Fitbit calorie adjustment

etherealanwar

Hi everyone,

I was wondering how accurate is the fitbit calorie adjustment made to mfp with regards to steps. Also I noticed that an activity made in fitbit (today I did weights) does not get recorded in mfp...is it just part of the steps or do I have to manually enter it in?


Thanks!

The_Ta

For some people it is spot on, but not so for others. It is suggested that you eat back half and just see how things go for a few weeks. Losing too fast? Eat back more. Not losing what you want? You are either off on your logging or Fitbit is giving you too much credit.

Fitbit doesn’t estimate calorie burns for strength training

Mslmesq

I’ve been losing weight using it. I set mfp to sedentary and eat back my calorie adjustment.

PAV8888

Fitbit will give you some credit for weight training due to general movement and heart rate.

There are two ways to go about it.

Try to enter each specific activity with correct times and be as accurate as possible.

Or

Let the chips fall where they may (automatic detection) and figure out over a four to six week period how closely your calories in and out tracking matches your weight TREND changes (f.e. I connect my Fitbit account to trendweight.com to get my weight trend over time)

Based on results you can sort of figure out how close your tracking matches and adjust.

etherealanwar

Thanks everyone i was just thrown off by today's adjustment. I have accumulated over 10k steps and had my weight lifting session over fitbit and it's given me 1000 calories. That just seems way too high for me. I'm not going to eat back exercise calories for now and see how it goes. If I decide to I'll only eat back 30% or so to be on the safe side.

I've only had my fitbit for 3 days so I'm fairly new to it.

PAV8888

etherealanwar wrote: »

Thanks everyone i was just thrown off by today's adjustment. I have accumulated over 10k steps and had my weight lifting session over fitbit and it's given me 1000 calories. That just seems way too high for me. I'm not going to eat back exercise calories for now and see how it goes. If I decide to I'll only eat back 30% or so to be on the safe side.

I've only had my fitbit for 3 days so I'm fairly new to it.

Heart rate Fitbits seem to be quite keyed to heart rate in conjunction with activity.

You can, in the Fitbit app or web page, create a weight training activity for the exact time and duration of your session and have a look to see how it adjusts your calories and steps.

Fitbits also tend to settle down a bit after a few weeks, so I assume they start taking your resting heart rate more into account. Whether they do so sufficiently as of right now is an open question.

Your adjustment is probably because you're setup as sedentary on mfp.

A person who has done 10k steps would be better defined as active.

So part of the adjustment reflects that. Furthermore, right now, the adjustment expects you to continue being active at this pace.

If you snooze on the couch the rest of the day to midnight you will slowly lose some of these bonus calories.

People with negative adjustments enabled could even end up with a negative overal daily exercise adjustment (unlikely when MFP is set to sedentary and steps > 5k)

The Fitbit adjustment is not specifically reflective of exercise. It just equalises MFP's guess of your TDEE (which is mostly based on your input) to what Fitbit has managed to detect based in information from your gadget. This number is finalised at midnight.

whitpauly

New fitbits are always wonky with the calories at first,when I switched to the Alta hr in Dec it was giving me nearly 1,000 calories for an hour of exercise,now that it knows me its more spot on

karahm78

What is your activity level set at in MFP? The 1,000 calorie adjustment doesn’t mean that you burned that much in your workout, but that you exceeded your set activity level by that amount. In your case it would mean that you exceeded what MFP has for whatever your selected activity is.

The lower your activity level, the bigger your adjustments will be.

I’ve gained/maintained/lost as expected using my Fitbit for years. I set my level as sedentary since my job can be on non-workout days. However I logged 15k steps today and got an adjustment over 1,000 calories.

Mslmesq

I have the fitbit flex and it has never given me that many calories. The most steps I’ve ever logged was 23,000 and it gave me 920 that day. Of course, I’m short and don’t weigh that much.

Jthanmyfitnesspal

I saw lots of high readings from my fitbits (before they broke). I unlinked.

etherealanwar

karahm78 wrote: »

What is your activity level set at in MFP? The 1,000 calorie adjustment doesn’t mean that you burned that much in your workout, but that you exceeded your set activity level by that amount. In your case it would mean that you exceeded what MFP has for whatever your selected activity is.

The lower your activity level, the bigger your adjustments will be.

I’ve gained/maintained/lost as expected using my Fitbit for years. I set my level as sedentary since my job can be on non-workout days. However I logged 15k steps today and got an adjustment over 1,000 calories.

I set my activity level to sedentary as I work an office job and I'm sitting the majority of the day. That makes more sense now but then how can I know how much i actually burned? I shouldn't be eating back these calories then correct?

karahm78

That’s what I thought.... if you had 10k steps today you were not sedentary hence the large adjustment. I’d start by eating at least half of the calories and see where you stand in 3-4 weeks.

I also set mine to sedentary so that on my office days that I don’t move much my allowance is lower, but on days I’m not sedentary I get a higher allowance. It encourages me to move more...

Angierae75

I'm set to sedentary, and I have an Alta (so no heart rate monitor) and I've lost 44 pounds eating back most of my calories. (I don't aim to leave some on the table, but sometimes I do because I'm just not that hungry. But on days I'm super hungry, you better believe i eat ever last one of them.)

PAV8888

My total calories out as estimated by Fitbit and as compared to my logging and trending weight results have been accurate within a range of 0.5% under estimated to 5.5% over estimated over 3 years, 2 different Fitbit models, and 4 actual devices.

That said, I log more meticulously than most. And I am not an outlier when it comes to my BMR.

One thing's for sure: 0% eat back is guaranteed to be wrong.