fitbit

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hi there so its only my 2nd day on this site/app but ive linked my fitbit, it says i have walked like 2000 steps this afternoon but my calories are exactly the same? if i click exercise and then the little question mark it says something about my daily activity estimated or something i dont understand,

basically if i dont use fitbit but walk 2 miles thats about 200 calories so i would manually add that as extra free calories if that makes sense, or i could not eat more and just have burnt of extra but with fitbit its tracking the steps but not giving me calories... why is this.. is it worth me just using fitbit for steps and working out how many steps is how many miles so i can manually put my own calories lost?

Replies

  • cecekay19
    cecekay19 Posts: 89 Member
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    Join the Fitbit Users group and read the FAQ about syncing, etc. Make sure that your settings are correct so that Fitbit talks to MFP correctly, and enable negative calorie adjustments.
  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    edited June 2017
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    Because MFP accounts for about that many steps in just the Sedentary activity level. When you hit about 4000 steps, you should start seeing added calories.

    Fitbit is meant to be worn all day. It estimates your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) based on what it tracks you doing for the day (everything including exercise).

    It sends the TDEE estimate as of your last sync to MFP. MFP uses that number to estimate what Fitbit will say at 11:59pm (so it updates with each sync).

    MFP then takes the estimated Fitbit burn and subtracts what MFP thought you would burn from it. If there is a positive remaining, you earned extra calories. If a negative, you didn't meet MFP's calorie burn based on activity level and as such have not earned any extra calories.
  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    edited June 2017
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    Okay, so example:

    MFP estimated calorie burn at Sedentary : 1688
    That's
    70.33 cals per hour
    1.17 cals per min

    As of 5:18 pm, my Fitbit burn is 1688 for the day so far.

    There is 6 hrs 42 mins left till midnight. So:

    5 x 70.33 =351.65
    42 x 1.17 = 49.14

    1688 + 351.65 + 49.14 = 2088.79

    2089 is what MFP estimates Fitbit will report at 11:59 pm tonight. So:

    2089 - 1688 = 401 extra calories burned today with almost 8k steps

    Yesterday on the other hand, I only got 29 extra calories with 3k steps.