Is net calories meaningless?

Anon2018

Hey guys - help me out. I'm a little confused about what net calories exactly....are. So, as I understand it, there's no difference between exercise calories and calories burned through normal life activities. I have my fitbit hooked up, so all my steps are counted as exercise calories that reduce my net.

I'm typically an active person with >10k steps daily, but I identified myself as sedentary and let MFP adjust, so I end up with low net calories. BUT if I identified myself as "active" and enabled negative adjustments and got the same number of steps, it wouldn't "net" out those calories because those would just be my calories from living life.

Wouldn't "net" calories be total consumed - total expenditure, so, basically your deficit? Am I supposed to gain any information from this "net calories" metric?

malibu927

Net calories is calories consumed minus calories expended (either via exercise or an activity tracker). Your calorie deficit has already been accounted for, so your net calories should ideally be the goal you are given, as MFP is set up for you to eat your exercise calories back.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10503681/exercise-calories-do-i-eat-these-a-video-explanation

Anon2018

malibu927 wrote: »

Net calories is calories consumed minus calories expended (either via exercise or an activity tracker). Your calorie deficit has already been accounted for, so your net calories should ideally be the goal you are given, as MFP is set up for you to eat your exercise calories back.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10503681/exercise-calories-do-i-eat-these-a-video-explanation

Right, but if I listed myself as "highly active" or whatever and didn't log my exercise, I would have eaten the same and burnt the same but my net calories would be higher, correct?

Therefore....meaningless. Am I missing something? Or is there a way to get MFP to stop showing me this metric lol

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PAV8888

You've misunderstood what net calories you would end up with.

Whether you start from MFP Sedentary and then added a LOT of exercise calories via Fitbit integration because you're MFP Active in reality, or start from MFP Very Active and add very few (or even negative) "exercise" calories via Fitbit integration because in reality you're MFP Active, your NET CALORIES at the end of the day (midnight) will be the *SAME*.

Goal calories = the calories you should NET to lose at your chosen rate of loss per week.

This will work as envisioned if all your other calculations are "on point" and you happen to be an average individual.

Real life results may vary.

I suggest that you use a trending weight application or web site and compare your actual progress over a time period of 4 to 6 weeks to the progress you would have expected based on your logging... and adjust as necessary.

Anon2018

YepItsKriss wrote: »

I think its just a visual way to encourage users to eat back their exercise calories to hit 1200

See, this is part of what I don't get. Common forum-advice is not to eat back all your exercise cals because of machines and trackers overestimating. But even ignoring that, I'm short, so my sedentary maintenance is somewhere around 1400-1500. I'll typically eat ~1400, get 10-15k steps which my tracker gives me at around 450 calories. So, my "net" is around 1000, but my defecit is still around 500ish. If I ate up to 1200 I'd be eating away my deficit and not losing weight. right?

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PAV8888

Anon2018 wrote: »

YepItsKriss wrote: »

I think its just a visual way to encourage users to eat back their exercise calories to hit 1200

See, this is part of what I don't get. Common forum-advice is not to eat back all your exercise cals because of machines and trackers overestimating. But even ignoring that, I'm short, so my sedentary maintenance is somewhere around 1400-1500. I'll typically eat ~1400, get 10-15k steps which my tracker gives me at around 450 calories. So, my "net" is around 1000, but my defecit is still around 500ish. If I ate up to 1200 I'd be eating away my deficit and not losing weight. right?

Are you talking about your real life results or your expected results?

You are EXPECTED to eat back ALL your exercise calories and NET your GOAL to lose at your selected rate. Your goal amount ALREADY INCLUDES your selected deficit.

If your goal was 1200 and you ate up to 1200 you would be eating at your 500 deficit. By eating 1000 you are creating a 500+200=700 paper deficit.**

Then real life and the potential need for adjustments intrudes.

**1200 is a special case on MFP because it is also the floor below which MFP does not go. So there are many situations where a goal of 1200 does not actually provide you with the deficit you think you've selected.

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heybales

YepItsKriss wrote: »

Personally i just use my fitbit to log workouts.. i don't trust the step counting with MFP even if its getting the information from fitbit..

So you selecting from 4 rough levels of only daily activity on MFP, and logging, or rather it sounds like not logging your workouts - is more accurate?

Of all the numbers - 0 calories for exercise is the most obvious incorrect one.

