New user - I don't understand the calorie function
Piqueaboo
Posts: 1,193 Member
Hello everyone,
I got my fitbit (inspire hr) almost a month ago to primarily help me with my weight loss, I am 40lbs to goal weight and wanted an hr monitor for more accurate cico readings.
On MFP I have 1200 calories allowance, I eat back my exercise calories if I'm hungry enough. On the fitbit (I don't remember where it is) there was a setting where I could say how fast I want to lose weight, I set (2lbs per week) and each day it synchs the food from MFP (not the exercise for some reason).
In the "food" section there is a little meter that indicates in either blue (under target), green (on target) and red (over target) if my food intake is good. As I'm sticking with the calories allocated and am flexible with eating exercise calories back, most of my days are marked "under target" - is this a problem?
Also, is the hr monitor accurate or is it more of an estimate like when I log my exercise on MFP? Can I rely on if the fitbit tells me I burned 240 calories at the gym, that it's actually 240 calories?
Thank you very much for any pointers!
(ignore Monday's logging, I didn't log the 3 pints of beer I had ^^ )
I got my fitbit (inspire hr) almost a month ago to primarily help me with my weight loss, I am 40lbs to goal weight and wanted an hr monitor for more accurate cico readings.
On MFP I have 1200 calories allowance, I eat back my exercise calories if I'm hungry enough. On the fitbit (I don't remember where it is) there was a setting where I could say how fast I want to lose weight, I set (2lbs per week) and each day it synchs the food from MFP (not the exercise for some reason).
In the "food" section there is a little meter that indicates in either blue (under target), green (on target) and red (over target) if my food intake is good. As I'm sticking with the calories allocated and am flexible with eating exercise calories back, most of my days are marked "under target" - is this a problem?
Also, is the hr monitor accurate or is it more of an estimate like when I log my exercise on MFP? Can I rely on if the fitbit tells me I burned 240 calories at the gym, that it's actually 240 calories?
Thank you very much for any pointers!
(ignore Monday's logging, I didn't log the 3 pints of beer I had ^^ )
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Replies
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Just FYI - HR monitor doesn't lead to more accurate CICO readings.
In fact HR-based calorie burn is ONLY an appropriate estimate (and potentially really rough even then) for steady-state aerobic exercise (same HR for 2-4 min constantly) - not intervals, not lifting, not daily level stuff. Inflated in all those cases.
So it's calorie burn estimates for your gym time just depends on what your workouts are and for how long - and really how active you are besides that.
30 min of even a terrible 100% inflated calorie burn when you do 15K steps daily is immaterial in that big picture.
3 hrs of 25% inflated burn when super sedentary otherwise would be bad effect.
Fitbit did not take the option to sync workouts to MFP. Garmin does.
In either case it's reflected in your Total Daily Burn and MFP handles the math correctly.
40 lbs to healthy weight means 2 lbs weekly attempt is unreasonable at this point - 1.5 would serve your body and sustaining it better. At 30 left to 1 lb weekly, at 10-15 0.5 lb is.
So not eating back extra activity (which doesn't have to be just exercise) you are creating more deficit, at this point making it more unreasonable.
That is a stress on the body.
These things are trying to teach a life lesson about weight maintenance.
You do more, you eat more.
You do less, you eat less.
In a diet a tad less in either case.
Forget the Fitbit sweep meter - really is worthless. It's looking at that moment in time how your eaten compares to burned - rarely does anyone ever have a day progress where those match up.
Besides which - aggravation is the result of attempting to follow 2 roads to the same destination.
Tracker for movement related goals and logging.
MFP for eating related goals and logging.
MFP needs tracker info - tracker may not need MFP info at all.
Here's the FAQ to understand what it's doing. Section 2 if you like math and really want to know.
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10098937/faq-syncing-logging-food-exercise-calorie-adjustments-activity-levels-accuracy/p12 -
Thank you very much for your reply, very helpful and informative. I appreciate you taking the time to be so detailed! I think I got it now
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