Do you ever comment on unrealistic logging by friends?

CarvedTones

Sometimes I see things in my news feed and think about trying to politely say there is no way in he11 you burned that many calories in that much time doing that activity, but I never do. If it was an IRL friend, I would say something as politely as I could. Here, I just shake my head and ignore it. Sometimes I wonder if I should say something; maybe they really have no idea. OTOH, I don't want to come across as a know it all jerk.

cheryldumais

I stay out of it. Sometimes they know it but it is their fitness band or whatever and most people who are losing know how much they can eat and lose. I know what you mean tho. 1000 calories for a walk? I get 125.

TavistockToad

depends on the situation... for a newbie i would be more likely to say something - in a nice way about exercise burns.

more often than not with food i wont do unless they then complain about not losing weight. i think for the most part things can be said in a way that isn't jerk-ish...

collectingblues

No. It’s none of my business, and if they’ve got bad logs, they’ll realize over time. If they ask for help, I’ll chime in, but not before hand.

sardelsa

I don't. If they specifically ask for help or advice, then I would consider it.

TavistockToad

cheryldumais wrote: »

I stay out of it. Sometimes they know it but it is their fitness band or whatever and most people who are losing know how much they can eat and lose. I know what you mean tho. 1000 calories for a walk? I get 125.

cleaning and cooking are my favourite ones... and anything from mapmywalk or mapmyrun

collectingblues

TavistockToad wrote: »

cheryldumais wrote: »

I stay out of it. Sometimes they know it but it is their fitness band or whatever and most people who are losing know how much they can eat and lose. I know what you mean tho. 1000 calories for a walk? I get 125.

cleaning and cooking are my favourite ones... and anything from mapmywalk or mapmyrun

Lol. I used to log cleaning and cooking when I did Weight Watchers. In hindsight, I learned my lesson.

jjpptt2

sardelsa wrote: »

I don't. If they specifically ask for help or advice, then I would consider it.

^^ that.

mitch16

I guess I'm just passive-aggressive... If I saw unrealistic calorie burns and then that person was whining about "why am I not losing weight???" then I would probably unfriend. Otherwise I would let it go because it's not really my business.

Erinloveable

One of my "friends" adjusted their calorie limit by thousands of calories everyday so it always said they were under their calorie limit for the day on people's walls. I just unfriended them. That kind of delusion and/or trickery is the enemy of weight loss and made me feel a bit weird. You can't control what people do, you only control what you do and I am not gonna bust people I barely know for being dishonest, that's a bad time.

zyxst

Nope.

I'm sure they have a mother and do not wish for another.

rheddmobile

I would only say something if the person was griping about not losing weight as expected. Even then it would be on the order of "Wow, that's a lot of calories for a fifteen minute walk! Are you sure about that?" Instead of just telling them they are wrong.

Mapmyhike always gives me insane-seeming calorie burns; however, my rate of loss is always at or higher than expected, so for some reason it seems to work out. Probably because I'm less sedentary in other ways.

MelanieCN77

Only if they later post wondering about why they aren't doing better.

kgeyser

If they have a fitness tracking app connected to MFP, it will often post automatically with ridiculous burns. For some people, the accountability is more important than the calorie burn.

I would only comment if the person specifically asked for help or feedback about their diary. If they were venting, I might ask if they wanted someone to take a look, but I wouldn't just respond with a list of what was wrong. Sometimes people just want to express frustration without necessarily being in the frame of mind to want to work on a solution.

urloved33

zyxst wrote: »

Nope.

I'm sure they have a mother and do not wish for another.

^^this^^

collectingblues

And, it's like, I look at my log from yesterday. The feed posts that I burned 1200+ calories from 214 minutes of exercise.

Except that's not quite true. I have Runkeeper synced to MFP, and I recently started syncing my Watch; I still use Runkeeper to log my runs, because the stats comparison is better than Watch and it tracks the miles on my shoes. So MFP was double counting my 7-mile run. I went in and deleted the Runkeeper entry from my log, but didn't bother to do anything with the feed, because honestly, I don't *care* what someone else thinks. If someone on my friends list started giving me an earful about that, they'd be getting an earful right back.

MikePTY

Part of the issue is with the MFP calorie estimators for exercise, which seem to be in active conflict with their activity multipliers. For instance, lets take a 30 year old, 5'4, 160 pound woman. BMR would be 1431, which means that if someone defined themselves as Sedentary, they would have a normal burn of 1717. Now lets say that person does house cleaning for a living. They have 2 options. They could choose their activity level as either "active" or "highly active", which would give them another 500-700 calories per day of budgeting. Or they could log 480 minutes of "Cleaning, light, moderate effort", which would likely say that they burned about 3x the calories than if they included that as part of their activity level.

So I think a big issue with calorie logging is that logging basic household activities greatly overestimates the number of calories burned. Exercise is not meant to be done for hours. If a person finds themselves doing hours of a life related exercise on the regular, they should raise their activity level, rather than logging it as exercise. Exercise should be for specific acts of exercise outside of normal daily activity.

MelanieCN77

kgeyser wrote: »

If they have a fitness tracking app connected to MFP, it will often post automatically with ridiculous burns. For some people, the accountability is more important than the calorie burn.

I would only comment if the person specifically asked for help or feedback about their diary. If they were venting, I might ask if they wanted someone to take a look, but I wouldn't just respond with a list of what was wrong. Sometimes people just want to express frustration without necessarily being in the frame of mind to want to work on a solution.

They're still responsible for making sure their tools are working properly. Cleaning for 90 minutes and posting a 1600 calorie burn might be a nice fantasy but that's all it is. But yes, I just shake my head and move on.

Blythmag

Nah i say nothing.no point

susanpiper57

I don't say anything, but certainly notice. I don't log some of my activities such as breastfeeding or most exercise, but my fitbit is synced to MFP and if I use Map my Run to track my runs that syncs as well. I do better with losing when I don't log all of that, because then I won't "eat those calories back".

smolmaus

I had MFP synced with my PureGym app so MFP knew when I was at the gym and how long for and I started getting 1000+kcal burns for "Aerobics, general" posted automatically for a 200kcal (max) lifting session. Friends would "Like" it before I could delete and I just had to hope to goodness they wouldn't think I'm logging that nonsense on purpose.

Give the benefit of the doubt maybe. Even if you know it's inflated it can be nice to keep track of general activity minutes week to week.