MFP/fitbit awarding me too many calories?

eandrews726

I work a job in which I am on my feet all day most days. Weekdays I get anywhere between 10,000 - 18,000 steps. Sundays are my slacker days when I usually get less than 10,000 steps.

I try to exercise most days whether it be walking, running, lifting, or playing sports with my kid. I haven't been as strict with it lately though and will exercise 3-6 days per week, depending on how hectic it is.

Anyway - getting to my point. I have my Fitbit charge 2 synced to mfp. I have mfp set to sedentary. Mfp tells me to eat back what I feel is an extreme amount of calories, even when I didn't exercise that day.

For example, I will take about 12,000 steps one day and mfp will award me around 750 calories. It's awarded me over 1000 calories one day when I went on a short hike and got about 13,000 steps. Even on days when I am not as active, it will give me 200-350 calories to eat back.

I feel that this is inaccurate. I can't imagine eating ~2,000 Calories each day and continuing to lose.

I have been logging for about 1 month now and have lost about 5 lbs. Before that, with just exercise and trying not to eat as much crap I lost 10 lbs in a few months. Should I eat back half, most, or all of these huge amount of calories? Should I trust my gut and continue with what I am doing - eating an average of 1400 per week? Does anyone else feel that their fitbits give them too many earned calories?

Any input is appreciated.

In case anyone asks -
I am a 5'4" 26 year old female
SW: 163lb
CW: 148lb

karahm78

If you get that many steps you are not sedentary... I prefer my setting that way, and I only eat half to account for any logging errors, I lose as expected. However if you set to Lightly Active or Active you will not have those big Fitbit adjustments.

heybales

That's all the extra you got for that many steps?

Sedentary stops at about 4000 steps as you move into Lightly-Active.

So ya you should be getting big adjustments - you have been badly underestimating your activity level.

If you trusted MFP prior, and like majority probably with no idea what it's really doing besides giving you an eating goal - why wouldn't you trust MFP when it's trying to correct itself to a more accurate figure that Fitbit is reporting.

The Fitbit is actually with you seeing what you do - MFP only knows the underestimated guess you made of activity level.

Undereating wins you the prize of extra lost muscle mass - that's not good for maintenance, if you reach it, because it's also not good for adhering to reach goal weight.

And this close to reaching a healthy weight, the deficit should be smaller, probably time for 1lb weekly since likely within 20 lbs.

Like the lifting on Fitbit will be underestimated on a step-based device (you didn't mention which model, there are many), but inflated on a HR-based device.

Daily level could be more accurate with a manually entered stride length based on your average daily pace length.
Same with running stride on your average pace.

Let me guess - Fitbit is up approaching 3000 calories burned on active days.
Easily believable.

You likely have no idea how much of a good workout you are missing out on with the extreme potential deficit you are causing.
Hopefully you haven't hit the avg 20% LBM lost with fat loss for that 10 lbs.

Never try to lose eating the bare minimum - vast majority fail in maintenance that way.
Lose trying to eat the max you can.

If you search the Fitbit group for your question, it's been asked and commented on many times - majority have it accurate with what they really lose or maintain on.
Others probably could tighten up based on their workouts.
Some are probably bad at logging food but blame the device.

eandrews726

Thank you so much for your helpful answers!
I will try to put more trust in mfp and my fitbit, but I may still only eat about 1/2 back to account for logging errors and see how it works for a few weeks. Maybe that is why I have been more tired lately, I guess I really could not be eating enough calories. I certainly don't want to be in too much of a deficit.

Btw, I have a Fitbit Charge 2 which does track HR.

SusanMFindlay

eandrews726 wrote: »

I work a job in which I am on my feet all day most days. Weekdays I get anywhere between 10,000 - 18,000 steps. Sundays are my slacker days when I usually get less than 10,000 steps.

I try to exercise most days whether it be walking, running, lifting, or playing sports with my kid. I haven't been as strict with it lately though and will exercise 3-6 days per week, depending on how hectic it is.

Anyway - getting to my point. I have my Fitbit charge 2 synced to mfp. I have mfp set to sedentary. Mfp tells me to eat back what I feel is an extreme amount of calories, even when I didn't exercise that day.

