Supertracker, and the fallacy of believing everything you see online
JeromeBarry1
Posts: 10,179 Member
I've put my numbers into the USDA's supertracker tool several times and each time I'm skeptical of the result. If I chose my leisure activity level as "Moderate", (more than once weekly of walking or gardening), it tells me that I can lose .5 lb per week by eating over 2100 calories daily. Further, it tells me that I can maintain at 160 lb by eating 2450 calories daily.
In the real world, I eat 1700 + some of my exercise calories and lose at that rate.
I created an account on Supertracker and started entering my physical activity. First is my job, in which I stand at my desk for 8 hours a day. Supertracker has an entry for that, "Standing, general". With 8 hours, 480 minutes per day of standing, Supertracker says I burn 2041 calories each workday.
In my mfp exercise logging, I created an exercise to account for standing, and I calculated it as burning about .75 calories per minute, such that a day of standing at my desk gives me about 350 extra calories.
If I were to trust Supertracker, I'd be eating over 4000 calories each day.
I've done that a few times.
It's called a "binge".
It's sad that the USDA does such a good job with the food database but such poor job with the exercise database.
In the real world, I eat 1700 + some of my exercise calories and lose at that rate.
I created an account on Supertracker and started entering my physical activity. First is my job, in which I stand at my desk for 8 hours a day. Supertracker has an entry for that, "Standing, general". With 8 hours, 480 minutes per day of standing, Supertracker says I burn 2041 calories each workday.
In my mfp exercise logging, I created an exercise to account for standing, and I calculated it as burning about .75 calories per minute, such that a day of standing at my desk gives me about 350 extra calories.
If I were to trust Supertracker, I'd be eating over 4000 calories each day.
I've done that a few times.
It's called a "binge".
It's sad that the USDA does such a good job with the food database but such poor job with the exercise database.
3
Replies
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I just tried it. Told it that I do 30 to 60 minutes of moderate activity per day (brisk walking) and it gave me 2200cal to maintain. LOL! I maintain on 1700...
And I walk more than 60min a day briskly.
Why such a rediculously bad estimate?0 -
Wow, Supertracker thinks that I should be eating 2400 calories a day o_O. That's a gross overestimate!0
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im 5 ft 3 135 pounds and it gave me 2200 to lose weight xD? hah ...even when i understated my activity level it gave me WAY to many1
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So, I went back in and played around with some setting and found this:
https://supertracker.usda.gov/bwp/index.html
It gives a much more reasonable estimate of weight loss/gain/maintenance, but still overestimates your activity levels. I should be at about a 1.45 multiplier, and when I input my actual activity using their estimator it reads at a 1.6, which is just too much based on my personal TDEE trend. I like that the estimate data for weight loss/gain/maintenance can be exported to an excel file. It looks like this part of the website could be useful as far as data collection goes. It's interesting to play around with target dates, etc.
ETA: You'll get the most information if you switch to "expert mode", located on the top right0 -
I just tried the USDA dri - daily reference intakes. At least that seems right.
jerome, if you try it, what do you think =here it is https://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/interactiveDRI/1 -
JeromeBarry1 wrote: »I've put my numbers into the USDA's supertracker tool several times and each time I'm skeptical of the result. If I chose my leisure activity level as "Moderate", (more than once weekly of walking or gardening), it tells me that I can lose .5 lb per week by eating over 2100 calories daily. Further, it tells me that I can maintain at 160 lb by eating 2450 calories daily.
In the real world, I eat 1700 + some of my exercise calories and lose at that rate.
I created an account on Supertracker and started entering my physical activity. First is my job, in which I stand at my desk for 8 hours a day. Supertracker has an entry for that, "Standing, general". With 8 hours, 480 minutes per day of standing, Supertracker says I burn 2041 calories each workday.
In my mfp exercise logging, I created an exercise to account for standing, and I calculated it as burning about .75 calories per minute, such that a day of standing at my desk gives me about 350 extra calories.
If I were to trust Supertracker, I'd be eating over 4000 calories each day.
I've done that a few times.
It's called a "binge".
It's sad that the USDA does such a good job with the food database but such poor job with the exercise database.
I don't think the 2041 is "additional" calories like you would get exercise calories beyond your activity level...but rather the gross calorie expenditure including your BMR, etc. Your net difference between standing and sitting is likely 350-400 calories.
From what I've researched, standing vs sitting will burn roughly 50 calories per hour more than sitting...so if you sat, instead of "burning" 2,041 calories, you would burn an estimated 1,641 calories.2 -
I have friends who post on social media a "burn" of 3,287 calories after they leave the gym. Or burned 2,654 calories "by just taking 11,000 steps" I imagine it's info from their fitbit. (These are average sized people mind you) Sooooo much misinformation out there in the world regarding fitness and weighloss.1
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I love this and have played with it for more than a year now.So, I went back in and played around with some setting and found this:
https://supertracker.usda.gov/bwp/index.html
It gives a much more reasonable estimate of weight loss/gain/maintenance, but still overestimates your activity levels. I should be at about a 1.45 multiplier, and when I input my actual activity using their estimator it reads at a 1.6, which is just too much based on my personal TDEE trend. I like that the estimate data for weight loss/gain/maintenance can be exported to an excel file. It looks like this part of the website could be useful as far as data collection goes. It's interesting to play around with target dates, etc.
