Eating back calories?
Replies
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Can I ask what NEAT is?
An estimate of all the calories you burn in a day, excluding intentional exercise (e.g. Going to the gym) . The NEAT approach is what MFP uses. MFP estimates your NEAT, subtracts the amt of calories needed to achieve the proper calorie deficit for your weight loss goal, and then has you add your intentional exercise calories to it each day, to determine how much you should eat. The TDEE, in contrast, includes everything, including your intentional exercise. If you wanna lose one pound a week, you just subtract 500 from your TDEE and eat it.
So for instance, you might have a NEAT of 2100 and on top of that do 300 calories of intentional exercise today. Or, you might have a TDEE of 2400 based on being a person who generally gets in a moderate daily workout. Two different ways of looking at the same data. TDEE is more of an average figure based on your assumptions about typical activity levels over time, whereas NEAT is a more precise measure of what you actually burned today. In theory they should get you to the same place. The only difference is that one method separates intentional exercise out and the other sort of averages it into the assumptions. Either is usable for dieting.
The more consistent your daily workouts are, the more it makes sense to use TDEE because you don't have to bother with adjusting your caloric intake each day. The more variable your workouts, the more NEAT makes sense.2 -
WinoGelato wrote: »PiscesIntuition wrote: »@veganbaum If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. When I wasn’t eating calories back, I was doing fine. Reading more on here about eating calories back made me want to see if it would work. It doesn’t. I’m back to what was working. Lesson learned for me! Thanks though!
But having accurate numbers and a true understanding of what a person burns can help with transitioning to maintenance. The approach you are taking may work now but it may not work down the road as you get closer to goal, have less weight to lose, and really need to tighten things up in order to finally reach your goal. Then when you try to transition to maintenance you have no idea how many calories to eat because you’ve been ignoring the exercise calories the whole time you’re losing.
A question for you. In many of your posts you mention that Fitbit helped you in your weight loss journey as well as in maintenance. I am transitioning to maintainance. I synched my Charge 3 with MFP(enabling negative calorie adjustments) and have noticed a difference between MFP and Fitbit in my daily burn. I set my activity to lightly active and MFP adjustment is regularly giving me more calories than Fitbit app. What number should I pay attention to?
I’m not sure. Do you use the app? When you click the exercise adjustment and “info” you should see how MFP is calculating your adjustments. Do they add up to what your FitBit daily burn is (like for a full day)? Have you tried unsyncing and resyncing?
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WinoGelato wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »PiscesIntuition wrote: »@veganbaum If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. When I wasn’t eating calories back, I was doing fine. Reading more on here about eating calories back made me want to see if it would work. It doesn’t. I’m back to what was working. Lesson learned for me! Thanks though!
But having accurate numbers and a true understanding of what a person burns can help with transitioning to maintenance. The approach you are taking may work now but it may not work down the road as you get closer to goal, have less weight to lose, and really need to tighten things up in order to finally reach your goal. Then when you try to transition to maintenance you have no idea how many calories to eat because you’ve been ignoring the exercise calories the whole time you’re losing.
A question for you. In many of your posts you mention that Fitbit helped you in your weight loss journey as well as in maintenance. I am transitioning to maintainance. I synched my Charge 3 with MFP(enabling negative calorie adjustments) and have noticed a difference between MFP and Fitbit in my daily burn. I set my activity to lightly active and MFP adjustment is regularly giving me more calories than Fitbit app. What number should I pay attention to?
I’m not sure. Do you use the app? When you click the exercise adjustment and “info” you should see how MFP is calculating your adjustments. Do they add up to what your FitBit daily burn is (like for a full day)? Have you tried unsyncing and resyncing?
I use both of the apps. Here is an example from Thursday. The difference is minor, although somedays the difference is bigger, but in the long run it adds up to a few hundred calories per week.
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WinoGelato wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »PiscesIntuition wrote: »@veganbaum If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. When I wasn’t eating calories back, I was doing fine. Reading more on here about eating calories back made me want to see if it would work. It doesn’t. I’m back to what was working. Lesson learned for me! Thanks though!
But having accurate numbers and a true understanding of what a person burns can help with transitioning to maintenance. The approach you are taking may work now but it may not work down the road as you get closer to goal, have less weight to lose, and really need to tighten things up in order to finally reach your goal. Then when you try to transition to maintenance you have no idea how many calories to eat because you’ve been ignoring the exercise calories the whole time you’re losing.
A question for you. In many of your posts you mention that Fitbit helped you in your weight loss journey as well as in maintenance. I am transitioning to maintainance. I synched my Charge 3 with MFP(enabling negative calorie adjustments) and have noticed a difference between MFP and Fitbit in my daily burn. I set my activity to lightly active and MFP adjustment is regularly giving me more calories than Fitbit app. What number should I pay attention to?
I’m not sure. Do you use the app? When you click the exercise adjustment and “info” you should see how MFP is calculating your adjustments. Do they add up to what your FitBit daily burn is (like for a full day)? Have you tried unsyncing and resyncing?
