Confused about adjustment
Francl27
Posts: 26,371 Member
My fitbit is finally sync'ed with MFP - yay!
I'm however 100% confused about how it works. I'm set on 'active' on MFP. It's 9.35am right now, I'm at 10k steps, and I have 240 extra calories from Fitbit.
Yesterday, I ended up around 17k steps, and had a 155 calories adjustment for the day. It actually kept going down during the day (started at 165 or so).
I've never been really good at math but something's really odd there. Shouldn't MFP only start adding calories once we're past the 'active' setting instead of just changing the value all day? How in the world does it work?
I'm however 100% confused about how it works. I'm set on 'active' on MFP. It's 9.35am right now, I'm at 10k steps, and I have 240 extra calories from Fitbit.
Yesterday, I ended up around 17k steps, and had a 155 calories adjustment for the day. It actually kept going down during the day (started at 165 or so).
I've never been really good at math but something's really odd there. Shouldn't MFP only start adding calories once we're past the 'active' setting instead of just changing the value all day? How in the world does it work?
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Read the FAQ in the stickies for this group, 2nd section if you really want to understand the math.
You can do it with your own example to see how it works.
And your example above - that many steps by 9:30 am means you are active, and the calorie burn reported by Fitbit probably was pretty high too.
MFP did the math and it appeared your day was going to be WAY above Active (which is only meant to represent daily activity, not exercise, so it doesn't ramp up fast enough to include exercise you may have started the day with).
But then as the Fitbit daily burn kept coming in, the daily estimated kept dropping as you weren't really that activity all day. So the adjustment kept going down.
2nd section of FAQ also shares a gotcha to having MFP set to high activity level to be aware of.
And this is all presumed on the sync between them working correctly all day long.
Fitbit sends new daily burn when it's 100 higher than last sync - that could easily be over 1 hour if a desk job not moving much.2 -
This is why i have mine set at sedentary. Yesterday i got 23,000 steps, and i still lose calories from around 5pm(when i am actually very sedentary) to midnight, only around 60 calories, so not too bad. When i had it set to lightly active, i could guarantee up to 200 calories being taken away by the next morning, because i am not lightly active all day up until midnight.
My problem is i'm in bed most nights by 7-8 pm, so there's a whole lot of hours where i am very sedentary.0 -
your posts always make so much sense! It's like both Fitbit n mfp should hire you!Read the FAQ in the stickies for this group, 2nd section if you really want to understand the math.
You can do it with your own example to see how it works.
And your example above - that many steps by 9:30 am means you are active, and the calorie burn reported by Fitbit probably was pretty high too.
MFP did the math and it appeared your day was going to be WAY above Active (which is only meant to represent daily activity, not exercise, so it doesn't ramp up fast enough to include exercise you may have started the day with).
But then as the Fitbit daily burn kept coming in, the daily estimated kept dropping as you weren't really that activity all day. So the adjustment kept going down.
2nd section of FAQ also shares a gotcha to having MFP set to high activity level to be aware of.
And this is all presumed on the sync between them working correctly all day long.
Fitbit sends new daily burn when it's 100 higher than last sync - that could easily be over 1 hour if a desk job not moving much.
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Christine_72 wrote: »This is why i have mine set at sedentary. Yesterday i got 23,000 steps, and i still lose calories from around 5pm(when i am actually very sedentary) to midnight, only around 60 calories, so not too bad. When i had it set to lightly active, i could guarantee up to 200 calories being taken away by the next morning, because i am not lightly active all day up until midnight.
My problem is i'm in bed most nights by 7-8 pm, so there's a whole lot of hours where i am very sedentary.
That is why I set mine to think I live on the East Coast instead of the west Coast that way after dinner when I just sit the day is almost over and I don't lose as many calories late in the day. (you have to set both fitbit and MFP that way).0 -
Yeah it's still kinda odd though because I'm at 17k steps today and it gives me 380 extra calories. Highly doubt I will lose 200 extra calories overnight. Just odd.
I'm set on active anyway because I pretty much never do less than 7000 steps.0 -
Yeah it's still kinda odd though because I'm at 17k steps today and it gives me 380 extra calories. Highly doubt I will lose 200 extra calories overnight. Just odd.
I'm set on active anyway because I pretty much never do less than 7000 steps.
Check how many calories you have left when you go to bed, and see what it says tomorrow morning when you get up.0 -
Christine_72 wrote: »Yeah it's still kinda odd though because I'm at 17k steps today and it gives me 380 extra calories. Highly doubt I will lose 200 extra calories overnight. Just odd.
