Activity Level

idrathereatnachos

Hello, I think MFP and Fitbit are giving me too many exercise calories. Here are two examples:

Yesterday I worked out and got in 10,000 steps. On MFP I got 1393 exercise calories; looking at fitbit it says I burned 663 in my 45 min. tabata circuit training class which seems a little high too (but I am 5'7" 264 lbs so maybe possible).

One day last week I didn't exercise at all just got in 10,000 step and MFP gave me 1077 exercise calories.

Do these numbers seem high? I am wondering if I should adjust my activity level to lightly active (its currently at sedentary). Would this give me less exercise calories?

For a typical work week: I work in an office so I don't get many steps throughout the work day maybe 5,000, after work I do my circuit training class and get anywhere from 1,500 - 3,000 steps, then I come home and walk my dogs and get about 1,800. Weekend I don't get many steps at all maybe 5,000 all day.

NancyN795

It's hard to say if the numbers are off. If you worked hard in that exercise class, at your weight, I don't see that calorie count being outrageous.

Adjusting your activity level won't actually make a difference. Yes, your "Fitbit Calorie Adjustment" (which isn't technically just "exercise" calories, even though it shows up on your exercise page) will be lower, but you'll start the day with more calories and end the day with the same total calories to eat. Your description of your typical work week certainly sounds like sedentary is the right setting.

What you need to look at is how MFP is calculating your adjustment. Go to the exercise page, or to the diary in the mobile app, and click on the little 'i' next to the adjustment label (or touch the adjustment in the app, then touch again to display the math). You'll see something like this:



Then, you can use that to figure out if all the numbers make sense. Does the MFP Calories burned number look right? (It should be roughly BMR + 20%, I think). If it looks too low, then check your MFP settings to make sure everything is correct. Does the Fitbit calories burned number make sense? If it looks too high, check your Fitbit settings. Most especially, re-enter your weight as at one point there was a bug where the weight seemed to be in pounds but was being calculated as if it were kilograms. I'd have expected them to have fixed that by now but...

Also, you can look on your Fitbit account, on the Activity Log page and see where your calories are showing as burned. If you look at when you're sleeping, you can see what Fitbit is expecting your BMR to be. For instance, I just logged an activity from 1:30 to 2:30 am and it says I burned 55 calories during that hour, so Fitbit thinks my BMR is about 1320 (a little lower than a BMR calculator I just used calculates, but I do have a low resting heart rate) so, that's a reasonable number.

Finally, you can just test things for a month by carefully logging your food and using your Fitbit and then computing your expected weight change and comparing it to your actual weight change.

mathiar86

Here's my question though
Yesterday being a Sunday I was pretty lazy. Walked to the gym, did my workout, walked to the shops then home. All up my CHR gave me 38min of activity as I'd set the stopwatch for the gym where it said I was in whatever zones for about 30 of those minutes (strength training is notoriously spotty for HR). I got 6800 steps for the day.
My exercise log on Fitbit said 245 calories burned and with my steps I would have expected to have about 300+ calories in mfp. I had about 250 when I synced. Not a big deal I guess.
I had a pretty luxurious celebratory dinner with the wife, big meal, 1500 calories.
When I was going to bed Fitbit adjustment had gone DOWN to 100 calories for the day, and mfp had logged my 1500 calorie dinner. In Fitbit though it showed that dinner as 2700 calories and that I was 1300 calories OVER for the day. Now I don't pay much attention to the calories for food in Fitbit, but the breakfast/lunch calories from MFP to Fitbit were correct, but dinner was off by 800. What's worse is that my calorie adjustment have plummeted in mfp from 300 to 100 by the end of the day. Yes I'd been sedentary and laying on the couch the rest of the afternoon, but I'd done a 245 calorie workout (according to Fitbit) so I though at least that would stand??

-addit-
I know some are having mfp/Fitbit sync issues at the moment. I did earlier in the week but when I woke up it had all resolved. I'm hoping this isn't the issue popping up again...

idrathereatnachos

Thank you @NancyN795. I will try these things!

NancyN795

@mathiar86 : Did you look on the Food Log page in Fitbit when your dinner seemed to be too many calories. One bug that has cropped up from time to time is multiple meal summaries transferring from MFP to Fitbit. Typically, only one is right, but Fitbit uses all of them. I've never been able to figure out what causes it when it has happened to me, and it has happened for a day or so and then stopped. So, if that happens, just delete the extra meal summaries and everything will work out.

As for losing calorie adjustment when you're inactive later in the day - that's normal. The cause is the same thing that causes people to wake up with a negative adjustment in the morning. Losing 200 calories is a lot, but it depends on your MFP activity level and just how long you were inactive. MFP expects me to burn 1643 calories a day if I don't exercise. Fitbit estimates that I burn 55 calories an hour when I'm sleeping - for a BMR of 1320. Take the difference, divide by 24 and that's about 13.5 calories of adjustment that I lose per hour when I'm just sitting still or sleeping. For someone with a higher BMR and/or a higher activity level setting, it would be more.

mathiar86

I did check @NancyN795 and there's only one meal for dinner I. The Fitbit app registering at 2700 calories. Mfp still says only 1400. I checked again today and mfp still shows correct and Fitbit is way off. It's not a big deal because I know what I ate, but my OCD is driving me nuts seeing that HUGE red bar in my Fitbit calorie info...that being said I almost exclusively use mfp for diet calories. I just use Fitbit for exercise

NancyN795

That's odd. It would drive me nuts, too. I would probably try to fix it, because while I use MFP for deciding how much to eat and Fitbit for exercise, when I decide it is time to evaluate how accurate my Fitbit/food logging has been, I go to my Fitbit profile page to get my average calories eaten vs. calories burned for the past 30 days. So, I want the "calories eaten" in Fitbit to be accurate. What I would do would be to delete the meal summary in Fitbit, and then go into MFP and edit that meal. Then, see if it transferred over (I'm never sure what, if anything, triggers an update to a past day). If I couldn't get it to transfer, I'd manually make a meal summary in Fitbit with the correct calories.