I did try unsynching and resynching. Using Fitbit for maintenance is a new frontier for me. I am thankful to you for your willingness to help me to figure this out.0 -
WinoGelato wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »PiscesIntuition wrote: »@veganbaum If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. When I wasn’t eating calories back, I was doing fine. Reading more on here about eating calories back made me want to see if it would work. It doesn’t. I’m back to what was working. Lesson learned for me! Thanks though!
But having accurate numbers and a true understanding of what a person burns can help with transitioning to maintenance. The approach you are taking may work now but it may not work down the road as you get closer to goal, have less weight to lose, and really need to tighten things up in order to finally reach your goal. Then when you try to transition to maintenance you have no idea how many calories to eat because you’ve been ignoring the exercise calories the whole time you’re losing.
A question for you. In many of your posts you mention that Fitbit helped you in your weight loss journey as well as in maintenance. I am transitioning to maintainance. I synched my Charge 3 with MFP(enabling negative calorie adjustments) and have noticed a difference between MFP and Fitbit in my daily burn. I set my activity to lightly active and MFP adjustment is regularly giving me more calories than Fitbit app. What number should I pay attention to?
I’m not sure. Do you use the app? When you click the exercise adjustment and “info” you should see how MFP is calculating your adjustments. Do they add up to what your FitBit daily burn is (like for a full day)? Have you tried unsyncing and resyncing?
I use both of the apps. Here is an example from Thursday. The difference is minor, although somedays the difference is bigger, but in the long run it adds up to a few hundred calories per week.
Further down in your diary on the app is an exercise adjustment from FitBit. Click that, then click again for more information and it will tell you what number from FitBit it is basing your adjustment on as well as the time of day of your last sync . How does that compare to your FitBit total calories?0 -
Here is a screenshot from that day. It says that full day projection is 2,138 which is very close to MFP's end of the day adjustment except the morning after Fitbit app always shows lower calorie burn than MFP. Yesterday MFP total calorie goal with adjustment was 2322, Fitbit gave me 2269.WinoGelato wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »PiscesIntuition wrote: »@veganbaum If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. When I wasn’t eating calories back, I was doing fine. Reading more on here about eating calories back made me want to see if it would work. It doesn’t. I’m back to what was working. Lesson learned for me! Thanks though!
But having accurate numbers and a true understanding of what a person burns can help with transitioning to maintenance. The approach you are taking may work now but it may not work down the road as you get closer to goal, have less weight to lose, and really need to tighten things up in order to finally reach your goal. Then when you try to transition to maintenance you have no idea how many calories to eat because you’ve been ignoring the exercise calories the whole time you’re losing.
A question for you. In many of your posts you mention that Fitbit helped you in your weight loss journey as well as in maintenance. I am transitioning to maintainance. I synched my Charge 3 with MFP(enabling negative calorie adjustments) and have noticed a difference between MFP and Fitbit in my daily burn. I set my activity to lightly active and MFP adjustment is regularly giving me more calories than Fitbit app. What number should I pay attention to?
I’m not sure. Do you use the app? When you click the exercise adjustment and “info” you should see how MFP is calculating your adjustments. Do they add up to what your FitBit daily burn is (like for a full day)? Have you tried unsyncing and resyncing?
I use both of the apps. Here is an example from Thursday. The difference is minor, although somedays the difference is bigger, but in the long run it adds up to a few hundred calories per week.
Further down in your diary on the app is an exercise adjustment from FitBit. Click that, then click again for more information and it will tell you what number from FitBit it is basing your adjustment on as well as the time of day of your last sync . How does that compare to your FitBit total calories?
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I am sorry, I didn't mean to take over the thread. I promise this is my last post in it. So I checked the adjustments from yesterday. The difference between the two apps was only 13 calories. Close enough! I'll stick with MFP adjustments and reassess in couple of months.1
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Here is a screenshot from that day. It says that full day projection is 2,138 which is very close to MFP's end of the day adjustment except the morning after Fitbit app always shows lower calorie burn than MFP. Yesterday MFP total calorie goal with adjustment was 2322, Fitbit gave me 2269.WinoGelato wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »PiscesIntuition wrote: »@veganbaum If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. When I wasn’t eating calories back, I was doing fine. Reading more on here about eating calories back made me want to see if it would work. It doesn’t. I’m back to what was working. Lesson learned for me! Thanks though!
But having accurate numbers and a true understanding of what a person burns can help with transitioning to maintenance. The approach you are taking may work now but it may not work down the road as you get closer to goal, have less weight to lose, and really need to tighten things up in order to finally reach your goal. Then when you try to transition to maintenance you have no idea how many calories to eat because you’ve been ignoring the exercise calories the whole time you’re losing.
A question for you. In many of your posts you mention that Fitbit helped you in your weight loss journey as well as in maintenance. I am transitioning to maintainance. I synched my Charge 3 with MFP(enabling negative calorie adjustments) and have noticed a difference between MFP and Fitbit in my daily burn. I set my activity to lightly active and MFP adjustment is regularly giving me more calories than Fitbit app. What number should I pay attention to?
