Best Goal Set Up

donjtomasco

I can't sync my fitbit to mfp, but it (my fitbit) does calculate my calories burned based on my heart rate. Is it best to set my FitnessPal goal set up at Sedentary and 0 workout's per week and 0 min's per workout with my weight loss goal at 1 pound per week, then simply subtract my calories burned on my fitbit from my calories consumed on mfp?

FitBit tells me that my calorie burn is base on my bmr and heartrate, and I just don't understand all of that. I am NOT able to syn the two.

My goal is to get the most real caloric intake number on MFP, then use my calories burned number on FitBit.

I am hoping it is this simple. It has not been simple getting an answer from FitBit or searching in the MFP forums.

Thank you!

seska422

The MFP Fitness goal settings for Calories Burned/Week, Workouts/Week, and Minutes/Workout don't impact your MFP calorie calculation so you can set those to whatever you wish or to nothing at all.

Sedentary will get you the lowest calorie setting and each activity step above that will add calories to account for extra activity. How you decide to handle that is up to you. If you want a low daily goal for a buffer or so that you can manually add exercise, Sedentary might be what you want. If you want to have your daily calorie goal be as close to accurate as possible and/or to include enough calories to account for your exercise without you needing to fiddle with it, chose whichever activity level does that for you.

My suggestion:
Set both MFP and Fitbit to lose one pound per week. See how far apart their calorie goals really are in hindsight (after days are complete) and your actual response to that calorie level over time. Use those numbers to adjust your calorie intake.

Your body's actual response over time is what matters. MFP and Fitbit are tools to let you hone in on what your body is doing. Once you figure out how close your chosen tools are to your actual data, you can add or subtract whatever you need to if they are a bit off.

donjtomasco

Thank you Seska, that was very helpful.