Fitbit calories burned?????????

meganreid163
meganreid163 Posts: 72 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Do you manually add the calories burned that your Fitbit says to your MyFitnessPal???
I just got a Fitbit today @ I synced it but it doesn’t show up in my exercise calories.
Do you just manually add it, or do you not count those confused!

Replies

  • Dreamwa1ker
    Dreamwa1ker Posts: 196 Member
    Did you link your myfitnesspal to your fitbit account? In myfitnesspal go to "apps and devices", select fitbit, and connect your accounts. It sometimes has some delay in calories updating but in general works very smoothly and automatically for me without manual entry needed. My weight even syncs since I have a scale that automatically syncs to my fitbit account.
  • meganreid163
    meganreid163 Posts: 72 Member
    aiknye3ugnft.png


    It shows my steps but doesn’t give me exercise calories so that’s why I’m so confused?
    Does it only give me exercise calories when I do a work out, I thought it would give me some for steps?
  • Amerek412
    Amerek412 Posts: 74 Member
    You haven't yet done enough "extra" daily activity to earn any extra calories. There is an assumed amount of daily activity that is already taken into account when MFP gives you a calorie goal. If you exceed the assumed amount of daily activity, then it'll give you extra calories. The amount of daily activity that you need to exceed depends on the daily activity you input in MFP when setting up your diet goals, sedentary, lightly active, etc.
  • emilysusana
    emilysusana Posts: 416 Member
    Yep, enable negative adjustments, wear your Fitbit all day (I just charge mine while in the shower and it never dies) and the calorie adjustments will kick in once you burn more than what MFP things you should have burned according to your activity level. Until then it will show 0 adjustment. For me it has worked like a charm and has proved accurate (after 10 weeks of data collection, the numbers are spot on, though this may not be true for everyone),
  • meganreid163
    meganreid163 Posts: 72 Member
    Thank you I actually had 7000’steps on my Fitbit but for reason it took a few hours to sync.
  • SFJULES66
    SFJULES66 Posts: 168 Member
    WinoGelato wrote: »
    Also you should enable negative calorie adjustments, on days you don’t meet the expected activity for your stats then MFP will deduct cals, ensuring you don’t overeat on days when your activity level is lower than normal.

    Also I would give it a few days for the two systems to work well together and give reliable and consistent info. But once they do sync well many of us have found it to be a very reliable tool to help meet goals.

    Great information, thank you!
    Question - Do you think Fitbit calories burned are more accurate than MFPs? I know many reduce MFPs by up to 50%. If I use Fitbit activity calories, am I better off?
  • WinoGelato
    WinoGelato Posts: 13,454 Member
    SFJULES66 wrote: »
    WinoGelato wrote: »
    Also you should enable negative calorie adjustments, on days you don’t meet the expected activity for your stats then MFP will deduct cals, ensuring you don’t overeat on days when your activity level is lower than normal.

    Also I would give it a few days for the two systems to work well together and give reliable and consistent info. But once they do sync well many of us have found it to be a very reliable tool to help meet goals.

    Great information, thank you!
    Question - Do you think Fitbit calories burned are more accurate than MFPs? I know many reduce MFPs by up to 50%. If I use Fitbit activity calories, am I better off?

    For me, when used in sync, and when I understood how the two tools worked, I found them to be accurate in conjunction.

    Personally I also think a device that I wear, that is constantly measuring my movement and heart rate - is going to be more accurate than estimates that are based only on population averages.

    So yeah, I use the FitBit adjustments over to MFP and trusted them pretty implicitly and for me, they were not inflated.
  • meganreid163
    meganreid163 Posts: 72 Member
    Question about the activity calories? Will my Fitbit Trackers my elliptical workouts? So I don’t have to manually put it into MyFitnessPal?
  • Tankiscool
    Tankiscool Posts: 11,105 Member
    meganreid163 wrote: »
    Question about the activity calories? Will my Fitbit Trackers my elliptical workouts? So I don’t have to manually put it into MyFitnessPal?

