Calorie adjustment?

_aenyeweddien_

Hi, I'm really confused with the exercise calorie adjustment.

For example, this morning I walked to work and tracked it with MapMyFitness. It recorder 30 min walk and 211 kcal burned.

In MyFitnessPal, underneath that entry, there is Under Armour calorie adjustment section, which says -155kcal.

I read the explanation but I've got no idea what it means and where does that number come from? Any help/explanation would be much appreciated.

angelsja

Mfp has a estimate of what calories you will burn based on the activity level you chose so you will only start "earning" calories when you exceed the activity level you are set to

_aenyeweddien_

Thanks Angelsja.....My activity level is set to sedentary due to my job, so it seems weird it would take 155kcal away. Especially cause on some days when I do kickboxing or go gym, it deducts as much as 350kcal. I just don't get how does it work

LivingtheLeanDream

It is weird it adjusted when you're set to sedentary, anything should be a bonus on that setting - maybe check your settings to see that is in fact what you are set to?

Tacklewasher

Sometimes it looks wierd mid-day but straightens out by the end of the day. See what it today looks like tomorrow.

shadow2soul

My take from what I’m seeing (as a Fitbit user).

MFP estimated an appropriate burn based on Sedentary activity.

However your UA band tracked that between MFP’s Sedentary burn + 211 calories from a walk that your actual calorie burn was 155 calories less.

**if you click the little “ i “ by “Under” it will show you the math that led to that adjustment.**


When I first started using MFP, I was so Sedentary that I would get negative adjustments if I didn’t workout and my workouts would pretty much bring my calorie burn to even with what MFP thought I burned at a Sedentary Level.

_aenyeweddien_

I just double checked and yeah, it's set to sedentary...

It's just very weird, cause it seems the more kcal I burn by exercising, the more is deducted.... I tried clicking at the ''i'' symbol to see how it's calculated but I just don't get it, maths is like black magic to me lol

Redordeadhead

I have the same issue and also set to sedentary.

I think part of the problem is that I don't use a Fitbit or other fitness tracker, so if I've logged a walk with mapmyfitness, MFP thinks those steps are the only steps I took today. Since the others are not recorded, my 30 minute walk on its own burns fewer calories than the sedentary setting expects.

_aenyeweddien_

Redordeadhead wrote: »

I have the same issue and also set to sedentary.

I think part of the problem is that I don't use a Fitbit or other fitness tracker, so if I've logged a walk with mapmyfitness, MFP thinks those steps are the only steps I took today. Since the others are not recorded, my 30 minute walk on its own burns fewer calories than the sedentary setting expects.

But if that's the case, then why doesn't it do the adjustment if I don't exercise? If it was assuming that was the only exercise, then shouldn't it deduct even more on rest days? Also, the more I exercise and more kcal I burn, the more kcal is taken away by adjustment.

I just don't get it and what's causing it, I tried looking in FAQ and that ''i'' symbol next to the adjustment, but it doesn't explain much (or maybe it's just me being silly and not understanding it).

Thank you for all your replies so far.

cheryldumais

I disabled negative adjustments in my settings for exactly this reason. It made no sense whatsoever. My Garmin usually gives me more than MFP per day anyway and I use the MFP calcs so felt the negative adjustment was just confusing and demotivating. Once you know how close your device is you can adjust mentally automatically.

collectingblues

I've had the same issue. I disabled negative adjustments and stopped syncing with anything *but* Runkeeper because every single time it was *subtracting* my activity instead of crediting it.

RAinWA

It looks to me like you may have logged the walk into MFP and also have a step tracker (I could be wrong). But if you have a step/exercise tracker adjusting your calories through the day you shouldn't also log the exercise into MFP since it would be double dipping on the exercise calories. So MFP is taking away the calories your tracker is counting and replacing it with the exercise you logged. I could totally be wrong, but worth looking at.

_aenyeweddien_

RAinWA wrote: »

It looks to me like you may have logged the walk into MFP and also have a step tracker (I could be wrong). But if you have a step/exercise tracker adjusting your calories through the day you shouldn't also log the exercise into MFP since it would be double dipping on the exercise calories. So MFP is taking away the calories your tracker is counting and replacing it with the exercise you logged. I could totally be wrong, but worth looking at.

No, I don't log anything on MFP, I only do it on MapMyFitness as it's linked to MFP account. I know what you mean though, at the beginning I had SamsungHealth connected to it as well and activity was logged twice, but that's not the case anymore

RAinWA

_aenyeweddien_ wrote: »

RAinWA wrote: »

It looks to me like you may have logged the walk into MFP and also have a step tracker (I could be wrong). But if you have a step/exercise tracker adjusting your calories through the day you shouldn't also log the exercise into MFP since it would be double dipping on the exercise calories. So MFP is taking away the calories your tracker is counting and replacing it with the exercise you logged. I could totally be wrong, but worth looking at.

No, I don't log anything on MFP, I only do it on MapMyFitness as it's linked to MFP account. I know what you mean though, at the beginning I had SamsungHealth connected to it as well and activity was logged twice, but that's not the case anymore

Well, I'm out of ideas then. That is a very annoying issue and hopefully someone will come up with a good explanation!

_aenyeweddien_

it definitely is, and very confusing

_aenyeweddien_

I just walked for more 30 minutes and now the adjustment is over -300kcal I just can't wrap my head around it

heybales

To be clear, it's not possible to double-dip unless you get the am/pm wrong - because the activity accounts are replace only mode, not additional mode.

Meaning if you manually log a workout on a tracker account, or a workout syncs in (from MFP or MMF) - it replaces the data the account already has for that chunk of time regarding calories and distance.
That's why workouts require a start & duration time, along with calories, at minimum.

Since that workout is assumed to have synced back over to Under Armour and increased it's daily calorie burn (then again it probably matches exactly for the workout) - MFP does the math without it to estimate rest of the day and adjustment.

Tracker daily burn - MFP estimated daily burn - logged workouts = adjustment (some more work here for reaching end of day)

Base eating goal + workouts + adjustment = new eating goal.


So what can foul this up is if the workout really didn't make it back to UA account, to increase it's daily burn.
The result there is double removal of the workout for the math done.

Or in your case - your UA account isn't actually getting to track your entire day's calorie burn (via steps that gives a distance), so it's likely assuming BMR level burn when it sees no steps through the app.

So with sleeping all day, you are getting big negative calories. Which would be correct.

Solution - don't sync with a tracker style account which isn't actually tracking your daily activity and getting good calorie estimate.

Only have MMF sync workouts over to MFP - I think that's still possible.

Then you merely have to hope you got your MFP daily activity level close to reality so the workouts are really additional as they should be.