Are fitness trackers just a hindrance to my weightloss.....

Xkmaf2018X

I literally just obsess over calories burnt/earnt etc and I'm still not bl**dy losing, I clearly (know) must be eating way more than I should but its beginning to drive me nuts now.

I literally fluctuate between 11st 8lb and 12st and have done since around Feb. Before fitness trackers I lost a normal 0.5-1.5lb per week by logging my exercise via just MFP and eating them back. In fact logging via MFP only made me go to the gym everyday because I'd save my workout calories for the weekend....Now with the fitbit I earn around "300" extra calories just by walking plus any on top through gym workouts which clearly means I must be eating more than what I should.

So say today I've "earnt" an extra 250 calories via fitbit and I haven't even been to the gym so I see that as "oooh an extra 250 to eat" whereas before fitbit I wouldn't log my steps and would still have my 1290 daily calorie intake and I would lose.

I'm going to try it for a few weeks and see if it helps me by only logging actual proper workouts via MFP and not relying on my fitbit.

Have anyone else found fitness trackers to be a hindrance to weight loss as opposed to being positive to they're weightloss journeys.

SonyaCele

you might not want to use the fitness tracker to decide your calorie level. Use it as a way to encourage you to be more active, and then stick to the calorie level Mfp recommends. You dont have to eat back earned calories, in fact i never do if its less than 500 calories, and even then when its more than 500 i only eat back a small fraction of what it says i should eat.

Xkmaf2018X

I know lots of people don't eat back or maybe just eat back a percentage but when I see the "extra" calories there in front of me it kinda just makes me eat more (I believe) and I'm literally getting no where whereas before fitbits I was losing steadily and felt really good, now I just feel fat! Plus I love the gym and do classes such as Step, Fatburn, Running, StairMaster, Bodypump but as soon as I'm done working out I'm like "quick, sync the fitbit and lets see what I earnt", I was never like this before.

So should I maybe unsync my fitbit from MFP? and just logg my exercise via MFP?

SonyaCele

if its messing with your head that way, yeah you might wanna get it out of sight out of mind. I love my fitbit when i use it, i never even look at the extra calories it gives me as more food. I see that "extra calorie " number as more weight loss for me for the day. Remember 3500 calories is 1 pound, so theoretically the faster you can accumulate an extra 3500 calories, the faster you lose 1 pound. That's how i get motivated, those extra eat back calories just go into my accumulated burned calories and equates to pounds lost. As long as you aren't generating massive amounts of extra calories each day its fine.

mbaker566

if you aren't loosing, check your logging. let fitbit do it's thing and link it to mfp.

lisaepell

I noticed that my fitbit would count steps when I talked with my hands, even when sitting still. So, I stopped using it. OP, I would unsync it from MFP, use it as way to increase your steps for your overall health and log your intentional exercise into MFP. In the end, the added calories that you get from steps but don't factor into your calorie allotment for the day, could help you. I get the mental piece of eating the calories because you have them. Unsync, log well for a few weeks and see what happens. You can always resync down the line.

TynaBaby17

Fitness trackers can be largely inaccurate. If you are insisting on using one, try getting a chest strap one, because it will be better able to track your heart rate and estimate your calories burned. If your wrist strap is saying stuff like you burned 900 calories in 50 minutes its probably inaccurate.

Another method that I have gotten from a fitness trainer is don't eat back your exercise calories. Instead just increase your daily calories about 150 or so and call it that. MFP's calories limit doesn't take into account exercise, so that's why if you use that you're encouraged to eat back calories.
This calculator does account for your exercise habits and encourages you to NOT eat back calories you think you burned during exercise.

https://www.katyhearnfit.com/macro-calculator

This is again in part becasue fitness trackers are inaccurate. Anything from excessive sweating to not wearing a wrist tracker correctly can cause inaccuracies.

