps and sleep.. Fitbit can do many things to help you with weight loss and syncing with MFP is really to help you with the Fitbit app not the other way around..

And yes if you have a setting set to anything other than sedentary when using Fitbit this will cause differentials in what you get in calories to eat back. Remember all these calories are just estimates there is no way to get 100% accurate calorie burns using any method.. So eat back your calories wisely...

nyponbell

I personally keep my exercises on Fitbit (the only thing I really log separately is swimming, since I take it off when I do) and use MFP for food, to avoid double-dipping. I don't even go in an specify what my logged exercises on the fitbit were (like walking, or elliptical). I have, once, but it's too much work since I pretty much only use the app!

I have my MFP set to lightly active, even though most days I'm active. I do this because I do have days when I'm not "active enough" (for the activity setting) and I rather have "more to eat" on the days when I am more active, than having to adjust down with the negative adjustment on days when I'm not so active. I've also had my Fitbit long enough to know fairly accurately how much I can add to my MFP plan any given day, just based on the current step count and what I know I will do for the rest of the day. So when I plan (I add food in the day before, of not two days before) I can easily add in 400-500 calories over my goal because I know I will be active enough just from work to cover that. If you're not there yet, but you're regularly more active (and evenly so, to avoid the unpleasant surprise of the negative adjustment) then I too would suggest changing your activity setting.

But, the most important thing; keep your food and your exercise separate.

PAV8888

nutmegoreo wrote: »

This depends on a few different factors, but I suggest logging your activity into your FitBit rather than in MFP, and then let FitBit do the adjustment. Otherwise, you are telling MFP you have worked out, and FitBit counts the steps taken during your workout, creating a double dip in the exercise cals earned. I could be wrong, that was my understanding when I read the info on synching the two accounts.

You are incorrect.

At worse the steps and caloric estimate from the Fitbit during the same time interval will be replaced with the activity and calories estimated by MFP. in other words the exercise activity Fitbit imports from MFP over-writes the burn the fitbit estimates.

Generally I consider the fitbit estimate more accurate so that is often undesirable and can be resolved by deleting the activity on Fitbit once it appears.

The adjustment will adjust through to MFP accordingly and nothing will be double counted.

nutmegoreo wrote: »

Several people say that they trust the FitBit burn, and others do not. You could start with eating 50-75% of those calories back, and monitor over 4-6 weeks to see what your results are from that. Then adjust according to your results. There's always a margin of error on trackers and calculators, plus measurement error in food tracking. Results would be your best indicator of what works for you.

While in general the above statement is correct and makes sense, the reality is that Fitbit assigns BMR for non active minutes (as opposed to BMR x 1.2 or 1.3 which is what most awake minutes consume). As a result for the vast majority of people the Fitbit calculation is either accurate or an underestimate of TDEE, not an over-estimate.

If your Fitbit is picking up proportionately huge amounts of arm movement and/or if you do a lot of activities that the Fitbit over-counts, then you might get your TDEE overestimated by Fitbit. This is relatively rare, and I've yet to meet people (whose food counts are believable) who seem to think there is a large TDEE discrepancy between Fitbit and reality. I am one of the people who seem to think that there is one...and I estimate mine at about 5%.

So, I would start by eating back at least 90% of the Fitbit TDEE adjustment (if not 100%) , and take it from there.

And in essense what you were told earlier is accurate. your issue is your MFP setting of sedentary.

At 16000 steps you are not sedentary. At 16000 steps you are right around MFP's most active setting.

Depending on the frequency of the steps and how they are interspersed throughout the day the break-even point is in the 15K step range

As to your concern that you need to severely under-eat in order to lose weight; be aware that you will lose weight just fine if you consistently eat at a 10% to 20% deficit off of your TDEE (perhaps as high as 25% while you are obese).

From your thinking on how to set yourself up as you've described, and from your pictures, it seems to me that you have an unrealistic view of how much of a deficit you should have, and how fast you should be losing weight.

Your fat reserves can support a deficit of approximately 30 Cal per lb of non essential fat a DAY. Your picture indicates a person well within the normal weight range and with a fat percentage of less than 18%.

