Activity level

snarlingcoyote

I'm going to be Devil's advocate

Your Fitbit may or may not track stairs. If it does not, MFP gives you calories based on number of steps over flat ground carrying nothing. If you spend those steps climbing the side of a mountain with a 20lb pack. . .well. You figure it out.

In any case, if you try to add a few calories to your total calories for the day for that 20lb pack? (I do, not because I want to eat them, but because I like looking at the totals. YMMV.) MFP recalculates so your totals are all fracked up.

Yeah. Have fun with that. If I weren't so addicted to seeing my Fitbit steps in MFP and my MFP food in Fitbit, I would turn off the darn link.

nxd10

I set to 0 and bought a pedometer that calculates it for me. I have an Apple Watch now, but my old Fitbit zip was $35 on ebay, talks to MFP, and ups my calories with exercise.

MysticalT

I know this isn't a recent post but I've just bought a fitbit and have been wondering about activity levels as the extra calories I seem to get are too high. I work in a school so no strenuous activity just mostly walking around, between 6000 and 8000 steps a day ( at work ). I'm currently set at lightly active but as I'm using the fitbit should I change it? I get 1350 calories a day on mfp but the adjustment has given just over 500 extra with over 12000 steps today including a 1 hour walk.

PAV8888

MysticalT wrote: »

I know this isn't a recent post but I've just bought a fitbit and have been wondering about activity levels as the extra calories I seem to get are too high. I work in a school so no strenuous activity just mostly walking around, between 6000 and 8000 steps a day ( at work ). I'm currently set at lightly active but as I'm using the fitbit should I change it? I get 1350 calories a day on mfp but the adjustment has given just over 500 extra with over 12000 steps today including a 1 hour walk.

Your question confuses me.

6000 to 8000 steps corresponds to the top end of MFP lightly active (more or less) and any adjustments from lightly active will be small.

12000 steps, however, corresponds to the top end of MFP ACTIVE (more or less) and while any adjustments from MFP ACTIVE would be small, the adjustment from "lightly active" would be bigger... because by the end of the day you were not "lightly" active.

When using MFP by itstelf you are supposed to add deliberate activities like your walk separately.


While I do not recommend that you do that when it comes to steady state cardio activities such as walking and running if you are using a Fitbit, IF you done so, i.e. if you had added that hour walk as a separate exercise in addition to MFP's lightly active setting, your final adjustment would have been much smaller.

The reason to not add the walk separately has to do with the way that Fitbit and MFP integrate. A manual exercise on MFP will transfer over and over-write what Fitbit detects during that time period thus "polluting" your Fitbit data. While you can compensate for that by then deleting the imported exercise on the Fitbit web site, this requires a degree of manual intervention for marginal benefit

heybales

MysticalT wrote: »

I know this isn't a recent post but I've just bought a fitbit and have been wondering about activity levels as the extra calories I seem to get are too high. I work in a school so no strenuous activity just mostly walking around, between 6000 and 8000 steps a day ( at work ). I'm currently set at lightly active but as I'm using the fitbit should I change it? I get 1350 calories a day on mfp but the adjustment has given just over 500 extra with over 12000 steps today including a 1 hour walk.

Why do you know they "are too high"?

Once you've had a few days you'll know about what the daily eating level is rough and close enough - the adjustments being big or small won't matter since the end of the day ends up being exactly the same anyway.

Most people in a diet need to plan their day anyway - eating off the cuff usually doesn't work as well, and so depending on those adjustments during the day can be fraught with issues, they are mainly useful at night to know how big or small dinner or snacks need to be depending on parts of the day.

The main reason for picking Sedentary and just taking the bigger adjustments has to do with the end of day adjustments you see the next morning, and being a teacher possibly getting to bed early - could effect you more.
The Fitbit group has a FAQ, the 2nd section describes that effect if curious.

CoachJen71

MysticalT wrote: »

I know this isn't a recent post but I've just bought a fitbit and have been wondering about activity levels as the extra calories I seem to get are too high. I work in a school so no strenuous activity just mostly walking around, between 6000 and 8000 steps a day ( at work ). I'm currently set at lightly active but as I'm using the fitbit should I change it? I get 1350 calories a day on mfp but the adjustment has given just over 500 extra with over 12000 steps today including a 1 hour walk.

I work in a school, too. I'm set for sedentary, however because my Fitbit lies I can't use MFP as a neat system, so it's ultimately irrelevant for me. Data from using my Fitbit and MFP during my weight loss gave me a rough idea of step correlation to caloric needs, and I'm refining it from there.