Calories from exercise

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Eldow1977
Eldow1977 Posts: 48 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I'm making sure I stay under my calorie goal but I have a Fitbit connected which adds calories, should I be making sure I use those too.

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  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,224 Member
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    Generally, yes.

    Your MFP calorie goal already includes a calorie cut for weight loss (if you told it you want weight loss). If you eat back your Fitbit calories, the math MFP does keeps that same calorie deficit, to give you that same weight loss rate.

    That said, this is all statistical estimates (MFP's and Fitbit's). So, believe and follow the calorie goal they give you - hit close most days, little over or under, either way. Do that for 4-6 weeks, then compare starting and ending weights. If you're female and premenopausal, follow it for at least one full menstrual cycle, so you can compare weight at the same relative point in at least 2 different monthly cycles (because hormonal water weight fluctuations can be weird). With that multi-week result in place, if you've logged intake reasonably meticulously, you can adjust your goal to fine-tune your loss rate after that point. After that, keep monitoring, adjust if necessary.

    Losing too slowly can be frustrating. Losing too fast can increase health risks. Adjusting based on your own individual results, to keep a sensible rate - that's what I'd suggest (and what I did, in practice, too).

    I've eaten pretty much every exercise calorie all through nearly a year of weight loss (obese to healthy weight), and for 5+ years since in maintenance.

    Best wishes!
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    Your adjustment (which is for both daily activity and exercise BTW) is the Fitbit trying to do its job as it was designed to do.

    I would default to using tools as designed but with the proviso that estimating may need an adjustment based on actual results over an extended period of time whether you use a Fitbit, an average TDEE method or MyFitnessPal without a tracker. They all account for activity and exercise, just in different ways.

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