Fit bit calorie adjustment

kglenny

Hi All

I have the Fitbit One - i have walked 10682 steps today and my fitness pal has given me 824 calories for these steps!This seems like alot of calories?Should I eat them back?Thanks

laurenebargar

I think most people eat 25-50% of the calories back, although that does seem like alot. What are your stats? Age Height weight?

kglenny

I am 5 foot 7 and 11 stone 1 pound and 37 years old.I have My Fitness Pal as sedentary - so my daily allowance is 1280 to lose 1 pound a week.

laurenebargar

kglenny wrote: »

I am 5 foot 7 and 11 stone 1 pound and 37 years old.I have My Fitness Pal as sedentary - so my daily allowance is 1280 to lose 1 pound a week.

Its not that high then, IMO I still would only eat 25%-50% back, but I never eat the full amount back. Someone else may have more info on if this is accurate or not.

kglenny

Im kinda new to all this tbh.I havent ate any back so far but was just worried it was giving me too much and I would not lose but maybe that is correct then!Thank you

JDHayesBC

I just got started with fitness trackers and I had EXACTLY the same thoughts as you. I'm 6' and about 185lbs. On a day when I spend 24 minutes on the elliptical for about 300 calories and walk another 2 miles or so elsewhere along with random pacing about the office Fit is going to give me about a 1k calorie adjustment. That seemed impossible. That means a 2lb/week weight loss for me is clocking in at 2500 calories a day? PREPOSTEROUS!

For me, the problem was caused by two errors:

• In the past, I had BMR wrong. I thought it meant "sedentary" and instead it means comatose. So I was undervaluing my basic caloric burn.
• I had NO idea that simply pacing around the house on the telephone or walking around the block burned so many calories. Since those things don't make me sweat and pant, I didn't really associate them with exercise -- or any serious exercise anyway.

So when I started seeing those adjustment numbers (and corresponding totals) I was dubious to say the least. The first obvious thing I got wrong was that if I move my body weight a certain distance then I have expended calories whether or not it seems like "work" to me. Physics is like that -- doesn't really seem to care what I think about it.It wasn't too hard to reverse engineer a "steps/calorie" for a person of my size and sure enough, it all added up.

I STILL didn't believe it though so I sent the question off with no embellishment to my son who's way into fitness. Without telling him why I just said, "I weight this, I did these things today. How many calories did I burn?" He came within 50 calories of the MFP estimate.

Unfortunately, our scale is busted and the new one is strapped to the back of a sea turtle half-way between here and China. But just casually glancing at my waistline confirms that all of my calculations can't be too far off. I'm shedding fat visibly. So all the math is also semi-confirmed by subjective observation.

kglenny

Thanks for your message - I guess I must be burning that then but just felt like a big number!!!Oh well def means I can have more to eat, which is always good news.Do you eat back all your cals?

limex

I also have the One. I eat back all my calories, and I've always lost at if not more than what my goal was based on the calorie deficit I set. I'd change that if I wasn't actually losing at the pace I wanted though.

WinoGelato

I just posted this in another thread but it's relevant here too so I will just quote myself!

WinoGelato wrote: »

I think a lot of people don't understand how FitBit works with MFP. When you enter your stats and activity level in MFP it calculates an estimate of your NEAT calorie maintenance, and then the selection of a goal rate Of loss (1 lb/week, etc) then calculates a calorie target at a deficit. When you have MFP and FitBit synced, FitBit tell MFP how many cals you are actually burning (estimate of your TDEE). The difference between what MFP thinks you burn based on info your provided, and what FitBit says you burned, is the exercise adjustment you see. It's a true up essentially.

So people that see exercise adjustments when they haven't done much in the way of exercise, are usually a sign that they've provided info to MFP that suggests they are far less active than they actually are.

And for what it's worth I lost the weight I set out to lose, the last 20 lbs of which were with a FitBit, and am currently a few years into maintenance trusting and eating back the exercise adjustments. I'm 5'2 and 118, I have a desk job but average 15k steps/day so my activity level is set to active. MFP thinks my maintenance cals are 1830, but my TDEE from FitBit is 2200-2300 so my adjustments are in the neighborhood of 400-500 cals. I eat them all back and continue to have predictable results.