Remaining Calories Decreasing

aroycepung
aroycepung Posts: 10 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I want to be as accurate as possible so I have set my activity to the lowest setting and I sync my Fitbit for exercise calories. Throughout the day my remaining calories have been decreasing so for example at 6:00pm it said I had 110 left to eat but now at 8:00pm it says I only can eat 80 but I have not logged any food between these times. If I had eaten the 110 at 6:00pm I would now be over for the day. What is up with this? How can I fix it?

Replies

  • Jsagalovsky
    Jsagalovsky Posts: 8 Member
    I could be wrong, but I believe it has to do with Fitbit steps. MFP does a projection of total steps for the day based on steps so far. If further on you don't get the same rate of steps, the projection goes down, as do your remaining calories.
  • aroycepung
    aroycepung Posts: 10 Member
    edited November 2017
    That sucks because I walk all day at work and then come home and relax so it expects me to burn a couple hundred more calories at night than I actually will. I wish it wouldn’t make predictions and it would only allow me to eat what I have actually already burned. Oh well. I guess it’s a Fitbit issue not a MFP issue. Thanks for the response.
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,011 Member
    edited November 2017
    Check and make sure you have the right activity level on Fitbit. Your Fitbit is predicting how many calories you will burn based on the activity level you put in when you set up your Fitbit. Towards the end of the day it is adjusting your cals because you aren't getting enough steps to live up to your activity setting.

    Also make sure you have the right time zone on your Fitbit, it should "expect" you to be less active after a certain hour. I didn't realize mine was set at GMT when I first set it up and was getting weird adjustments at weird times of day.

    And once you've been using it for awhile, you will get used to how many calories you get on a typical day. I found it took a month or so for the combo of my Fitbit with mfp to really come together and make sense.
  • macgurlnet
    macgurlnet Posts: 1,946 Member
    You should be able to change your Fitbit to account for the lack of activity (sort of).

    By default, it tries to guess your activity for the rest of the day based off your activity so far. You can switch to Sedentary and see if that changes the calorie info.

    https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Charge-HR/Change-from-sedentary-to-personalize/td-p/681683

    ~Lyssa
  • WinoGelato
    WinoGelato Posts: 13,454 Member
    FitBit makes projections throughout the day based on your activity. When you wake up, if you have negative calorie adjustments enabled (and you should) you might see a negative number since FitBit started measuring at midnight when you may have been asleep. Then as you build up activity throughout the day, the adjustments become positive, and if you have a very active period from exercise or a lot of walking, FitBit assumes you will be maintaining that activity for the rest of the day, which you won't. So them as the day goes on and your activity dwindles the calories go down again. This is very normal, and once you get used to it and have an understanding of what your typical calorie burns are, you'll know how to manage that situation. I and many others leave some cals on the table at the end of the day, for those downward adjustments.

Categories