Fitbit giving me extra calories

caroannv

I used to wonder why everyone said they only eat back half their exercise calories, until I got a fitbit! Prior to that, I had worked out how many calories I had likely used for the range of activities I did, and logged them as such. This year, I got a fitbit and it adds about twice as many calories as I had worked out previously, so having it automatically sync and then eating back the calories is no longer working for me - so just like everyone else here I am now having to 'eat back only half'. It's convenient having the automatic logging, but certainly stalled weightloss when I was eating back all the caloires. I've tried some messing around with it but am now just going to keep in mind that it overestimates calorie burn for sure!

karahm78

@haybales

Yes, true! I was referring her to a site for reputable information and reliable calculator, she has clearly happened upon one elsewhere that caused needless confusion about her maintenance level. :-)

heybales

caroannv wrote: »

I used to wonder why everyone said they only eat back half their exercise calories, until I got a fitbit! Prior to that, I had worked out how many calories I had likely used for the range of activities I did, and logged them as such. This year, I got a fitbit and it adds about twice as many calories as I had worked out previously, so having it automatically sync and then eating back the calories is no longer working for me - so just like everyone else here I am now having to 'eat back only half'. It's convenient having the automatic logging, but certainly stalled weightloss when I was eating back all the caloires. I've tried some messing around with it but am now just going to keep in mind that it overestimates calorie burn for sure!

Actually - that recommendation came about because of assumed inflation of everything in the exercise database when you manually log exercise.

Fitbit is NOT sending over exercise calories.
It is sending over a daily calorie count for MFP to do math with to correct itself.

You could have no workout and be extra active and get a big adjustment.
You could have hard workout and be extra lazy and get no adjustment.

Many people do no exercise on many days and get a big adjustment merely from their activity levels - meaning they have the wrong level selected on MFP (of course it's usually purposeful since they are syncing and getting a correction).

That 1/2 the exercise database calories is probably overkill, but it was mainly for items that have no intensity in the description, like Spin bike, aerobics class, elliptical, compared to say walking 4mph, or running 6mph is specific.

And keep reading about those with Fitbit's - you'll discover many that eat all the adjustments and keep losing weight - so it's hardly a lemming agreement of everyone else is doing it that way.

And there are some workouts it'll inflate calorie burn on - daily life is pretty good unless the stride length needs correction and you do a lot of steps.

amusedmonkey

Have you by any chance switched to a fitbit that has a heart rate function? I had to ditch that function because it was giving way more calories than I had calculated from experience. I also had to play with the stride length and age/height functions to get the burn closer to what it should be (made myself older and shorter).

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