Why are my exercise calories decreasing?

JD2000

I have gone from 133 to 96. I googled and read a long winded explanation from the MyFitnessPal team, but I couldn’t comprehend it. I don’t remember it doing this before. Can anyone explain why in a way that makes sense? Thank you.

ETA-I am using a Fitbit and have it synced.

malibu927

Are you using an activity tracker? If so, it's because the estimate MFP made of how many calories you'll burn today has gone down.

JD2000

Yes, a Fitbit. So if I hit the estimate or go over it won’t subtract? How do I know what will be my final calorie number? I don’t want to eat over calories. I start the day with 1250. Right now it says I have 228 remaining with 95 exercise, but I just saw it subtract.

malibu927

Say you're set to lose 1.5 pounds a week. This means that your maintenance calories are 2000. You sync your Fitbit and MFP reads the calories burned up to that point. It estimates that if you remain that active for the remainder of the day, you will burn 2133 calories. Thus, you receive a 133 calorie adjustment. Between syncs you didn't move as much as expected. Now MFP believes you will only move enough to burn 2095 calories, which means it had to adjust your calories earned down. If you move more between syncs, you get more calories. If you move less, you lose calories and if you have negative calories enabled it will subtract up to 50 to make sure you don't overeat (as you're only 50 calories above the 1200 calorie threshold, it won't drop your goal lower than that).

JD2000

Thank you for that explanation, it makes sense.

I saw the negative calorie box, but do not have it checked. Should I check it? I’m only set to lose .5 lbs and not very active. I’m at 10ish lbs I need to lose.