For example, I will take about 12,000 steps one day and mfp will award me around 750 calories. It's awarded me over 1000 calories one day when I went on a short hike and got about 13,000 steps. Even on days when I am not as active, it will give me 200-350 calories to eat back.

I feel that this is inaccurate. I can't imagine eating ~2,000 Calories each day and continuing to lose.

I have been logging for about 1 month now and have lost about 5 lbs. Before that, with just exercise and trying not to eat as much crap I lost 10 lbs in a few months. Should I eat back half, most, or all of these huge amount of calories? Should I trust my gut and continue with what I am doing - eating an average of 1400 per week? Does anyone else feel that their fitbits give them too many earned calories?

Any input is appreciated.

In case anyone asks -
I am a 5'4" 26 year old female
SW: 163lb
CW: 148lb

I am a 5'4" 41 year old female. Start weight (for calorie counting) 190 lb. Current weight 150 lb. So, my current stats are pretty similar to yours, but you're younger than me so your burns should be higher.

I've been averaging about 17,000 steps/day. I currently eat an average of 2300 calories/day and have been losing just over 0.5 pound/week (on average; it's not linear). That should speed up a little over the summer since my activity level is increasing slightly (I'm up to 20,000 steps/day on average, and FitBit says my average burns are up from 2600 to 2750 calories/day) but I don't plan to raise my calories to compensate since I still have enough fat for a 500 calorie/day deficit to be fine.

When I ate 1750 calories/day, I lost 2 pounds/week. That was too fast for my comfort level so I increased my intake. It took several bumps to get to my current level because I found it very hard to believe that I could really lose weight eating so much. Turns out that I can. Back then, I weighed more so my burns were slightly higher. As I lost weight, the burns dropped a bit, but I didn't particularly want to lower my calories and I'm still losing, so I didn't.

So, yes, at your activity level and stats, you can indeed lose weight eating 2,000 calories per day. You are not sedentary. You are not anywhere close to sedentary. I'm set to "active" and I get adjustments in the ballpark of 400-600 calories/day over and above that. If I was set to "sedentary", I would get adjustments well over 1,000 calories/day.

Word of warning: I am a lab scientist by training. My food is logged *really* accurately. I am including a few high calorie meals/days that some people would call "cheat meals/days" in that 2300 calorie/day average. If you don't log with that degree of accuracy and include *everything*, you may want to leave a little more room for error. Based on your report that you've lost 5 pounds in month, it sounds like you're running about a 500 calorie/day deficit. So, you should probably continue eating at the level you're eating *but* you should be aware that you're likely underreporting your intake and are probably actually consuming closer to 1800-2000 calories/day (which, given your activity level, would be about the right amount to eat). If your loss stalls, *that* should be the first place you look (rather than blaming the device - which, unfortunately, many people tend to do).

WinoGelato

All of what @heybales and @SusanMFindlay said.

You are making the classic mistake of underestimating your activity level and being dubious of the exercise adjustments because you chose the wrong setting, not because the tools are wrong.

I'm 42, 5'2 and 118 lbs in maintenance. I work a desk job but average 15k steps/day. My TDEE according to my FitBit is 2200-2300. So yeah, I lose eating 2000 cals/day, and it's likely that you do as well. The adjustments from FitBit are a true up of what MFP thinks you would burn without exercise, based on the stats you entered, and the actual calorie burn. If you burn a lot more than MFP estimates, then your adjustments will be significant. They are telling you that you're more active than you think and you need to fuel that activity by eating back some of those exercise calories. Also, with only about 20 lbs to lose (I presume), you should be aiming to lose only 0.5 lb/week at this point.

InkAndApples

I agree with the other posters. I'm 5'3", 31 and female. When I'm at work I easily get around 15000 steps in and on those weeks I eat an average of 1900 calories, basically everything given back by my Fitbit. On weeks where I'm off my step count plummets and I eat my allotted 1220. I'm losing exactly on schedule.

If you've given it some time to get to know you then I'd start eating back my exercise calories. In a month look at your rate of loss and reassess. It does sound like you're far more active than you think and 1400 calories is far too low for somebody that active.