So you could quit the fitness tracker and just eat a bit more and not worry about how many calories you are burning becasue it's accounted for in your caloric limit.
This is the method i have been doing and it has worked for me, I steadily loose about 1.2 pounds a week for 12 weeks now.

stanmann571

TynaBaby17 wrote: »

Fitness trackers can be largely inaccurate. If you are insisting on using one, try getting a chest strap one, because it will be better able to track your heart rate and estimate your calories burned. If your wrist strap is saying stuff like you burned 900 calories in 50 minutes its probably inaccurate.

Another method that I have gotten from a fitness trainer is don't eat back your exercise calories. Instead just increase your daily calories about 150 or so and call it that. MFP's calories limit doesn't take into account exercise, so that's why if you use that you're encouraged to eat back calories.
This calculator does account for your exercise habits and encourages you to NOT eat back calories you think you burned during exercise.

https://www.katyhearnfit.com/macro-calculator

This is again in part becasue fitness trackers are inaccurate. Anything from excessive sweating to not wearing a wrist tracker correctly can cause inaccuracies.

So you could quit the fitness tracker and just eat a bit more and not worry about how many calories you are burning becasue it's accounted for in your caloric limit.
This is the method i have been doing and it has worked for me, I steadily loose about 1.2 pounds a week for 12 weeks now.

Who makes an all day wearable chest strap fitness tracker?

TynaBaby17

stanmann571 wrote: »

TynaBaby17 wrote: »

Fitness trackers can be largely inaccurate. If you are insisting on using one, try getting a chest strap one, because it will be better able to track your heart rate and estimate your calories burned. If your wrist strap is saying stuff like you burned 900 calories in 50 minutes its probably inaccurate.

Another method that I have gotten from a fitness trainer is don't eat back your exercise calories. Instead just increase your daily calories about 150 or so and call it that. MFP's calories limit doesn't take into account exercise, so that's why if you use that you're encouraged to eat back calories.
This calculator does account for your exercise habits and encourages you to NOT eat back calories you think you burned during exercise.

https://www.katyhearnfit.com/macro-calculator

This is again in part becasue fitness trackers are inaccurate. Anything from excessive sweating to not wearing a wrist tracker correctly can cause inaccuracies.

So you could quit the fitness tracker and just eat a bit more and not worry about how many calories you are burning becasue it's accounted for in your caloric limit.
This is the method i have been doing and it has worked for me, I steadily loose about 1.2 pounds a week for 12 weeks now.

Who makes an all day wearable chest strap fitness tracker?

Well if you really want to you could wear any of them all day under your shirt. But it's mainly for workouts. Why would you need to track your everyday walking around the office heart rate? That's basically your resting heart rate and the calories you burn there aren't really accountable for your dieting, those calories are accounted for in your activity level in MFP, so you shouldn't eat them back anyway.

Just google chest strap heart rate monitor if your looking to buy one.

not_a_runner

If the way you were doing it before was working, I would go back to that method.

I don't let my Fitbit adjust my calories because I know it's horribly inflated. I know my TDEE is about 2800, via weighing/logging. Fitbit often says my TDEE is more than 500+ cals more than that. If I ate the adjustments it gave me I would wipe out my deficit, if not gain weight.

mbaker566

while fitness trackers can be inaccurate, i would be more interested in what the food logging looks like. what is logged, what isn't? weighed or cups etc

my garmin tracker has been pretty accurate and i've successfully lost weight. when i stopped tracking my food is when i gained it back.

if there is any question, start eating half back and extrapolate from there

stanmann571

TynaBaby17 wrote: »

stanmann571 wrote: »

TynaBaby17 wrote: »

Fitness trackers can be largely inaccurate. If you are insisting on using one, try getting a chest strap one, because it will be better able to track your heart rate and estimate your calories burned. If your wrist strap is saying stuff like you burned 900 calories in 50 minutes its probably inaccurate.

