Calories burned from steps

missnaynay

Hey do you all eat back your calories burned from steps? I've got the app 'pacer' that syncs the amount of steps I do with MFP. Thanks

Go_Deskercise

Personally no, I do not. I have a Fitbit tracking my steps and I feel the calories burned is a little over exaggerated and I would rather be under than over.

I only eat back 50-60% of my exercise calories

Momepro

I eat back some, not all. They are more of a buffer than an actual count for me.

jjpptt2

When you setup your MFP account, you put in all your stats including activity level. MFP set your calorie goal for weight loss based on all that info. You're good to go.

Now you're using a pacer app to track steps and trying to resolve that with what MFP is telling you. In most cases, I would say to ignore the steps, and probably to disconnect the app from MFP (as I think steps simply over-complicate things for most people). But so we have some context for this conversation... how many calories is the pacer app giving you when it syncs with MFP?

Unknown

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JaxxieKat

No, because I walked around and still got fat.

Azdak

A good portion (if not the majority) of those “steps” are already accounted for by your activity level. If you count them separately, there is a high probability you are counting them twice.

smolmaus

Pacer in particular seems to only give you calories for steps counted above the activity level you gave MFP. Because I also wasn't sure about how accurate this was I personally tracked gross and net calories in a spreadsheet with my weight changes for a month and found that counting the step calories burned nicely explained why I was still slowly losing weight on maintenance calories. So they do count for something. But I also made sure my step counter on my phone was accurate by testing that too.

In general I don't eat back all my exercise calories but pacer only gives me approx 23kcal per 1000 steps anyway so if I walk an extra two miles I can have... a small banana????

amusedmonkey

I eat all, but that's after calibrating those steps to my actual losses after a while (changing stride length and messing with my stats on Fitbit like making myself shorter and older). It's about 60-70% of the calories I would be getting had I not changed my stats. You could eat them all, or a portion of them, and see how your weight behaves in the next couple of months then adjust how much you eat accordingly: if you're losing too fast eat more of them, and if you're losing too slow eat fewer of them.

wizzybeth

I only eat back exercise calories from intentional exercise (i.e. a gym workout or a walk/hike with the dog). If I don't make it to the gym, I do try to make sure I get at least 10,000 steps in and on those days I will give myself 100 ex. calories (my typical day without intentional exercise is 3-4k steps tops so if I get 10k I figure that I worked for those 100 calories.)

Tacklewasher

I set my activity level to sedentary, and eat back most of what my tracker gives me from exercise, steps, swimming etc. Make sure negative adjustments is turned on and if you set your activity to higher than sedentary, understand it may take away calories on lazy days.

DX2JX2

Walking, no. Dedicated exercise yes.

Walking is a gentle enough activity that you'll have warning signs if you need to eat more well before anything bad happens. Maybe add a couple of hundred calories if you're walking a ton more than your base activity level but in reality, I wouldn't plan to eat back walking calories. Take them as 'gravy' against your base deficit and adjust your consumption based on long term weight loss trends as necessary.

TeaBea

missnaynay wrote: »

Hey do you all eat back your calories burned from steps? I've got the app 'pacer' that syncs the amount of steps I do with MFP. Thanks

What your device should be doing is giving you earned calories for steps ABOVE your stated activity level, not 100% of your steps.

If your device is doing this, then yes......you earned those calories.

You can do a test - set your activity level higher. This puts your calorie goal higher (and your earned calories are going to be less). Either way, it should be the same deficit.

capaul42

TeaBea wrote: »

missnaynay wrote: »

Hey do you all eat back your calories burned from steps? I've got the app 'pacer' that syncs the amount of steps I do with MFP. Thanks

What your device should be doing is giving you earned calories for steps ABOVE your stated activity level, not 100% of your steps.

If your device is doing this, then yes......you earned those calories.

You can do a test - set your activity level higher. This puts your calorie goal higher (and your earned calories are going to be less). Either way, it should be the same deficit.

Or you could just look at the adjustment math by clicking on the adjustment. With fit bit, the adjustment is made from subtracting your MFP maintenance calories from what your fit bit calories are (it estimates full calorie burn from what you've done at sync).