ETA: You'll get the most information if you switch to "expert mode", located on the top right
I had to play with the activity multiplier as well and 1.3 was my magic number while losing to get a weight loss rate that matched my real-world results. I've added some walking and I'm close to maintenance so I need to go play with the numbers again.
Everything (including Fitbit) overestimates how many calories my body actually burns. I don't know if some people naturally burn closer to the estimates or they are getting people's calories from notoriously-inaccurate self-reported calorie intake or what. I saw a story a while back talking about how the Nutritional Facts calorie counts on food labels of 2000 for women and 2500 for men were too low and should be increased because people were undereating if they followed those general amounts.
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I have friends who post on social media a "burn" of 3,287 calories after they leave the gym. Or burned 2,654 calories "by just taking 11,000 steps" I imagine it's info from their fitbit. (These are average sized people mind you) Sooooo much misinformation out there in the world regarding fitness and weighloss.
Or they are misinterpreting what they're looking at. I burn around 3,000+ calories per day...that's not all exercise...that's my BMR, my day to day activity, and my exercise...a Fitbit or similar would tell me I burn 3,000 calories in a day...if I posted that, probably a lot of people would misinterpret that and think I'm full of it...but it's not just exercise, it's everything.3 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »I've put my numbers into the USDA's supertracker tool several times and each time I'm skeptical of the result. If I chose my leisure activity level as "Moderate", (more than once weekly of walking or gardening), it tells me that I can lose .5 lb per week by eating over 2100 calories daily. Further, it tells me that I can maintain at 160 lb by eating 2450 calories daily.
In the real world, I eat 1700 + some of my exercise calories and lose at that rate.
I created an account on Supertracker and started entering my physical activity. First is my job, in which I stand at my desk for 8 hours a day. Supertracker has an entry for that, "Standing, general". With 8 hours, 480 minutes per day of standing, Supertracker says I burn 2041 calories each workday.
In my mfp exercise logging, I created an exercise to account for standing, and I calculated it as burning about .75 calories per minute, such that a day of standing at my desk gives me about 350 extra calories.
If I were to trust Supertracker, I'd be eating over 4000 calories each day.
I've done that a few times.
It's called a "binge".
It's sad that the USDA does such a good job with the food database but such poor job with the exercise database.
I don't think the 2041 is "additional" calories like you would get exercise calories beyond your activity level...but rather the gross calorie expenditure including your BMR, etc. Your net difference between standing and sitting is likely 350-400 calories.
From what I've researched, standing vs sitting will burn roughly 50 calories per hour more than sitting...so if you sat, instead of "burning" 2,041 calories, you would burn an estimated 1,641 calories.
It has space to put exercises for the 7 days of the week. As my standing at work was the first thing I entered, both Sunday and Saturday remained with no exercises at all. Both of those days listed 'calories burned' as "0", From this, I have confidence that the 2041 number was the site's idea of net exercise calories, not the gross number of BMR + exercise.0 -
It came back at about 1940 for maintenance at my activity level. My experience says closer to 1850, but it's still pretty close.0
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TheWJordinWJordin wrote: »I just tried the USDA dri - daily reference intakes. At least that seems right.
jerome, if you try it, what do you think =here it is https://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/interactiveDRI/
I chose an activity level of "low active". It gives me "Estimated Daily Caloric Needs: 2569 kcal/day"
to maintain at 170.4 lb.
Even if I completely disregard my 8 hours of MET 2.0 standing, I believe that my 3+ hours weekly of weight lifting and 3+ hours weekly of deliberate intense cardio + 1-2 hrs of walking, gardening, etc would match a higher level of activity with a higher calorie target.
It's also interesting that the supertracker wants to know activity levels for work and for leisure, while the DRI tool only asks for one comprehensive activity level.
Overall, the DRI site is similarly as generous as the supertracker site.0 -
Sounds a lot like my damn FitBit HR giving me 2200+cals/ day...my TDEE is actually around 1800 after analyzing 3+weeks of data. Hail to the spreadsheet!
I have just recently started standing up at my desk since my knee injury last summer so- hopefully Ill get a little more for it. (But Im not counting it as extra)1 -
The data I used to calculate my standing came from www.juststand.org.
It's like any other deliberate exercise, though at MET 2.0 it only accumulates slowly by raising your heart rate by about 10 beats per minute above resting. It is your decision if you want to eat those calories. I have occasionally justified some workplace snacking with those.0 -
Why should I believe this post?4
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cwolfman13 wrote: »I have friends who post on social media a "burn" of 3,287 calories after they leave the gym. Or burned 2,654 calories "by just taking 11,000 steps" I imagine it's info from their fitbit. (These are average sized people mind you) Sooooo much misinformation out there in the world regarding fitness and weighloss.
Or they are misinterpreting what they're looking at. I burn around 3,000+ calories per day...that's not all exercise...that's my BMR, my day to day activity, and my exercise...a Fitbit or similar would tell me I burn 3,000 calories in a day...if I posted that, probably a lot of people would misinterpret that and think I'm full of it...but it's not just exercise, it's everything.