Another method that I have gotten from a fitness trainer is don't eat back your exercise calories. Instead just increase your daily calories about 150 or so and call it that. MFP's calories limit doesn't take into account exercise, so that's why if you use that you're encouraged to eat back calories.
This calculator does account for your exercise habits and encourages you to NOT eat back calories you think you burned during exercise.

https://www.katyhearnfit.com/macro-calculator

This is again in part becasue fitness trackers are inaccurate. Anything from excessive sweating to not wearing a wrist tracker correctly can cause inaccuracies.

So you could quit the fitness tracker and just eat a bit more and not worry about how many calories you are burning becasue it's accounted for in your caloric limit.
This is the method i have been doing and it has worked for me, I steadily loose about 1.2 pounds a week for 12 weeks now.

Who makes an all day wearable chest strap fitness tracker?

Well if you really want to you could wear any of them all day under your shirt. But it's mainly for workouts. Why would you need to track your everyday walking around the office heart rate? That's basically your resting heart rate and the calories you burn there aren't really accountable for your dieting, those calories are accounted for in your activity level in MFP, so you shouldn't eat them back anyway.

Just google chest strap heart rate monitor if your looking to buy one.

Clearly you don't understand what the purpose of a fitness tracker is. And you're confusing HR tracker with Activity tracker.

HINT: It's not to track your HR all day.

It's to track your activity all day. I get between 3K and 30K steps a day. It's useful to know whether I'm hungry because I'm bored(3K day) or Because I've been on the go(15K+). And no, it's not intuitively obvious.

So no, those calories Aren't Accounted for in my MFP activity level estimate.

Neither of my trackers records HR. If I want that data(and I do use that data) I'll strap on my Wahoo.

And if I run 5 miles in 50 minutes as a 230 lb man, that's 800-900 calories. so Yeah, pretty accurate.

https://www.runnersworld.com/peak-performance/running-v-walking-how-many-calories-will-you-burn

mutantspicy

I like my trackers because they give me a good idea of what my actual activity level is. Sunday is usually sedentary, and all other days are usually active to very active. This gives a good idea of how to setup my MFP settings. As far as workout cals, yeah they mostly overestimate in my experience and what you are doing by manual logging is a good idea. However, I like seeing the data, the heart rate, duration, pace etc that you get from a tracker. They are great reference to judge your performance of different workout types and give your self goals to shoot for. And they give you some good information about overall fitness from heart rate and sleep patterns as well. For instance, I know that over the last 2 year period, my resting heart went from high 70's to mid 50s. That's progress and it gives me motivation to keep going. But I also know that my restless sleep patterns need to improve. To your point tho, I trust my fitbit more than my Gear S3, however I prefer the way the data is imported to MFP from Gear S3. It seperates workout cals from step/ daily activity cals. But in either case I wouldn't eat all the calories back, but I've been doing this long enough to know whats going work and what isn't. There's some trial and error for sure. I had the same confusion as you and many, when I first tried to link my tracker data to my MFP account, but I already had an idea of what my actual target should be.

TeaBea

Xkmaf2018X wrote: »

I know lots of people don't eat back or maybe just eat back a percentage but when I see the "extra" calories there in front of me it kinda just makes me eat more (I believe) and I'm literally getting no where whereas before fitbits I was losing steadily and felt really good, now I just feel fat! Plus I love the gym and do classes such as Step, Fatburn, Running, StairMaster, Bodypump but as soon as I'm done working out I'm like "quick, sync the fitbit and lets see what I earnt", I was never like this before.

So should I maybe unsync my fitbit from MFP? and just logg my exercise via MFP?

Eating extra calories for exercise is how MFP is designed. However, these extra calories are estimations. Some people find an activity tracker is a good estimation for them, and others find it's a poor one.

Activity trackers are generally good at measuring steps.....with lots of other activities it may not be doing a good job.

Adjust the numbers. If you know you aren't losing, eat back just a %.....not all of them. When you start losing again, you can "tweak" that % up or down to "dial in" your real calorie burns.

