Fit bit and exercise calories

msfazer

I had my fitbit synced to mfp and it seems ro be adding alot of extra calories to my goal. I have a very active job and walk anything from 10000 to 20000 steps a day. Would it be better for me to disconect the fitbit app from here and just add actual extra exercise i do manually instead?

kgirlhart

Are you losing at the rate you expect? I find my fitbit adjustment to be more accurate than manually adding exercise on mfp. You could just eat back a percentage of the adjustment if you feel it is too high.

msfazer

I have only just came back to mfp after putting on two stone! (Wish i still looked like my profile pic i worked so hard for that). Hmm maybe if i set my activity level to low it will make more sense?

StaciMarie1974

If you have a very active job and are getting a high Fitbit adjustment, then I'm guessing you selected sedentary as your MFP activity level? Choosing a more accurate activity level would improve MFP's guess as to what your caloric needs should be. But no matter what, on its own, MFP is a guess and assumes that you entered accurate information in setting your profile. Including activity level.

MFP estimates your total daily burn based on your stated activity level, which could be wrong or could vary from day to day. Fitbit estimates your total daily burn based on your actual movement and then transmits that info to MFP if you have them synced. So the Fitbit adjustment is likely to be more accurate than you stating an activity level.

msfazer wrote: »

I had my fitbit synced to mfp and it seems ro be adding alot of extra calories to my goal. I have a very active job and walk anything from 10000 to 20000 steps a day. Would it be better for me to disconect the fitbit app from here and just add actual extra exercise i do manually instead?

rileysowner

So what do you have your activity level here set at? The reason I ask is if you are getting a whole lot of extra calories, some setting is wrong.

MaybeLed

It's up to you there are people here who do both,

I've set my profile to sedentry, even though most days I'm not. I then let my fitbit add the kcal it thinks, and I eat back 75% of that, with allowing negative adjustments. I'm losing steadily as expected. you may just want to set yours for highly active if your days are regular, mine aren't.

It may take a bit of trial and error to work out exactly where you are when you've got a few weeks of consistent data. MFP is designed for you to eat back exercise calories, so you don't want to underfuel yourself.

MaybeLed

Also this: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf/p1

jessiferrrb

It takes a while for your fitbit to really hone into an accurate calorie burn when you first get it, and you should make sure that your MFP settings are set to enable negative adjustments and that your activity level is set to sedentary if you're linking your fitbit. MFP works on NEAT so when you set lightly active (like your job would indicate) it builds extra calories into your goal while your fitbit is set to TDEE, which adds calories as you expend them. This may cause you to double dip if your settings are off.

once you've got everything adjusted and you've given your fitbit some time to adapt to you. then it's trial and error for how much you can eat back. i eat back 50-75%. if you're losing too fast eat more, too slow eat less.

StaciMarie1974

No. Set your activity level anywhere. Enabling negative adjustments ONLY matters if you are ever less active than MFP expects. If you don't have negative enabled and see a 0 adjustment then that means your actual burn according to Fitbit is less than what MFP expects based on your stated activity level. Like if you're set to lightly active but have a day where you're ill and spend much of it on the sofa binge watching Netflix.

Fitbit won't double up on calories, not even if you log activity. Such as if you have them synced and log some exercise from 1-2pm, then MFP will use the logged info for that hour and the Fitbit data for the other 23.

jessiferrrb wrote: »

It takes a while for your fitbit to really hone into an accurate calorie burn when you first get it, and you should make sure that your MFP settings are set to enable negative adjustments and that your activity level is set to sedentary if you're linking your fitbit. MFP works on NEAT so when you set lightly active (like your job would indicate) it builds extra calories into your goal while your fitbit is set to TDEE, which adds calories as you expend them. This may cause you to double dip if your settings are off.

once you've got everything adjusted and you've given your fitbit some time to adapt to you. then it's trial and error for how much you can eat back. i eat back 50-75%. if you're losing too fast eat more, too slow eat less.

StaciMarie1974

Mathematical example:

Say that set to lightly active MFP expects you to burn 2000 and set to sedentary it expects you to burn 1800. If your Fitbit says you burned 2100, you'd earn either a +100 or +300 adjustment depending on your activity level setting.

If your Fitbit says you actually burned 1900, you'd have a +100 (sedentary), or either a 0 (negatives NOT enabled) or -100 Fitbit adjustment if MFP is set to lightly active.

A higher activity level setting means you'll need to move more before you earn a Fitbit adjustment, and at the tend of the day your Fitbit adjustment will be less than if you have a lower activity level.

louise5779

I think it depends on your height and weight etc. I don’t look at the MFP totals I only eat what the Fitbit app says in the actual app. I use MFP pal to log my food only then sync to my Fitbit app and I follow the Fitbit based on my actual TDEE.

I am only 5’ 3” so being 123lbs set at sedentary MFP sets my maintenance at 1537 cals. If I cut ½ lb weight loss per week (250 cals per day) I only get 1287 cals. My target weight is 112lbs.

On 2 days a week I am completely sedentary and only walk 6000-8000 steps per day and drive most places. I don’t get a chance to exercise on those days or do any cleaning. I’m mainly sat down at a desk (8 hours). If every day was like that I wouldn’t lose any weight and try to stick 1287 cals (never happens) my Fitbit app always says I have eaten too much on these days whereas MFP says I can eat more. It gave me 1714 cals to eat this Monday. It gave me 350 cals of Fitbit exercise cals when I didn’t do anything or even walk anywhere other than to and from the car and sit at a desk all day. MFP gives way too many extra cals to eat.

The other 5 days I normally hit about 20,000 steps per day plus burn about 700 cals working out and more light activity rushing about cleaning house. Take yesterday for example:

Steps 19837,
Active minutes 159,
319 cals walking the children to school,
341 cals Body Pump class
317 Cals Body Attack Class
Total cals burned 2853

If I cut a 750 cals deficit per day on my Fitbit I can eat 2103 cals, I actually forced myself to eat 1941. But MFP gave me 2663 cals to eat!! That’s ridiculous!!

I’ve been doing this for 12 weeks now and have steadily loss 12.3lb on my lowest weighing in this week. That’s a pound a week which I think is fine. When you’re small it’s hard because this is all based on estimates and even though I have a Fitbit charge 2 (previously Charge HR) and weigh and log everything I eat but its stil all estimates. That small 250 cals a day deficit can easily be swallowed up, So 2 days a week I cut 250 cals and the other active days I cut 750 cals as per my FITBIT app not MFP. Sorry to go on, I hope this makes sense.

oat_bran

When I added exercise calories on mfp it automatically added those calories to my FitBit, even though it already counted those calories. It took me a while to realize it was overestimating my eercise calories.