Too many exercise calories
StressedChaos
Posts: 86 Member
I've looked everywhere and can't figure this out. I've used fitbit and MFP separately alot and know how they both work. I recently decided to connect them. They both have the same settings. Without exercise and not even meeting step goal It telling me I have a ton of exercise calories added on mfp. Like yesterday it showed 1,470 exercise calories added. I'm obviously not eating these because I know it's not right. How do I fix this? I don't want to just ignore it because when I start logging exercise I know I will need to wat back a portion of those calories.
1
Replies
-
weird! Did you work out? Do you have your devices set up to sedentary? If they are set to inactive, it is likely that you did earn some of those because very few people are truly inactive. I sometimes earn that many after a day of work, working out and a walk. If I eat them (and have it set to sedentary) I still lose weight. I have used trial and error for this and it has worked for me.0
-
angelb1983 I'm new to both MFP and Fitbit. I've connected them together. Yesterday was a pretty lazy day but I walked 3000ish steps. Should that be uploading to MFP as it did not? Today is the real workout and assume the workout will move over to MFP without me doing anything. I guess I need a little insight on the connection between the two.
0 -
FitBit logs some calories burned even when sitting or even eating (!) based on weight, height and heart rate. MFP has captured my total calorie burn, including the passive calories until today. Has anyone else had a problem with FB calories not getting captured in MFP0
-
@ssuther27..I will try to answer your question. Depending what you have your activity level set at, 3000 steps may not show an adjustment, since Fitbit usually considers around 3500 steps sedentary. I think I am right, but someone with more knowledge may also answer.1
-
After days of monitoring my progress I believe that MFP talks to the Fitbit but not vice versa.
. So here's another question. What is your opinion about logging the daily steps into MFP not included in a workout, just the remainder of daily steps. Should they count towards exercise? 1 -
mine adds 8000 to 9000 every day and I don't know how to fix it0
-
Steps don't add calories - the distance from steps is used to estimate calories burned, but that happens on Fitbit. Steps is merely a figure like weight sent over for nothing but display.
The daily total is sent to MFP to create an adjustment to what it thought you'd burn already from your Activity setting.
Usually the distance with around 4000 steps starts moving you from Sedentary to Lightly Active - so adjustments would be seen.
You'd have to have Negative Cal Adj enabled to see the other direction of being lazier than the setting - if you had the calorie range above 1200 to lose more.
MFP won't drop below 1200.
Everyone wondering how things work should read in the Stickies for this group the FAQ, first section a couple of times, and then come back if any questions remain.
Also, Fitbit doesn't send workout calorie burn - only daily burn, to MFP to do math with.2 -
I seem to like my setting on disabled adjustments to not get the higher number displayed.0
-
Steps don't add calories - the distance from steps is used to estimate calories burned, but that happens on Fitbit. Steps is merely a figure like weight sent over for nothing but display.
The daily total is sent to MFP to create an adjustment to what it thought you'd burn already from your Activity setting.
Usually the distance with around 4000 steps starts moving you from Sedentary to Lightly Active - so adjustments would be seen.
You'd have to have Negative Cal Adj enabled to see the other direction of being lazier than the setting - if you had the calorie range above 1200 to lose more.
MFP won't drop below 1200.
Everyone wondering how things work should read in the Stickies for this group the FAQ, first section a couple of times, and then come back if any questions remain.
Also, Fitbit doesn't send workout calorie burn - only daily burn, to MFP to do math with.
Great post. I didn’t know about the “stickies” will look for that. I’m working on losing weight and I seem to like when they are disabled cause when I workout and get more steps the number is lower. This way I feel like if I want an extra snack or something I have a few calories to compensate. I notice when I click and enable lol I get a large number for same workout/steps. Luckily I’m not trying to eat all those extra😄.0 -
Well, MFP is trying to teach a life lesson about weight maintenance.
You do more, you eat more.
You do less, you eat less.
In a diet to lose weight, a tad less in either case.
If willing to trust MFP eating goal without knowing what's behind it - why not trust it when it's trying to correct itself.0 -
Im pretty sure my charge 2 waaay overestimates. On days that I do ~20 min moderate HIIT cardio + 40 min lifting and lets say maybe groceries (I do like to wonder the isles) it says I burned 4,000+ kcals!!! Thats just insane no way I burning that much. Im a 29 year old dude weighing 80kgs.
So tbh I just ignore it and shoot for my daily 1,500-1,600kcals while trying to hit my macros. Most days I do. Im pretty sure fitbit estimates are bollocks because If it was correct I would be shredding weight like crazy, maybe 1-1.5kgs a week. In reality im loosing like 0.5kg which I would say is pretty healthy and I'm happy with that pace.
.. Or maybe im gaining like 1kg muscle a week
:D:D who knows .. 2 -
HR-based calorie burn is only a potential decent calculation for steady-state aerobic cardio.
HIIT and lifting is anaerobic if done right, and HR all over the place opposite of steady-state.
So device should be overestimating calorie burn for those if using HR.
Lifting could be manually entered on Fitbit to replace with better figures.
HIIT by total avg pace is good enough.0 -
@heybales
I appreciate the great work you did with the lenghty sticky about how to sync Fitbit and MFP and how to figure everything out. Thank you for that!