That's the thing! After conversations with several different people- they actually think that they are "burning" this with an hour of zumba class or their daily walks. When I ask if they've accounted for their TDEE- blank stare. Usually the gadget was gifted to them (and therefore set up for them by someone else) and they have no idea how to interpret the numbers.0 -
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It gives me 2413 to maintain my current weight. That's reasonable based on my records.
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Ironandwine69 wrote: »Why should I believe this post?
Perhaps it is my OP you doubt. Following is a copy-paste of the Body Weight Planner with my data inputs.
My body fat % was hydrostrostatically measured a couple of weeks ago at 14.3. I rounded it down to 14 to account for recent weight loss. I Bold-ed the calorie values at the end.
Starting Information Advanced Controls: ON
Starting Weight in lbs
Weight
170.4
Age
55
yrs
Height in Inches
Height
5
ft.
10
in.
Physical Activity Level
Physical
Activity Level
1.7
Estimate Your Level
Uncertainty Range
Uncertainty Range %
% Calories from Carbs
% Calories from Carbs
50
%
Sodium Intake (mg/day)
Sodium Intake
4000
mg/day
Initial Body Fat %
% Body Fat
14
%
Initial Resting Metabolic Rate as Cal/day
Resting Metabolic Rate
1618
Cal/day
Goal Weight
Lifestyle Change
Weight Goal
Goal Weight
160
lbs
I want to reach my goal in
49
days
OR select a date
I want to reach my goal by
8/17/2017
calendar
Physical Activity Change (Optional)
Weight Change Phase
To reach my goal, I will
change my physical activity by
0
Calculate
%
Goal Maintenance Phase
To maintain my goal, I will
change my physical activity by
0
Calculate
%
Results
Calories Kilojoules
In order to maintain
your current weight,
you should eat:
2,750
Calories/day
To reach your goal of
160 lbs in 49 days,
you should eat:
2,107
Calories/day
To maintain your goal
of 160 lbs,
you should eat:
2,614
Calories/day
Initial Weight (lbs): 170.4 Initial % Fat: 14 Initial BMI: 24.4
Final Weight (lbs): 160.9 Final % Fat: 12.1 Final BMI: 23.1
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The advanced version posted by @DamieBird seems pretty accurate for me. It says I can lose about five pounds a month on 1832, and I'm currently losing twice that on 1600. However, the standard version is smoking some whacky tobacky, it says I can lose on 2200.0
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »
I think she was just being cheeky at your title
the fallacy of believing everything you see online5 -
JeromeBarry1 wrote: »
I think she was just being cheeky at your title
the fallacy of believing everything you see online
I am the densest object in the room.5 -
I have friends who post on social media a "burn" of 3,287 calories after they leave the gym. Or burned 2,654 calories "by just taking 11,000 steps" I imagine it's info from their fitbit. (These are average sized people mind you) Sooooo much misinformation out there in the world regarding fitness and weighloss.
They aren't understanding.
That's their burn for the day... Which my Fitbit overestimates by about 4/500.1 -
genpopadopolous wrote: »I have friends who post on social media a "burn" of 3,287 calories after they leave the gym. Or burned 2,654 calories "by just taking 11,000 steps" I imagine it's info from their fitbit. (These are average sized people mind you) Sooooo much misinformation out there in the world regarding fitness and weighloss.
They aren't understanding.
That's their burn for the day... Which my Fitbit overestimates by about 4/500.
Or, they input 60 minutes of HIIT. or 75... for a Zumba class0 -
JeromeBarry1 wrote: »I've put my numbers into the USDA's supertracker tool several times and each time I'm skeptical of the result.
I don't know @JeromeBarry1 .
I guess YMMV with the Supertracker.
I just put myself in as super low work activity and super active leisure activity which pretty much matches what I would describe myself as doing.
For a gross estimate the Supertracker comes back with an activity factor of 1.9 and a 10% uncertainty.
Now there is a "lag" of 2 days on my last month's data and things don't match 1000% between the food/expenditure and trending weight tracking because of that but I think for the purpose of validating the tools this is good enough (and it will have to do whether it is good enough or not ;-) ...
Supertracker yields 2904 Cal to maintain.
Fitbit TDEE 30 days: 3015
MFP eaten 30 days: 2737
Deficit based on Fitbit: 278
Deficit based on SuperTracker: 166
Deficit based on trending weight change: 112
Thus, weight change (excluding body composition uncertainty) gives an error of <2% TDEE for SuperTracker and an error of ~5.5% of TDEE for Fitbit.
I note that my Fitbit error has been at 5.5% of TDEE or less for over 2 years now.
It reduces to less than 3% of TDEE when I actually multiply out the recorded macros for my caloric total as opposed to using the stated MFP number of calories, an artifact of opportunistic rounding and of manufacturers assigning zero calories to fiber when at times the absorbable calories may be as high as 2 or 3 per gram.
In any case... I would not call the supertracker wildly off. I would not even call Fitbit wildly off.
They are all based on the same studies and on averages. Individual results WILL vary.0
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