Truly trying to understand my steps

ladybug4233

Good morning! So I’m trying to loose about 5 pounds. I’ve been using the app for a while and understand how to log my food and exercise. I’ve been using an Apple Watch. While I like a lot of things about it it seems to complicate things for me. My goal is 12,000 steps a day. I will include a walk if I need to. I don’t count the calories just the steps. I am currently listed as lightly active and add the calories I get from the steps. The last few days I’ve gotten about 250. Yesterday I got 114 for 12,500 steps. I don’t understand the difference. The only thing I can come up with is I also worked out the other days but I subtracted the calories I burned from the workout. I think I’m making this too hard but when you only have 5 pounds to loose it feels like every calorie matters. Does anyone else have this issue?

mph323

Adding a fitness tracker to the mix can definately up the confusion factor Here's how I manage my fitbit steps. I've set my stats in MFP to whatever the "inactive" setting is called. I then let the fitbit track steps in MFP and add calories. As long as the activity I'm doing involves steps, I don't make any adjustments. If I do an activity that doesn't involve steps (stationary bike, for instance) I add the exercise to MFP with the correct starting time. The fitbit will add some calories for the duration of the activity, so in addition to daily steps I also have some calories for non-step activities. This is not necessarily a particularly accurate way to account for calories out, but for me it's consistent, and I can adjust my daily (or weekly) calories accordingly, and stay on target with my energy balance.

eb8566

I may be wrong and someone can correct me if so, but I believe your calories will vary based on your heart rate. You can turn that function off but the calorie count would not be accurate.

PAV8888

You're not getting x amount calories for x amount of steps.

You're getting your activity level measured independently of MFP.

And that number you see is the difference.

(You can accumulate steps in many different ways throughout the day. They are not always the exact same)

ladybug4233

Thanks everyone. I am probably way over thinking it. I think 12,000 steps puts me in the active category so I will select that and see how it goes for 2-3 weeks and adjust if I need to.

earlnabby

ladybug4233 wrote: »

Thanks everyone. I am probably way over thinking it. I think 12,000 steps puts me in the active category so I will select that and see how it goes for 2-3 weeks and adjust if I need to.

If you chose to do this, DO NOT add in any calories for the steps. 12000 is already figured in the active category calorie allowance for MFP.

In this case it is an either/or situation. Either you go with the calorie allotment from the activity level you put into MFP or you go with what your fitness tracker says. Doing both will cause you to double dip and possible overeat. Only add in purposeful exercise above your steps.

PAV8888

earlnabby wrote: »

ladybug4233 wrote: »

Thanks everyone. I am probably way over thinking it. I think 12,000 steps puts me in the active category so I will select that and see how it goes for 2-3 weeks and adjust if I need to.

If you chose to do this, DO NOT add in any calories for the steps. 12000 is already figured in the active category calorie allowance for MFP.

In this case it is an either/or situation. Either you go with the calorie allotment from the activity level you put into MFP or you go with what your fitness tracker says. Doing both will cause you to double dip and possible overeat. Only add in purposeful exercise above your steps.

Just to make sure everyone is clear: you are correct that the 12,000 steps are included in the activity level of active and should NOT be manually entered as a manual activity or exercise on MFP, NOR should any activity associated with them.

HOWEVER, synchronizing a supported tracker such as a Fitbit with MFP via integration while set at a level above sedentary will NOT result in any double counting while integration is working properly!

To the contrary, and as an example, I am set-up as very active on MFP with negative adjustments enabled.

Most days my morning large negative adjustment becomes a positive adjustment by the end of the day because I am actually slightly more active than the very active level I have selected. However on some days when I am a relative slug the negative adjustment only reduces by a bit and I still "lose" calories--and that's as it should be!

In any case the adjustments ensure that there is no double counting and that the tracker final TDEE figure is what is used by MFP at the end of the day.

heybales

ladybug4233 wrote: »

Good morning! So I’m trying to loose about 5 pounds. I’ve been using the app for a while and understand how to log my food and exercise. I’ve been using an Apple Watch. While I like a lot of things about it it seems to complicate things for me. My goal is 12,000 steps a day. I will include a walk if I need to. I don’t count the calories just the steps. I am currently listed as lightly active and add the calories I get from the steps. The last few days I’ve gotten about 250. Yesterday I got 114 for 12,500 steps. I don’t understand the difference. The only thing I can come up with is I also worked out the other days but I subtracted the calories I burned from the workout. I think I’m making this too hard but when you only have 5 pounds to loose it feels like every calorie matters. Does anyone else have this issue?

You will NOT get accurate math in MFP as the above comments are showing because you are using an Apple watch synced directly.

At least it sounds like you are.

Apple does not send the Active calorie burn above your base burn to MFP as trackers are supposed to contained with Total Daily burned.
Only workouts.
Both those things cause adjustments to actually go the wrong way.

Apple sends a Sedentary daily burn figure that mostly matches MFP sedentary. So little to no adjustment there.


Now, perhaps you are referring to viewing the stats on the Apple watch regarding your Move calories.
And manually adding them yourself.
And mere commenting on the difference that Apple shows for Move calories for different amounts of steps.
It's not the steps, it's the distance actually that creates the calories.
How does distance compare on days with similar step count?

PAV8888

heybales wrote: »

You will NOT get accurate math in MFP as the above comments are showing because you are using an Apple watch synced directly.

So they still haven't fixed Apple MFP integration, hey? Do you know what people are doing now? Do they sync through the Apple Health App? Are there some lucky ones who sync directly and it works? Or is it that all who have a working MFP - Apple integration are using third party apps such as Pacer?

heybales

Pacer seems to be the winner for getting everything over to MFP correctly, plus having some of it's own graphs and stats for workouts that some like better than Apple.

Hannahwalksfar

I forgot to take my phone off when I rode horses at riding trot for 8 hours. I looked like the step queen

lorrpb

ladybug4233 wrote: »

Good morning! So I’m trying to loose about 5 pounds. I’ve been using the app for a while and understand how to log my food and exercise. I’ve been using an Apple Watch. While I like a lot of things about it it seems to complicate things for me. My goal is 12,000 steps a day. I will include a walk if I need to. I don’t count the calories just the steps. I am currently listed as lightly active and add the calories I get from the steps. The last few days I’ve gotten about 250. Yesterday I got 114 for 12,500 steps. I don’t understand the difference. The only thing I can come up with is I also worked out the other days but I subtracted the calories I burned from the workout. I think I’m making this too hard but when you only have 5 pounds to loose it feels like every calorie matters. Does anyone else have this issue?

See bolded comments. This would be a good reason to also count your intake calories.

Cahgetsfit

I drove for 7 hours yesterday. It gave me 8000+ steps. from changing gears and pressing the clutch I'm assuming!

heybales

Cahgetsfit wrote: »

I drove for 7 hours yesterday. It gave me 8000+ steps. from changing gears and pressing the clutch I'm assuming!

If this is a Fitbit, you can manually create an Activity Record which is merely a snapshot of the stats that are there for a chunk of time.

You should do it for that 7 hrs, see the exact steps, but more importantly, the distance and calories assigned to that time.

Most people I've recommended that too discover it wasn't that much greater calories than BMR would have been.
And driving uses more calories than sleeping, so it's true.