I'm set on active anyway because I pretty much never do less than 7000 steps.
Check how many calories you have left when you go to bed, and see what it says tomorrow morning when you get up.
Yeah but I'm going to walk more anyway, lol0 -
I was just curious to how many, if any, calories you may lose between bedtime and when you get up. Like i said, mine was around 200. So moving up to lightly active was pointless, because i got an extra 250 calories but lost 200ish of those in the end.0
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Christine_72 wrote: »I was just curious to how many, if any, calories you may lose between bedtime and when you get up. Like i said, mine was around 200. So moving up to lightly active was pointless, because i got an extra 250 calories but lost 200ish of those in the end.
I'll check and report. I actually only lost 10 or so a couple days ago... maybe 60 yesterday? But I went in bed to read at 8.30pm, lol.1 -
So for 3.5 hrs MFP thinks your calorie burn is going to be 1.6 x BMR level burn.
But if lying still, Fitbit is going to report the more correct BMR level burn on next sync, which could happen while reading up to midnight, or as Christina is mentioning, upon first sync the next morning, when you look back at prior day.
0.6 x say 80/hr BMR x 3.5 hrs = 168 calories likely difference if you look at calories left for the day at 8:30 pm, and what it will show the next day once MFP got the final figures from Fitbit.
All this means is if you nailed your calorie goal at 8:30 pm and then got into bed - the next day would show you actually went over by about that 168 calories (or whatever it ends up being).
When near goal weight doing a minor deficit - that difference could easily be over 50% of desired deficit to be attempting.
Fortunately as Christina mentioned - easy to plan on if mostly to bed at same time - the figure won't change - just leave that much in the green, next morning will show you nailed calorie goal the prior day.0 -
Ok I lost 100 calories from 9pm to midnight. Good to know...
I start the day at -230 calories too, which actually seems too low! I'd probably end up at -500 or something if I didn't even do 5k steps.0 -
I start off at -98 calories. Setting myself to lightly active or higher put too much pressure on me lol0
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Christine_72 wrote: »I start off at -98 calories. Setting myself to lightly active or higher put too much pressure on me lol
Lol I get it. It's just easier for me when the number is close enough to what I get in the end.
MFP isn't kidding about what 'active' means though. I have to walk about 14-15k steps to break even.0 -
Christine_72 wrote: »I start off at -98 calories. Setting myself to lightly active or higher put too much pressure on me lol
Lol I get it. It's just easier for me when the number is close enough to what I get in the end.
MFP isn't kidding about what 'active' means though. I have to walk about 14-15k steps to break even.
15,000 is my daily goal, but i try to aim for 20k most days. Then there's days like yesterday where it rained all day, and i only got up to 12,000. Had i been set at active i would have been sitting there in a cold sweat watching the number in my diary slowly dwindle down lol
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Christine_72 wrote: »Christine_72 wrote: »I start off at -98 calories. Setting myself to lightly active or higher put too much pressure on me lol
Lol I get it. It's just easier for me when the number is close enough to what I get in the end.
MFP isn't kidding about what 'active' means though. I have to walk about 14-15k steps to break even.
15,000 is my daily goal, but i try to aim for 20k most days. Then there's days like yesterday where it rained all day, and i only got up to 12,000. Had i been set at active i would have been sitting there in a cold sweat watching the number in my diary slowly dwindle down lol
Lol I hear you. My house has a nice loop in it though so it's easy to just walk in a circle for 30 minutes if I have to.1 -
When I was linked, I always had to leave 100 calories in the green at the end if the day. I'm currently not linked but use the two Apps in tandem with each other because I personally found that FB overestimated my TDEE by a few hundred calories (and I'm waiting on a replacement band for my Blaze).
I'd really like to go back to linking the two. After reading some of the posts in the FB forum, I'm thinking that there's some data tweaks that can be made either on the MFP data or FB data to "lower" my FB TDEE. Any suggestions? FYI, I've had a FB for almost (2) years, first a Charge HR and now a Blaze. Thanks!0 -
If you set your food plan to sedentary instead of personalized on Fitbit, it avoids the projected/drastic swings in calorie allotment on MFP.0
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Maxematics wrote: »If you set your food plan to sedentary instead of personalized on Fitbit, it avoids the projected/drastic swings in calorie allotment on MFP.
I don't see that option.
Do you mean changing the goal options like '5 miles', '10k steps' a day etc?0 -
Maxematics wrote: »If you set your food plan to sedentary instead of personalized on Fitbit, it avoids the projected/drastic swings in calorie allotment on MFP.