    Yes they will but will just add to your total calorie burn or tdee for the day and never say you burnt xxx cals on the elliptical on mfp. Not sure what fitbit you have but I have the blaze and I can track my workout right from the fitbit but you can track it with the fitbit app I believe.
  • emilysusana
    emilysusana Posts: 416 Member
    edited March 2019
    meganreid163 wrote: »
    Question about the activity calories? Will my Fitbit Trackers my elliptical workouts? So I don’t have to manually put it into MyFitnessPal?

    When I do elliptical it “autorecognizes” cardio and gives me calories for it. I’m never sure if the accuracy but I don’t log exercise on top of this. It works fine.

    To your question about only eating back 50%... I did this for awhile, not knowing how accurate the Fitbit calories were (and it was my first time with a wearable and I wasn’t used to be credited for walking around the grocery store). I basically left about 250 calories on the table per day, just to be safe. But in the end I was losing an extra .5 lbs /week over my goal, so now I know I can eat all the Fitbit calories back and stay on goal.
  • jlynnm70
    jlynnm70 Posts: 460 Member
    I just eat less than my FitBit says I burned and am doing alright with that.....Also - in MFP if I want to log exercise to know exactly what I did - I just say 30 min on elliptical for 1 calorie. That way I know I did the elliptical - but don't double count my calories. Even if I log 5 things that way - I don't think 5 calories at the end of the day is gonna kill my progress.

    I need to figure out that negative calorie adjustment thing tho - I haven't done that - and It would be a really great idea.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,259 Member
    edited March 2019
    jlynnm70 wrote: »
    I just eat less than my FitBit says I burned and am doing alright with that.....Also - in MFP if I want to log exercise to know exactly what I did - I just say 30 min on elliptical for 1 calorie. That way I know I did the elliptical - but don't double count my calories. Even if I log 5 things that way - I don't think 5 calories at the end of the day is gonna kill my progress.

    I need to figure out that negative calorie adjustment thing tho - I haven't done that - and It would be a really great idea.

    What you described above would result in removing all calories for your workout from both MFP and Fitbit if the two were fully connected.

    The MFP exercise overwrites what Fitbit detected during that identical time period.

    You could use exercise notes to keep track or enter the exercise description directly by editing the detected exercise on Fitbit
  • WinoGelato
    WinoGelato Posts: 13,454 Member
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    jlynnm70 wrote: »
    I just eat less than my FitBit says I burned and am doing alright with that.....Also - in MFP if I want to log exercise to know exactly what I did - I just say 30 min on elliptical for 1 calorie. That way I know I did the elliptical - but don't double count my calories. Even if I log 5 things that way - I don't think 5 calories at the end of the day is gonna kill my progress.

    I need to figure out that negative calorie adjustment thing tho - I haven't done that - and It would be a really great idea.

    Don't enter exercise on MFP if your Fitbit is connected and if you don't understand what happens with your entries.

    What you described above would result in removing all calories for your workout from both MFP and Fitbit of the two are connected

    ^this. I don’t understand why people think they have to trick the system. MFP and FitBit work together to suss out the calorie adjustment, without double counting. If you do log on MFP, which is what I do with my non step based workouts - then that is recorded on MFP and then accounted for when the total exercise adjustment is calculated.

    If MFP estimates your NEAT burn to be 1750 cals, you log a 200 cal exercise in the system, then MFP considers your new calorie burn to be 1950 for the day. If FitBit says you burned a total of 2000 for the day, then you’ll see an additional 50 cal adjustment from FitBit. If you don’t enter the exercise on MFP, FitBit still accounts for it in its estimate of your 2000 cal burn so the adjustment would be 250.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    meganreid163 wrote: »
    aiknye3ugnft.png


    It shows my steps but doesn’t give me exercise calories so that’s why I’m so confused?
    Does it only give me exercise calories when I do a work out, I thought it would give me some for steps?

    You're only going to get an adjustment for activity that goes beyond your activity level set in MFP. Your calorie target already includes some activity. 3K steps is still sedentary.
    meganreid163 wrote: »
    Question about the activity calories? Will my Fitbit Trackers my elliptical workouts? So I don’t have to manually put it into MyFitnessPal?

    Yes, but you're not going to see your total burn from the elliptical in MFP...only calories for activity that goes beyond your activity level setting in MFP.

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