Fitbit exercise on MFP
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dalerst
Posts: 174 Member
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.
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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.0
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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 ?0 -
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.1
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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.
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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.0 -
Are you using the Fitbit totals for calorie burn, or a 5 level guess table method?
What does Fitbit estimate TDEE to be?0 -
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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.0