I don't see that option.
Do you mean changing the goal options like '5 miles', '10k steps' a day etc?
No. It can be found under the Food tab.
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Maxematics wrote: »Maxematics wrote: »If you set your food plan to sedentary instead of personalized on Fitbit, it avoids the projected/drastic swings in calorie allotment on MFP.
I don't see that option.
Do you mean changing the goal options like '5 miles', '10k steps' a day etc?
No. It can be found under the Food tab.
Ok thank you! I never actually had a food plan on Fitbit so I couldn't see that option... it's taken care of. Curious to see what difference it makes.0 -
I checked this morning, as i hadn't compared for a while. Yesterday I did 16,500 steps, and I lost 62 calories between bed time last night and this morning, so not too bad. I'm set at sedentary on both mfp and fitbit.
@no44s4me I've got the Alta and am waiting on a new band too! I've got mine super glued together at the moment. Fitbit has solid hardware, but their accessories aren't very sturdy, my charger fell apart after a few months. Luckily their customer service is excellent, and they have no problem replacing stuff, probably because they are aware how quickly their stuff falls apart
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Alright, my adjustment is still going up and down today. I guess we'll see what I get later. Assuming that I burn 250 more calories before midnight, I will still lose 100+ in adjustment by then (I'm at 25k steps today).
Maybe I'll see if it changes anything tomorrow... but I'm not really hopeful, considering that Fitbit is telling me that I'm 'over budget' as well, even though I'm already 30 calories under what I've burned so far today and left a 150 calories buffer on top of that (I'm set to lose half a pound a week on Fitbit too)...0 -
I've read and reread the stickies and I just don't get it. I'm feeling pretty unintelligent right now:(1
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leanjogreen18 wrote: »I've read and reread the stickies and I just don't get it. I'm feeling pretty unintelligent right now:(
Haha same here! I have a general understanding of how the numbers work, which is just enough to get me by
@Francl27 I hope you continue to keep us updated
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I am curious...do you know how fast you are walking when you do the 15,000-20,000 steps? I guess my question is...is it better to go faster & less steps, or slower & more steps? Or maybe you're both in better shape than me & can do fast & long, lol.0
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RetiredAndLovingIt wrote: »I am curious...do you know how fast you are walking when you do the 15,000-20,000 steps? I guess my question is...is it better to go faster & less steps, or slower & more steps? Or maybe you're both in better shape than me & can do fast & long, lol.
I don't think it makes a difference between faster/less steps or slower/more steps as you will still cover the same distance either way.
I don't know how many mph i walk, but i average 130-133 steps per minute.
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Lost exactly 100 calories last night again. Starting at -210 today on MFP and Fitbit is telling me that I can eat 1080 calories. Yikes. That's why I exercise LOL (and probably why I gained 5 pounds once I started being a bit more lazy).RetiredAndLovingIt wrote: »I am curious...do you know how fast you are walking when you do the 15,000-20,000 steps? I guess my question is...is it better to go faster & less steps, or slower & more steps? Or maybe you're both in better shape than me & can do fast & long, lol.
Outside I'm not sure, it's a 3 mile route I think and I do it between 51 and 57 minutes, depending on how my legs and feet feel. On the treadmill I usually do 3.2 or 3.3 at 6 to 8% incline. But it comes down to about 7000 steps an hour or something, and I get a bunch of steps just doing things at home too.
You'll generally burn more calories walking faster because your heart rate goes higher though, but yeah, if you're going to cover the same distance anyway... I'm not really sure. But you'll be done faster if you go faster too, so there's that.
I started the elliptical yesterday again after a long hiatus and it's more steps and more calories in the same time though so I'll probably go back to it... plus it gives my feet and calves a break. I could only really last 25 minutes on it so I guess I have to build up my stamina for it again though, lol.
To be honest, I've been kinda stuck with the 'gosh I need to take a couple rest days but I'm too hungry and can't afford a 1400 calorie day' problem. I really don't know how sedentary people do it.0 -
Thanks!0
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Weird, I got a message when I tried to post this morning that my post had to be approved first...
Anyway, I walk around 3 to 3.3 mph but do probably 3-4k steps just at home doing stuff.0 -
On a side note, the fitbit app confuses me. It says I have 85 calories left but that I am over budget on calories (which I'm sure will not be the case in 3 hours but it's just silly).
But I'm still seeing the constant adjustments after changing the fitbit diary settings and I'm still losing 100 calories overnight on MFP.0
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