Fitbit steps and extra calories?

passenger79

Can someone please tell me as I can't remember for life of me, if I am set as lightly active and hit 10.000 steps do I eat any of those calories or only EXTRA workouts calories?

It's giving me 600 calories on top of my daily allowance,off course I wouldn't eat all of them but I'm not sure if those are already calculated in my "lightly active level".

I normally eat about half of my workout calories from runs and weights.

shadow2soul

Yes you would eat some.
The math works like this:
Fitbit Total Calorie Burn - MFP estimated Burn* = +/- adjustment

* MFP's estimated burn is based on your activity level setting and any manually logged exercise on MFP.

Example:
At Sedentary MFP estimates 1710 burn for the day.
At lightly Active MFP estimates 1910 burn for the day.

My Fitbit burn yesterday was 2228.

2228 - 1710 = 518 at Sedentary
2228 - 1910 = 318 at Lightly Active

PAV8888

passenger79 wrote: »

off course I wouldn't eat all of them

What is the reasoning behind your decision?

Are you talking about exercise entries from the database or are you taking about your Fitbit adjustment?

As Shadow2soul explains, your initial activity setting only determines the final size of your adjustment, not the total value it reflects.

Look at the example above and how your 50% of the adjustment rule would skew results.

2228 is what the actually detected Fitbit expenditure was.

1710+259= 1969
VS
1910+159= 2069
are the inconsistent values your 50% rules would translate this 2228 into.

I prefer to eat as close to my targets as I can. Log consistently and monitor my weight trend over 4-6 weeks. And make changes to my targets or behavior if adjustments are needed.

passenger79

My Fitbit is synced with MFP so when I hit 10.000 steps today it added 600 cal on my left over calories for today .

I have no problem eating as much as I possibly can, I'm just wary as I've read plenty of times Fitbit and MFP can overestimate calorie burn so I am eating 50 -75% of my exercise calories depending how hungry I am.

Been a long day and I am probably confusing myself just thought for some reason that 10.000 steps is already accounted for and I should only eat "excess "calories I get from workouts on top of my daily steps. Thanks for replies .

PAV8888

Yes.

You're correct in that you should only eat the excess.

But you're incorrect that lightly active includes 10000 steps.

To be precise Active would be closest to 10,000 steps.

But in any case the type, frequency, vigor duration of all the activities are taken into account by your Fitbit when it is trying to determine the totals.

Therefore your final calories may vary between days even with the same number of steps.

Francl27

If Fitbit is linked, it doesn't matter how active you are, if you have negative calories enabled and you get extra calories, you should eat them (or at least some of them, if you're worried it's giving you too many).

If you're set as lightly active and you're getting 600 extra calories for 10,000 steps though, something isn't right in your settings, unless you're very overweight and/or did some very intense exercise.

passenger79

Francl27 wrote: »

If Fitbit is linked, it doesn't matter how active you are, if you have negative calories enabled and you get extra calories, you should eat them (or at least some of them, if you're worried it's giving you too many).

If you're set as lightly active and you're getting 600 extra calories for 10,000 steps though, something isn't right in your settings, unless you're very overweight and/or did some very intense exercise.

It was just walking ,no extra exercise and I want to drop another 10kg I'm 70 kg atm, 1.65 so not very overweight hence the confusion. 600 cal seems too many for just being on my feet all day.

passenger79

PAV8888 wrote: »

Yes.

You're correct in that you should only eat the excess.

But you're incorrect that lightly active includes 10000 steps.

To be precise Active would be closest to 10,000 steps.

But in any case the type, frequency, vigor duration of all the activities are taken into account by your Fitbit when it is trying to determine the totals.

Therefore your final calories may vary between days even with the same number of steps.

Thank you that all makes sense .

CoachJen71

@passenger79 If you have had your Fitbit for a while, you should be able to tell if it's overestimating activity cals. I know when I see green bars worth more than 60 cals during a walk that it's over the top.