DopeItUp

Studies have shown that people who use fitness trackers lose LESS weight than people who don't use them. So if you're not into it then I wouldn't bother.

http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/fitness-trackers-dont-help-you-lose-weight-and-genes-arent-to-blame-either-studies-proclaim

melissa6771

DopeItUp wrote: »

Studies have shown that people who use fitness trackers lose LESS weight than people who don't use them. So if you're not into it then I wouldn't bother.

http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/fitness-trackers-dont-help-you-lose-weight-and-genes-arent-to-blame-either-studies-proclaim

The reason they give for that in the article is that people wearing trackers gave up and didn't exercise because they wouldn't hit their daily goals. I call BS on that. Everyone I know is motivated to move more because of it, not less.

You could play with your settings if you want to keep it on and keep it synced. Up your rate of loss in MFP by a half pound so that when Fitbit adds in a couple extra calories it's accounted for and you won't eat all of them. Just a thought.

MeanderingMammal

TynaBaby17 wrote: »

Well if you really want to you could wear any of them all day under your shirt. But it's mainly for workouts. Why would you need to track your everyday walking around the office heart rate? That's basically your resting heart rate and the calories you burn there aren't really accountable for your dieting, those calories are accounted for in your activity level in MFP, so you shouldn't eat them back anyway.

So why have you recommended something completely irrelevant to the original post?

MeanderingMammal

Xkmaf2018X wrote: »

I literally just obsess over calories burnt/earnt etc and I'm still not bl**dy losing, I clearly (know) must be eating way more than I should but its beginning to drive me nuts now.

I literally fluctuate between 11st 8lb and 12st and have done since around Feb. Before fitness trackers I lost a normal 0.5-1.5lb per week by logging my exercise via just MFP and eating them back. In fact logging via MFP only made me go to the gym everyday because I'd save my workout calories for the weekend....Now with the fitbit I earn around "300" extra calories just by walking plus any on top through gym workouts which clearly means I must be eating more than what I should.

So say today I've "earnt" an extra 250 calories via fitbit and I haven't even been to the gym so I see that as "oooh an extra 250 to eat" whereas before fitbit I wouldn't log my steps and would still have my 1290 daily calorie intake and I would lose.

I would observe that the fitness tracker isn't the issue, but your attitude to what the data is telling you. You're talking about a 6lb deviation.

An activity tracker is merely a data point, but the question of whether that data point is meaningful or not is something only you can answer.

When you connected your FitBit account to MFP, did you also change your background activity level to sedentary?

Don't obsess over the numbers, use it to inform your trends and think about how you respond to those trends.

shanionie

This just happened to me. I gain two pounds. I was eating way too many calories. I turned my steps off today and will now just input my exercises and have those be my true calories I can eat back. Any extra steps taken that were not from my tradmill or HIIT workouts will just be bonuses.

callsitlikeiseeit

i totally stagnated when i tried to use a fitbit.

got rid of it, and scale started moving again.

lots of people love and swear by them, im just not one of them.

Jadub729

it works well for me, I have my activity level set to sedentary but I get 15k steps a day. I eat a portion of those exercise calories. Losing 1lb - 1.5lbs a week

PatuniaLaine

Try not to consume the earned calories and add it to your weekly deficit. Eat what you need to stay healthy and to not induce a "starvation" mode, which is different for every person. I try to stick between 1200 and 1500, depending on my activity level - but it's almost always 1200. I "earn" back about 350 per day with exercise and I put it in my calorie savings...i.e. weekly deficit.

cwolfman13

I'd say it's only a hindrance if you're taking the raw numbers as gospel and not reconciling that data with what is actually happening.

janejellyroll

PatuniaLaine wrote: »

Try not to consume the earned calories and add it to your weekly deficit. Eat what you need to stay healthy and to not induce a "starvation" mode, which is different for every person. I try to stick between 1200 and 1500, depending on my activity level - but it's almost always 1200. I "earn" back about 350 per day with exercise and I put it in my calorie savings...i.e. weekly deficit.