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heybales

Anon2018 wrote: »

YepItsKriss wrote: »

I think its just a visual way to encourage users to eat back their exercise calories to hit 1200

See, this is part of what I don't get. Common forum-advice is not to eat back all your exercise cals because of machines and trackers overestimating. But even ignoring that, I'm short, so my sedentary maintenance is somewhere around 1400-1500. I'll typically eat ~1400, get 10-15k steps which my tracker gives me at around 450 calories. So, my "net" is around 1000, but my defecit is still around 500ish. If I ate up to 1200 I'd be eating away my deficit and not losing weight. right?

The whole NET calories idea is thrown out the window when you have MFP correcting itself to better estimate from Fitbit for increased daily activity and exercise calories - because there is no split as to what is what.

NET in the non-sync tracker realm is dealing with taking exercise calories back out of the math.

But since on Fitbit you could have no exercise but be very active over Sedentary, you could have big adjustment.
Or you could have big workout and then really tired and have no adjustment.

So the NET thing doesn't make as much sense then.

Just eat what it tells you to eat.

The adjustment is just MFP trying to correct itself because they realize a better estimate is available.

You can confirm the Fitbit side is giving best estimate too though. Both for daily life and exercise.

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heybales

YepItsKriss wrote: »

Personally i just use my fitbit to log workouts.. i don't trust the step counting with MFP even if its getting the information from fitbit..

This makes it sound like workouts are only logged on Fitbit, which is fine, and actually more accurate for calories from the database.
If you mean Fitbit track your workouts, good again.

But I'm assuming if you don't trust the step counting with MFP from Fitbit, you actually mean calories, because really, who cares if steps was showing as wrong on MFP where they really don't matter for contests and challenges and such.

Sounds like you are saying you don't trust the calorie adjustment, and like so many others - ignore it.

To which my point is - 0 (or ignoring) is the one wrong answer no matter what.

If you meant something else entirely, then I really don't understand unless you literally mean MFP's app's ability to do step counts if you so decide to deselect Fitbit and select MFP.

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heybales

See - that's what is confusing.

Where exactly are you seeing a "steps adjustment"?

And what type of workouts are you tracking with what Fitbit model?
I'm assuming that means you are letting the Fitbit decide the calorie burn then - in which case method and type matter big time.

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ZedTop

Anon2018 wrote: »

Hey guys - help me out. I'm a little confused about what net calories exactly....are. So, as I understand it, there's no difference between exercise calories and calories burned through normal life activities. I have my fitbit hooked up, so all my steps are counted as exercise calories that reduce my net.

I'm typically an active person with >10k steps daily, but I identified myself as sedentary and let MFP adjust, so I end up with low net calories. BUT if I identified myself as "active" and enabled negative adjustments and got the same number of steps, it wouldn't "net" out those calories because those would just be my calories from living life.

Wouldn't "net" calories be total consumed - total expenditure, so, basically your deficit? Am I supposed to gain any information from this "net calories" metric?

I think you got a point there, I noticed it too and decided to enter myself as sedentary and just count calories I actually eat without entering any of my exercises or work, and without eating extra to compensate for those overestimated spent or burned exercise calories.

heybales

YepItsKriss wrote: »

Not really sure why some of them were so crazy high, but as i said it never made me lose any faster then my 1lbs per week

So HR-based calorie burn device for exercise.

A few potential issues that cause inflated calorie burn.

It doesn't have a good line for when it should be still using step-based calorie burn, and it's using HR-based during daily activities - that's inflated.
You can usually see that in the daily 5 min graph where calorie burn just shoots up and it wasn't workout time.

Your stride length setting is off badly and you get lots of steps in daily.
So it's inflated distance and calorie burn.

Or, you are set to Sedentary as many are with trackers - but your daily activity is no where near sedentary, you get upwards of 10K steps even on non-exercise days - in which case that could be reasonable, or at least understandable especially if stride-length is wrong too.

Some set stride-length to exercise level pace, even though that's not the pace for 90% of their steps daily - bad inflated distance/calories.


Curious - what does this mean - "the burn i get from fitbit once i start the timer for the workout is what i use"

I know Fitbit logs an Activity Record for exercise - I'm just curious what you use it for?

Are you logging that back on MFP as a workout so it shows up on your wall?
Using the correct start time/duration? Got your time zones correct between accounts?

You aren't manually logging that on Fitbit, right? True, it would just overwrite the exact same info, if start time/duration matched.