Mfp and Fitbit Calorie help

yorkiepuddings

Hi There
Ive recently attached my fitbit to this account and am rather confused regarding the calorie intake
Each time I note my foods on MFP and all is well but then because ive exercised it says I have more calories to use? Now I'm wanting to lose weight so dont fancy filling my belly with more calories. At the end of the day because ive not used up all of the calories I get a warning message from mfp saying ive not eaten enough. Vicious circle.

WinoGelato

yorkiepuddings wrote: »

Hi There
Ive recently attached my fitbit to this account and am rather confused regarding the calorie intake
Each time I note my foods on MFP and all is well but then because ive exercised it says I have more calories to use? Now I'm wanting to lose weight so dont fancy filling my belly with more calories. At the end of the day because ive not used up all of the calories I get a warning message from mfp saying ive not eaten enough. Vicious circle.

When you set up MFP and entered your stats: height, current weight, age, gender and an activity level from your daily activity (not including exercise) and then a goal weight and a goal rate of loss (i.e. 1 lb/week), MFP calculated a calorie goal for you to achieve that rate of loss. That goal is excluding exercise, such that if you did nothing above and beyond your normal daily activity, you should lose weight at the rate you selected (assuming you are logging accurately). When you exercise, you are supposed to eat some of those calories back, otherwise you are creating too large of a deficit which can have negative consequences: poor nutrition, fatigue, loss of lean body mass, hair loss, etc.

The FitBit synced to MFP is a handy way to estimate how many more calories you should be eating to keep you on track, FitBit tells MFP how many steps you took and how many cals you burned and MFP gives you an adjustment of how many more cals you should eat so that your NET goal remains the same (I'm assuming your goal is 1200?). Now many people are conservative with eating back those calories, especially at first, since they don't trust the systems. I can tell you that I lost the weight I set out to lose (30+ lbs) and am currently maintaining and always ate back those FitBit adjustments and still do.

PAV8888

MFP and Fitbit are guiding you to achieve reasonably sane weight loss goals in a reasonably sane manner and time frame taking into consideration a slew of things you may not have considered about the process of weight loss.

You are trying to circumvent these restrictions and go faster.

Follow the plan. At the end of four to six weeks evaluate how well it is working.

yorkiepuddings

Thanks both of you for your prompt replies. I was worried I had done something wrong with it giving me more calories. Right, I shall do just as it says and eat those calories. Thanks again guys xx