You should probably be looking to lose weight at a very slow 10% deficit off of your TDEE which probably translates into a half a pound a week with a tiny bit of an undershoot in terms of your MFP settings.

Or you can cut faster and lose a bunch of non fat mass you don't need to ;-)

nutmegoreo

PAV8888 wrote: »

nutmegoreo wrote: »

This depends on a few different factors, but I suggest logging your activity into your FitBit rather than in MFP, and then let FitBit do the adjustment. Otherwise, you are telling MFP you have worked out, and FitBit counts the steps taken during your workout, creating a double dip in the exercise cals earned. I could be wrong, that was my understanding when I read the info on synching the two accounts.

You are incorrect.

At worse the steps and caloric estimate from the Fitbit during the same time interval will be replaced with the activity and calories estimated by MFP. in other words the exercise activity Fitbit imports from MFP over-writes the burn the fitbit estimates.

Generally I consider the fitbit estimate more accurate so that is often undesirable and can be resolved by deleting the activity on Fitbit once it appears.

The adjustment will adjust through to MFP accordingly and nothing will be double counted.

nutmegoreo wrote: »

Several people say that they trust the FitBit burn, and others do not. You could start with eating 50-75% of those calories back, and monitor over 4-6 weeks to see what your results are from that. Then adjust according to your results. There's always a margin of error on trackers and calculators, plus measurement error in food tracking. Results would be your best indicator of what works for you.

While in general the above statement is correct and makes sense, the reality is that Fitbit assigns BMR for non active minutes (as opposed to BMR x 1.2 or 1.3 which is what most awake minutes consume). As a result for the vast majority of people the Fitbit calculation is either accurate or an underestimate of TDEE, not an over-estimate.

If your Fitbit is picking up proportionately huge amounts of arm movement and/or if you do a lot of activities that the Fitbit over-counts, then you might get your TDEE overestimated by Fitbit. This is relatively rare, and I've yet to meet people (whose food counts are believable) who seem to think there is a large TDEE discrepancy between Fitbit and reality. I am one of the people who seem to think that there is one...and I estimate mine at about 5%.

So, I would start by eating back at least 90% of the Fitbit TDEE adjustment (if not 100%) , and take it from there.

And in essense what you were told earlier is accurate. your issue is your MFP setting of sedentary.

At 16000 steps you are not sedentary. At 16000 steps you are right around MFP's most active setting.

Depending on the frequency of the steps and how they are interspersed throughout the day the break-even point is in the 15K step range

As to your concern that you need to severely under-eat in order to lose weight; be aware that you will lose weight just fine if you consistently eat at a 10% to 20% deficit off of your TDEE (perhaps as high as 25% while you are obese).

From your thinking on how to set yourself up as you've described, and from your pictures, it seems to me that you have an unrealistic view of how much of a deficit you should have, and how fast you should be losing weight.

Your fat reserves can support a deficit of approximately 30 Cal per lb of non essential fat a DAY. Your picture indicates a person well within the normal weight range and with a fat percentage of less than 18%.

You should probably be looking to lose weight at a very slow 10% deficit off of your TDEE which probably translates into a half a pound a week with a tiny bit of an undershoot in terms of your MFP settings.

Or you can cut faster and lose a bunch of non fat mass you don't need to ;-)

Thank you for the correction. I have been back and forth with another tracker and had not been using FitBit for about a year. Just getting back to using it again.

Sued0nim

Seems high for 16000 steps to me ..remember there's an extrapolation in there based on you continuing the same activity until midnight which readjusts based on what you've done until the next day

I would assume by the end of the day for 16000 steps if you're set to lightly active the adjustment would be closer to 800 but depends on your stats

Try eating back 75% and checking with your weight every rolling 6 weeks

I eat all of mine ...because I know it works

unrelentingminx

I had been on Myfitnesspal for about 8 months before I got a Fitbit, eating at a daily allowance of 1600. I do about a solid hour of walking Monday to Friday for work and normally rack up about 11,000 steps. I got the Fitbit out of curiosity and mostly to keep myself more accountable on the weekends when I naturally don't walk around so much. I have my activity setting as lightly active as I will also go to the gym a few times each week. I was already losing weight before I got the Fitbit and do eat back about 50% of calories from my additional workouts but not the calories Fitbit gives me for my steps which is normally around 200-300 calories for 11,000 steps.
For me, my Fitbit is an encouragement to move more when I need to (I like signing up for the challenges etc) but because I consider a fairly high amount of walking to just be part of my everyday routine, I don't use it to boost my calorie allowance.

