Why does MFP indicate that I've earned negative calories burned at the start of each day?

Avg_Guy

I lost 40 lbs in 3 yrs (from 207 to 167 lbs) and am now just 5 lbs from my target weight of 185 lbs. Since changing to a weight mode I have noted that each morning I log in to enter my morning meal, MFP indicates that I have earned negative calories for the day. In example, today MFP indicated "You've earned -235 calories from exercise today". This makes no sense to me whatsoever...should it not start at zero at 12:01 am and "earn" calories from there? Why the negative numbers?

penguinmama87

Some fitness trackers don't play nicely with MFP - that was my first thought. You can turn off the negative calorie adjustment in your sync settings.

AnnPT77

I'm not you, OP, but I wouldn't turn off the negative adjustment. It's there in case your tracker sees you burning fewer calories than your MFP activity level would estimate, and happens to keep your deficit (or maintenance calories) where you'd need them to accomplish the goals in your profile (loss or maintain).

OP, is your calorie total at the end of the day as you'd expect, for example, do you see activity calories added back over the course of the day, as the tracker sees you be more active at job, home, exercise?

If it wasn't showing the Am negative adjustment before your recent profile changes, it may be possible that some aspect of that reset changed MFP's expectations about your calorie needs, via something like bodyweight setting or activity level setting.

autumnblade75

It's because you haven't been as active as the activity level you selected while you've been, you know, *sleeping* since midnight when the current day rolled over. It should start to shrink the negative calories pretty quickly when you start moving around, and then start to earn you some positive calories. Even at sedentary, these tools estimate that I burn less than *standard* numbers of calories while sleeping.

Of course, 5 days out of the week, I work overnights, and thus am plenty active at midnight, so I come home with a pile of surplus calories which then shrink while I sleep 9 to 5. I'd rather start from behind and catch up, than have calories taken away later.

This is all coming from the activity tracker, though. If we don't like it, we could unlink them, and not have any adjustments at all.

PAV8888

The adjustment is final at midnight.

You asked for an adjustment part way through the day.

To that point of time you had been less active in the reality detected by your tracker than the fictitious activity level you had promised MFP you would be keeping.

MFP sedentary per minute = BMR * 1.25 / 1440
Tracker no activity detected per minute = BMR * 1.0 / 1440

MFP splits your activity bmr * 1.25 calories over 1440 minutes. Your tracker gives you BMR * 1.0 calories unless it detects activity. But when it does, it will generally give you much more than 1.25.