I’m not sure. Do you use the app? When you click the exercise adjustment and “info” you should see how MFP is calculating your adjustments. Do they add up to what your FitBit daily burn is (like for a full day)? Have you tried unsyncing and resyncing?
I use both of the apps. Here is an example from Thursday. The difference is minor, although somedays the difference is bigger, but in the long run it adds up to a few hundred calories per week.
Further down in your diary on the app is an exercise adjustment from FitBit. Click that, then click again for more information and it will tell you what number from FitBit it is basing your adjustment on as well as the time of day of your last sync . How does that compare to your FitBit total calories?
beulah, it's an estimate. 50 calories is insignificant. I believe in the morning it's just that - an estimate.
You're going to make more than 50 calories per day errors in logging food! Just use the numbers as the general starting point that they are intended to be. All of these numbers everywhere are just estimates, none of them are going to be exact. Close enough is good enough on all of this.
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cmriverside wrote: »
Here is a screenshot from that day. It says that full day projection is 2,138 which is very close to MFP's end of the day adjustment except the morning after Fitbit app always shows lower calorie burn than MFP. Yesterday MFP total calorie goal with adjustment was 2322, Fitbit gave me 2269.WinoGelato wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »PiscesIntuition wrote: »@veganbaum If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. When I wasn’t eating calories back, I was doing fine. Reading more on here about eating calories back made me want to see if it would work. It doesn’t. I’m back to what was working. Lesson learned for me! Thanks though!
But having accurate numbers and a true understanding of what a person burns can help with transitioning to maintenance. The approach you are taking may work now but it may not work down the road as you get closer to goal, have less weight to lose, and really need to tighten things up in order to finally reach your goal. Then when you try to transition to maintenance you have no idea how many calories to eat because you’ve been ignoring the exercise calories the whole time you’re losing.
A question for you. In many of your posts you mention that Fitbit helped you in your weight loss journey as well as in maintenance. I am transitioning to maintainance. I synched my Charge 3 with MFP(enabling negative calorie adjustments) and have noticed a difference between MFP and Fitbit in my daily burn. I set my activity to lightly active and MFP adjustment is regularly giving me more calories than Fitbit app. What number should I pay attention to?
I’m not sure. Do you use the app? When you click the exercise adjustment and “info” you should see how MFP is calculating your adjustments. Do they add up to what your FitBit daily burn is (like for a full day)? Have you tried unsyncing and resyncing?
I use both of the apps. Here is an example from Thursday. The difference is minor, although somedays the difference is bigger, but in the long run it adds up to a few hundred calories per week.
Further down in your diary on the app is an exercise adjustment from FitBit. Click that, then click again for more information and it will tell you what number from FitBit it is basing your adjustment on as well as the time of day of your last sync . How does that compare to your FitBit total calories?
beulah, it's an estimate. 50 calories is insignificant. I believe in the morning it's just that - an estimate.
You're going to make more than 50 calories per day errors in logging food! Just use the numbers as the general starting point that they are intended to be. All of these numbers everywhere are just estimates, none of them are going to be exact. Close enough is good enough on all of this.
Thank you cmriverside! 👍0 -
I am sorry, I didn't mean to take over the thread. I promise this is my last post in it. So I checked the adjustments from yesterday. The difference between the two apps was only 13 calories. Close enough! I'll stick with MFP adjustments and reassess in couple of months.
Yeah this is pretty typical. The two are never going to match exactly as they work off different algorithms and the adjustments are an estimate. Periodically MFP and FitBit stop playing nice together and the adjustments won’t come through at all and then suddenly you’ll be wishing for those “close enough” data points!
For me, having an idea of how many cals I burn on a day to day basis is one of the biggest advantages to the FitBit in maintenance. I love knowing a rough idea of how many calories i need to stay around in order to maintain my weight, since that number really can vary from day to day.
If maintenance is new to you read some of the threads in the Maintenance Subforum as there are lots of tips and tricks in there. Good luck!1 -
WinoGelato wrote: »I am sorry, I didn't mean to take over the thread. I promise this is my last post in it. So I checked the adjustments from yesterday. The difference between the two apps was only 13 calories. Close enough! I'll stick with MFP adjustments and reassess in couple of months.
Yeah this is pretty typical. The two are never going to match exactly as they work off different algorithms and the adjustments are an estimate. Periodically MFP and FitBit stop playing nice together and the adjustments won’t come through at all and then suddenly you’ll be wishing for those “close enough” data points!
For me, having an idea of how many cals I burn on a day to day basis is one of the biggest advantages to the FitBit in maintenance. I love knowing a rough idea of how many calories i need to stay around in order to maintain my weight, since that number really can vary from day to day.
If maintenance is new to you read some of the threads in the Maintenance Subforum as there are lots of tips and tricks in there. Good luck!
Thank you so much for your input! I've read many of your posts and they have been very helpful to me.1 -
No......4
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