Activity level

lauraesh0384

I know that you're supposed to set your activity level to sedentary when using an activity tracker. For a while I set mine to active and would usually get about 300-500 calorie adjustment since I walk 15-20k steps. I never ate back my exercise calories. Recently I decided to set my activity level to sedentary to follow what Fit Bit says to do. Based on my activity level I'm getting huge adjustments and I know I won't lose weight consistently eating 2000+ calories since my TDEE is around 2300. Today for example I ate 1700 calories and it gave me an 825 adjustment (I had a very busy day at work; walked 5 miles) and the goal is 1200. It says I have around 250 left at last sync. I generally eat 1700-1800. How important is it to set activity level to sedentary? Or should I go back to active and keep my setting to sedentary on fit bit? Previously I was using the personalized setting under food plan.

NancyN795

You don't need to set your activity level to sedentary. A lot of people do, but I don't recall seeing anyone say that you're "supposed" to.

Your MFP activity level shouldn't actually change how many calories you end up with at the end of the day - with one exception. If the combination of your weight loss rate and your activity level result in you being given the minimum calories per day (1200 for women) then the math that MFP uses to compute your adjustment doesn't work as expected. The solution is to choose a higher activity level, a slower rate of weight loss, or both.

So, go ahead and set you activity level where it works for you, then eat back any extra calories you're given from Fitbit.

The "sedentary" setting on Fitbit is completely different than the activity level on MFP, so it doesn't matter what you set it to. On Fitbit it just means it will allot you calories for the rest of the day on the assumption that you'll be inactive the rest of the day, while the "personalized" setting means that Fitbit will allot you calories for the rest of the day based on past activity levels. However, neither setting has any effect on MFP's calculations.

heatherheyns

I used to, but I realized it didn't work for me. The reason was (if I can explain it without rambling) is that if I set my activity to sedentary and I want to lose 2lbs a week, I get 1200 calories, but that is only losing about 1lb a week. So fitbit adjusts that up as I move more, and I never am able to get that 1k calorie deficit (I have a lot ot lose). If I set it to active, I get 1400 calories, and fitbit only adjusts it up a little bit for the difference. So now it adjusts my totals up to maybe 1600, where when I was sedentary it adjusted it up to over 2k often. The difference was that at sedentary I couldn't create enough of a base deficit and I can at active.

AvrilC1971

My Fitbit says I was active on an outdoor bike when I was actually gardening... Yes, intense gardening (adding fresh dirt) but I would like to change this.. can I ? anyone know how?

NancyN795

If you never go on outdoor bike rides, then turn off the ability for Fitbit to automatically detect that activity (look under Track Exercise in the Fitbit mobile app or Settings->Devices on the web). For the activity record already created, either delete it, or rename it to Gardening or something. You may not have been riding a bike, but I'm sure you were burning calories.