"Starvation mode" isn't a real thing.

Consistently netting less than 1,000 calories a day (which seems to be what you're recommending) isn't a great plan. A bigger deficit isn't always better, especially if you're trying to sustain physical activity.

CarvedTones

I got thousands of steps from sitting in a boat trolling for fish in light chop. I think it was the slow forward motion that was made erratic by the choppy waves.

Bry_Fitness70

Fitness trackers are just providing you with data - how you interpret and react to the data is on you. I have a Garmin Fenix 3 HR and get a vast amount of data from it; some things are useful, others aren't, there is a learning curve to figuring out what is helpful and using it.

hipari

I love my fitbit, it keeps me accountable. I have the Alta HR that measures heart rate all day, so the calorie burn is pretty accurate (at least, it’s accurate enough to work for me and my purposes). I can’t cheat myself with ”oh, I did this and that, I have these extra calories” when I actually don’t.

The thing that gets me, though, is the MFP calorie adjustment from Fitbit. Apparently the adjustment comes from your current rate of burn, so a morning workout will lead to the adjustment being way too high and it usually evens out by the end of the day. It took a while for me to figure out how the adjustment works and how I can use it to my advantage.

lporter229

Bry_Fitness70 wrote: »

Fitness trackers are just providing you with data - how you interpret and react to the data is on you. I have a Garmin Fenix 3 HR and get a vast amount of data from it; some things are useful, others aren't, there is a learning curve to figuring out what is helpful and using it.

This. I have maintained my weight using a basic TDEE approach for 5 years. I recently upgraded my Garmin GPS watch to a model that contains a fitness tracker/step and calorie counter. The "calories burned" data provided by Garmin does not even come close to agreeing with my own data. However, I am not about to ignore 5 years of success based on data derived from some general algorithms. I just keep doing what I have been doing and it is still working. The Garmin data is interesting, but I take it with a grain of salt.

So to answer your original question, yes, it is very possible that your fitness tracker is hindering your weight loss.

gothchiq

I would ignore the calorie count on the fitbit.

MegaMooseEsq

It sounds like you already know the answer here: what you were doing before was working and what you're doing now isn't working. That's totally okay! This is a long process and there's going to be trial and error there. Fitness trackers work for some people and don't work for others - it sounds like yours isn't working for you right now, so I think you should feel perfectly fine putting it away while you focus on losing weight. There's enough stress in life without adding something else that's really unnecessary.

OldAssDude

Xkmaf2018X wrote: »

I literally just obsess over calories burnt/earnt etc and I'm still not bl**dy losing, I clearly (know) must be eating way more than I should but its beginning to drive me nuts now.

I literally fluctuate between 11st 8lb and 12st and have done since around Feb. Before fitness trackers I lost a normal 0.5-1.5lb per week by logging my exercise via just MFP and eating them back. In fact logging via MFP only made me go to the gym everyday because I'd save my workout calories for the weekend....Now with the fitbit I earn around "300" extra calories just by walking plus any on top through gym workouts which clearly means I must be eating more than what I should.

So say today I've "earnt" an extra 250 calories via fitbit and I haven't even been to the gym so I see that as "oooh an extra 250 to eat" whereas before fitbit I wouldn't log my steps and would still have my 1290 daily calorie intake and I would lose.

I'm going to try it for a few weeks and see if it helps me by only logging actual proper workouts via MFP and not relying on my fitbit.

Have anyone else found fitness trackers to be a hindrance to weight loss as opposed to being positive to they're weightloss journeys.

Most fitness trackers give you more calories than you actually are burning in my experience. I think the rule of thumb is to only eat back half of your exercise calories.

The main purpose of fitness trackers is to motivate you to be more active, not just to be able to eat more.