Cerakoala

I have mine synced. I weigh about 180# and MFP has my calories set at 1200 a day w.out exercise at a 750 calorie deficit. I usually get about 15,000 steps and I log my crossfit workout each day into MFP. It subtracts my crossfit exercise from calories burned from steps so it doesn't double dip. At end of day total I burn about 2700-2800 calories according to my fitbit. I regularly eat between 1800-2100 calories and I lose. Some weeks its .5 some 1 lb some 1.5. For me it is pretty accurate. I also have the fitbit HR that does my heart rate so not sure if that makes a difference.

kellan813

I believe the steps are accurate- watch them increase as you walk. However, calories burned for me are always high too. 1700-1800 with walking 9,000-10,000 steps, no additional exercise. Here's why: it's uses your heart rate to calculate calories burned as well. The higher your heart rate, the more calories you're burning... Except if you're like me and are tachycardic all day on and off even at rest. It shows I'm in fat burning zone or higher for over 8 hours of the day.

drewlfitness

Quick update regarding one specific item: If you perform an exercise (for example walking for 45 minutes, or weight lifting for 90 minutes), should you log the activity in Myfitnesspal or Fitbit?

My conclusion, after logging workouts strictly in fitbit for the last week instead of myfitnesspal, is that it doesn't really matter where you log it. Either method will eventually give you "back" calories. The difference is, if you log your workouts in myfitnesspal, then you see your calories return instantly. If you log them in fitbit, you don't see them right away, but instead you see them come through slowly throughout the remainder of the day as your fitbit accumulates more steps and more calories burned, each time it "syncs" with myfitnesspal, the adjustment will slowly increase throughout the day. By the end of the day (such as 11:59pm), the adjustment you see in myfitnesspal will be nearly the same as what you would have directly logged in myfitnesspal if you were logging your activities in myfitnesspal.

The one thing I noticed is, if you for some reason don't get many steps in that day, then you won't see all the calories added back during the synchronization process, therefore if you perform an activity that involves taking steps (such as walking or running), then you should always log those in fitbit, because logging that activity will actually add steps to your total steps taken (it calculates based on distance you enter, and if the steps that it had automatically recorded are different from the distance you enter, it adjusts the step count but does not "double dip").

Therefore, my conclusion is that perhaps I don't need fitbit and myfitnesspal to really be synchronizing, since at the end of the day, the total calories that you can eat ends up about the same, and instead just use fitbit as personal encouragement to take more steps out climb more floors.

nutmegoreo

I've been logging mine through FitBit. I have found approximately 200 calorie difference for the same activity (1 hour swimming) between the two (MFP being higher). I would rather not risk over eating. But again, I am just getting back into using FitBit, so If I am incorrect, someone can correct me, please.

drewlfitness

kellan813 wrote: »

I believe the steps are accurate- watch them increase as you walk. However, calories burned for me are always high too. 1700-1800 with walking 9,000-10,000 steps, no additional exercise. Here's why: it's uses your heart rate to calculate calories burned as well. The higher your heart rate, the more calories you're burning... Except if you're like me and are tachycardic all day on and off even at rest. It shows I'm in fat burning zone or higher for over 8 hours of the day.

Interesting. I had a feeling heart rate had something to do with it. I'm in fat burning zone basically anytime I'm not sitting down, according to my fitbit. If I stand up to go over to the kitchen to make something to eat, it shoots up to 110-120 or so. My resting HR is 68-72, but I've found that fitbit overestimates by a couple beats.