I recently switched gear and I'm little bit confused about the calorie adjustment I get now. I owned a Fitbit flex for a while that was synced here, and I used a Polar FT4 as an HRM to monitor the calories burned during my workouts. I now have a Fitbit Charge and the FT4 is MIA, so I'm using only the Charge on a daily basis. As you suggested in the sticky, I rely on the Charge to estimate the calorie burn from my daily activities (mainly walking from one place to another) and the cardio part of my workouts (elliptical or bike). I manually log heavy lifting using "strenght training" in the database, and logging an average burn based on my previously known stats. My activity level is set to "sedentary" because I'm on maternity leave right now.
The thing I'm finding really confusing is that I have MASSIVE calorie adjustments no matter what I'm doing. On the days I workout, it can be anywhere between 900 and 1200 calories. For the same workout that I'm actually doing, I was previously burning - according to the FT4 - between 350 and 450 calories for about 70 minutes of physical activity. On days I don't workout, I do have big calories adjustment too (for today, I currently have a 947 calories adjustment for 10023 steps). I know that I walk a lot because I don't own a car, but that seems to be high. I'm especially wary because with the Flex and FT4 combo, I never had more than 700-800 calories burned total in one "normal workout" day, including the 300-400 calories adjustment based on steps. Sure, I'm heavier now than before my two pregnancies, but not that much heavier, though.
Should I trust MFP with those stats? Is there a possibility that my stride lenght is incorrect to the point that MFP overestimate my burned calories by this much? (I use the "automatic" stride lenght setting for now). I think I'm having trust issues right now.0 -
@DaivaSimone
Sorry I missed your post for so long. I guess a month with new data may be interesting too at this point, huh?
So your setup sounds pretty good, manually logging something that per HR would be inflated.
It should get better at estimating calories per HR for the aerobic things as it sees your amount of workouts weekly, and it figures out what your resting HR is.
Sadly the HRmax also used there is a pure calculation, and can be very off, especially for women, big bell curve.
10K steps is potentially huge distance, since that is what causes calorie calc. That is way more than sedentary, which starts ending around 3-4K steps.
So indeed if that stride length is off, with that many steps - you could be inflated.
But even with big distance with more weight - more calories. if incorrect distance, extra calories.
You would benefit from walking a known distance (1/2-1 mile) at avg daily pace - not grocery store shuffle, not exercise pace - right in the middle, maybe 1.8 mph to 2.
The other problem - you are comparing a workout only calorie burn, 350-450, to an all day adjustment, 900-1200.
That adj is not just exercise.
You'd have to look at the Fitbit exercise diary to see what the actual workout was given for calorie burn.0 -
Call me a cynic, but I believe MyFitnesspal knows they are adding way too many exercise calories in the adjustment. This is a relatively new behavior. I've been using MFP for a long time and I remember that you used to be able to turn off the exercise adjustment. I also remember that the adjustments were never as high as they are now. But it seems that now, in order to turn off this too high adjustment, you have to pay for "Premium". Feels a little like sabotage to keep free tier users using the app longer (due to failure to lose weight) and continuing the advertisement revenue stream.0
-
Call me a cynic, but I believe MyFitnesspal knows they are adding way too many exercise calories in the adjustment. This is a relatively new behavior. I've been using MFP for a long time and I remember that you used to be able to turn off the exercise adjustment. I also remember that the adjustments were never as high as they are now. But it seems that now, in order to turn off this too high adjustment, you have to pay for "Premium". Feels a little like sabotage to keep free tier users using the app longer (due to failure to lose weight) and continuing the advertisement revenue stream.
Go to the settings tab, then diary settings and then enable or disable negative adjustments....
You're welcome!
Psst, I don't find the calories allocated with syncing my Fitbit with MPF to be too many either and there are many here that find them pretty spot on. I actually find that they don't quite give me enough extra food.0 -
Call me a cynic, but I believe MyFitnesspal knows they are adding way too many exercise calories in the adjustment. This is a relatively new behavior. I've been using MFP for a long time and I remember that you used to be able to turn off the exercise adjustment. I also remember that the adjustments were never as high as they are now. But it seems that now, in order to turn off this too high adjustment, you have to pay for "Premium". Feels a little like sabotage to keep free tier users using the app longer (due to failure to lose weight) and continuing the advertisement revenue stream.
That is impossible for MFP to know they are adding "too" many, or any discernment about amount of calories.
All that is used in the math is 2 figures and time stamp. (have you ever looked at the details of the adjustment?)
Activity tracker Total calories burned today, and time of that sync of that figure to MFP.
MFP expected daily calorie burn based on your selection of activity level and BMR.
Fitbit minus MFP - simple as that. Tad more dealing with mid-day adjustments, but not much more difficult.
I've used MFP a long time too - I don't recall it ever being an option to disable an exercise adjustment, not until premium was added to provide it.
And that's for people using MFP in non-standard way.
All the tracker Adjustment does is allow MFP to match for daily burn what your tracker says it was.
And then MFP takes your desired deficit for weight loss, or gain, or maintenance - and provides an eating goal.
Daily burn minus deficit = weight loss
If you think adjustments are higher now - that would be a result of your tracker, not MFP.
If you don't want the adjustment - pretty easily solution - don't sync your tracker.
For Fitbit and a few others - what are you losing exactly if you didn't want the adjustment?
Workouts aren't synced over anyway.0 -
I feel like mine gives too many calories
I did 21k steps yesterday & it says that's 1200 calories back.0 -
coolcoolman1980 wrote: »I feel like mine gives too many calories
I did 21k steps yesterday & it says that's 1200 calories back.
Considering Sedentary you are likely set for is only about 4K steps - yes you did a huge amount of activity over Sedentary.
Plus read my posts above as to tweaking it in case distance is off with that many steps - it matters.0
