New with a few questions :)

WarmDontBurn

I have had my AW now for a couple days and so far loving it but am finding it a little harder to "read" as I had a Fitbit for years.

What should I be setting my activity level to on MFP?
I want to lose 1 lb a week and on my MOVE section I have 500 calories plugged in. I am assuming this is the deficit I need to have?
If that is the case does that mean as long as I reach that goal daily I should be on the right track?

If someone would be so kind as to help me set this up and get it working with MFP I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you in advance!!

Naruya

Hi there! I'll try and answer your questions:

- It honestly doesn't matter to which setting you set your activity level on MFP because if you connect your Apple Watch to MFP, the watch adjusts your calories for you. It would be best however to either set it to the lowest setting (it's what I did) or a setting that best reflects your daily activity. Since you aim for 500 I'd say set it to sedentary to get the best results, or you might get a lot of negative calorie adjustments.

- If you want to lose 1 lbs a week you just set MFP to that. If you connected your AW to MFP the connection does the rest for you. Your AW sends over your total calorie burn to MFP and this adjusts it's number showing how much you can eat.

- Reaching your goal on the AW has nothing to do with getting your calorie deficit. Let me explain:

Your move goal (500) are calories burned with daily activity + exercise. This gets added to your BMR (calories burned when doing nothing at all). The number of your BMR depends on your stats, and since I don't have those I don't know what it is, but you can caluclate it on the internet. For explanation sake, let's say it's 1500. This would mean that by getting to your move goal of 500, you'd have burned 2000 calories for that day.

MFP has you setting your activity level to something (sendentary, lightly active, etc) and calculates your TDEE (BMR+normal daily activity) based on that. Let's say MFP is set to sendentary and it thinks your TDEE is 1800 (1500 BMR + 300 from daily activity like walking to the bathroom etc etc).

Then, the Apple Watch sends it's number (2000 calories) over to MFP and adjusts that number. But instead of getting 500 extra calories like you're expecting, you're only getting 200 extra. This is because MFP already includes some of the normal activity calories.

What to take away from all this: just do what MFP tells you If you set it up correctly it'll give you the right calorie goal for losing x lbs a week. Your AW will adjust your total calories burned based on what you do. This will mean that on very active days you get to eat a bit more and on days you barely do anything, you can eat less. I'd advise you to enable negative calorie adjustments aswell to ensure you're not eating too much if you sit on your *kitten* all day. (Like, if you only get 200 of your move goal, in this example you'd have burned less than MFP thinks, and it'll adjust your total calories by -100)

Lots of explaining, I hope it makes sense. If you have any more questions don't hesitate to ask!

WarmDontBurn

First off thank you!! I sent a friend request as I may need some help along the way

Ok so if I set my MFP to sedentary it has me at 1300 and lightly active is 1520 - My BMR is around 1511.

Do I need to log more exercise? With my fitbit I didn't really log anything -- I just walked..lol.

Today I did go for a 20 min outdoor walk and logged it on the AW.
I walk a lot indoors - if I am going to be walking for a duration should I set that as an activity?

Also when I look at the app on my phone is says that I am using my iphone to measure my actual activity level throughout the day - Should it not say Apple Watch?
My walk recorded through the health app but looks like my steps are coming from my phone?

If it is easier to message me, I 'm game I just would love to get this set up to the best of it's abilities!

WarmDontBurn

I thought I had negative adjustments on but the option is now gone completely! ?

Naruya

Sorry for the late reply! I'm on MFP daily but I don't always check the forum so if you have any questions you can always just send me a private message instead!

Whether you log exercise or not is up to you. You have the option to let the Apple Watch post it for you if you turn it on in Health. It'll look at the exercise you did and link it to an entry in the MFP database, along with the calories burned according to the watch. However, you don't HAVE to do this perse, since the Apple Watch adjustment adjusts your calories either way, since it still sends your total calories burned over.

I like to register my exercises that don't use steps in MFP (So biking, kickboxing, weight training) but don't always register (or use the exercise option on the Watch) if I go walking. It really comes down to pereference though. Keep in mind that for the most accurate calorie burn you should always use the exercise app on the watch, since it'll then use your HR to determine your burn, rather than just steps. For a slow-paced walk it won't matter much though.

On the app on my phone it says "Apple Watch Steps" on the homepage, but in the exercise section of my diary it says "iOS adjustment". I think yours should say this too, otherwise, check in settings on the app to see if it's really using the watch for showing steps/adjustments.

You can enable negative adjustments through Settings > Diary Settings > Calorie Adjustments > Enable Negative Adjusments.

Suusik

Folks,
I am a little bit confused why you are entering Exercises manually. All my exercise get logged into MFP automatically: walking, stairs stepping, weight lifting.
I consider this one of the advantages of AW and MFP that I do not need to do anything manually.
Let AW and MFP do it for me

WarmDontBurn

Suusik wrote: »

Folks,
I am a little bit confused why you are entering Exercises manually. All my exercise get logged into MFP automatically: walking, stairs stepping, weight lifting.
I consider this one of the advantages of AW and MFP that I do not need to do anything manually.
Let AW and MFP do it for me

Do you mean you don't use "workout" feature on the watch?
That is what I meant by manually. Also even if I do a "workout" it doesn't always record in MFP.

Naruya

Yea, I don't enter manually in MFP, I just meant that those are the exercises I do use the Workout feature on the Watch for. Sorry for the confusion