Fitbit exercise on MFP

dalerst

Can someone please help me understand how this work on the app please. I have my calories on MFP set at my Maintenance based on my TDEE which inclueds my exercise plus 300 to get me in a surplus for each day! But when I do the exercise the fitbit is adjusting my calories by another 500 + per day.

malibu927

MFP works off the NEAT principle, which doesn't include exercise. Any time you log exercise you get a calorie adjustment. If you want to follow TDEE, your best bet is to disconnect your Fitbit from MFP.

dalerst

malibu927 wrote: »

MFP works off the NEAT principle, which doesn't include exercise. Any time you log exercise you get a calorie adjustment. If you want to follow TDEE, your best bet is to disconnect your Fitbit from MFP.

So if I want to leave my fitbit what would I need to set the calories on the app to ?

malibu927

Set to gain half a pound a week. You'll have a 250 calorie surplus, and then you'll eat that plus Fitbit/exercise calories.

heybales

So do you have your eating goal set to your TDEE?

Because that's not what MFP is doing math with using Fitbit's daily burn stat.

It's using your maintenance calories - which are adjusted by the selected activity level, and selected weight change goal.

So go through setup again - don't pick maintenance but 250 as mentioned above. And pick correct activity level for non-exercise portion of day - which for many is Lightly Active unless desk job AND you sit on couch/chair all night/weekends outside of workouts.
MFP will reset your eating goal to non-exercise TDEE level plus 250.
More importantly when Fitbit syncs, MFP will correct it's TDEE level, and still add on 250.

You're biggest thing will be manually creating a workout in Fitbit for Weights.

HR-based devices will be inflated calorie burn (which may not be bad), step-based devices will be badly deflated calorie burn.

dalerst

heybales wrote: »

So do you have your eating goal set to your TDEE?

Because that's not what MFP is doing math with using Fitbit's daily burn stat.

It's using your maintenance calories - which are adjusted by the selected activity level, and selected weight change goal.

So go through setup again - don't pick maintenance but 250 as mentioned above. And pick correct activity level for non-exercise portion of day - which for many is Lightly Active unless desk job AND you sit on couch/chair all night/weekends outside of workouts.
MFP will reset your eating goal to non-exercise TDEE level plus 250.
More importantly when Fitbit syncs, MFP will correct it's TDEE level, and still add on 250.

You're biggest thing will be manually creating a workout in Fitbit for Weights.

HR-based devices will be inflated calorie burn (which may not be bad), step-based devices will be badly deflated calorie burn.

Thanks for the advice. I've disconnect the fitbit for the moment whilst I try to establish the correct calorie intake for the day using my TDEE plus a small surplus, which to be honest I'm struggling with at the minute. Currently eating 3000 per day and still losing weight.

heybales

Are you using the Fitbit totals for calorie burn, or a 5 level guess table method?

What does Fitbit estimate TDEE to be?

dalerst

heybales wrote: »

Are you using the Fitbit totals for calorie burn, or a 5 level guess table method?

What does Fitbit estimate TDEE to be?

It has my TDEE at 2872 per day however all other TDEE has me down at between 2400-2600 so don't think the fitbit is that accurate.

heybales

It is meant for average consumer, for average days, and average workouts.

If you have more LBM and muscle than average person based on gender, age, weight, height - it'll underestimate.

If you do lots of daily non-step activity that burns more than sleeping - it'll underestimate.

If you eat lots of food which requires processing of course - it'll underestimate (because it doesn't count TEF at all).

If you mainly do weight lifting with HR-based device - it'll overestimate that.

If you do lots of walking and stride length is off - it'll overestimate that.


Considering the 4-5 levels available in TDEE charts, and those are strictly talking about workouts not daily life, and most people have potential to burn more in daily life than purposeful exercise - the Fitbit can be a great tool to help nail down the biggest calorie burner of the day.

But as you may have perhaps noticed based on real-world results - once you get a clue to start dialing in a specific number - you'll have to adjust eventually.

The activity trackers can merely make daily, seasonal changes easier to adjust to rather than discovering a month later and 2 lb gain, your activity dropped.