Adjusting calorie goal to account for Fitbit burn

mdnorthside

Hello everyone,

I have been on this journey a long time, but only recently synced my Fitbit to my MFP profile. I have 40lbs to lose and my goal was set to losing 1lb/week until yesterday. At that goal, eating back 100% of my Fitbit adjustment, I am quite full and not losing weight (maybe due to fluctuations, recently started my period AND a wicked new exercise routine). As a result, I've changed my goal to losing 1.5lb/week, still eating back 100% of my Fitbit adjustment.

It hasn't been long enough to see if I'm truly losing weight yet, but I am more comfortably satisfied and less "stuffed." If in a few weeks I'm still not losing weight, I intend to change my goal to 2lbs/week. I don't want to eat back only a portion of the adjustment because it's more complicated that way, but I can't ignore the adjustment all together because my activity varies greatly from day to day (if I changed my goal back to 1lb/week, on high-activity days I'd be starving and on lax days I'd eat too much).

My question is: is there anyway to lower the Fitbit calorie adjustment output?
I already have it on the lowest sensitivity (set to dominant hand and actually wearing on non-dominant hand)
And I update my weight every day when I use my scale so the burn is as accurate as it can get.
Any advice?

macgurlnet

How long have you had your Fitbit?

I would leave everything as-is for 4-6 weeks, especially since you have your period and a new exercise routine in the mix. Keep weighing in regularly and see where you are at that point.

~Lyssa

malibu927

macgurlnet wrote: »

How long have you had your Fitbit?

I would leave everything as-is for 4-6 weeks, especially since you have your period and a new exercise routine in the mix. Keep weighing in regularly and see where you are at that point.

~Lyssa

This. Stalls without weight loss for a week or two are very common, especially with a woman's reproductive system.

heybales

Outside great advice above - is confirming if what Fitbit is estimating as daily burn, either with or without exercise - is as decently accurate as you can get it.

The farther you get from the average person they made it for - the more inaccurate it can become.

Like if you do a great deal of workouts with HR-based calorie burns that are exactly opposite of what the formula is intended for (steady-state same HR for 2-4 min aerobic), and rest of your day is decently sedentary, that inflated calorie burn for the workout could be decent % of day's calories.
So manually correctly lifting, even circuit training or intervals where the HR is nothing but up and down constantly and anaerobic type.

Or if you have your stride length set for exercise level walking pace dead on, but the other 90% of your day is way below that pace and you are very active - you'll get inflated calorie burn with some pretty big increases possible for the whole day.

Both of those are reasons I've seen inflated daily burn from Fitbit. Correct for those, and the adjustments may become right on.

lemonychild

heybales wrote: »

Outside great advice above - is confirming if what Fitbit is estimating as daily burn, either with or without exercise - is as decently accurate as you can get it.

The farther you get from the average person they made it for - the more inaccurate it can become.

Like if you do a great deal of workouts with HR-based calorie burns that are exactly opposite of what the formula is intended for (steady-state same HR for 2-4 min aerobic), and rest of your day is decently sedentary, that inflated calorie burn for the workout could be decent % of day's calories.
So manually correctly lifting, even circuit training or intervals where the HR is nothing but up and down constantly and anaerobic type.

Or if you have your stride length set for exercise level walking pace dead on, but the other 90% of your day is way below that pace and you are very active - you'll get inflated calorie burn with some pretty big increases possible for the whole day.

Both of those are reasons I've seen inflated daily burn from Fitbit. Correct for those, and the adjustments may become right on.

i want to understand and double check IF when selecting treadmill/elliptical of charge 2 the formula changes and the numbers do become a bit more accurate ? @heybales

heybales

Your selection of a workout name/type (that's all it is - text label) doesn't change the HR-based formula for calorie burn.

Some of the selections auto-enable or disable GPS, that's the other function of them.

But mainly for you to find workouts later for review.

But many have confirmed easy enough, nail the same HR for the same amount of time, and vary the workout name a few times - same calorie burn.

For fun with theory, ....

The only place this could be useful to select different workouts, and I've never seen any HRM attempt this because the variance just isn't that big - is the fact for many something like biking has a lower HRmax than say running.
Since a calculated (220-age) HRmax is part of the formula for calorie burn, in theory it could be tweaked to improve the burn results.
But again, a 10 bpm change in HRmax, for the amount of time and the level of HR reached, just isn't going to change the calorie burn more than probably 5% calories.
Lets see - say 170 or 160 HRmax, you reach the same 140 running or cycling, 82% or 88% of HRmax, mere 6% difference. Since that is only part of what is used in the formula, the calorie burn will about half that amount difference, 3%.
Nope, just not significant enough. Just ran a sample - 30 cal for 45 min.
That difference is HRmax is more significant for endurance cardio training for performance, not calories.