Negative Calorie Adjustment

stephaniea09

Can someone provide a better explanation of what Negative Calorie Adjustment is? The explanation on the website is very confusing to me.

A bit about my situation: I wear an Apple Watch all the time and track my workouts on it. I have Apple Health linked to MFP and I have also selected my Apple Watch as a pedometer to track my steps and log them onto MFP.

Right now in my journey I am currently using up my additional calories that I have earned from workouts as more food (I think my Active Level is off and I am more Active than I assumed).

Is Negative Calorie Adjustment for me? Thanks!

RookieRunner76

Following 😄

AnnPT77

The Apple to MFP interface has a reputation for working in a nonstandard** way, and I'm not an Apple user, so I can't comment on that. (** I.e., an incorrect way, for reasons of how Apple implemented it, as I understand it.)

Speaking about trackers more generically, with MFP:

In MFP you have an activity level, some demographics (height/weight/etc.), and a weight management goal (lose X per week, or whatever). MFP uses those pieces of data to estimate your current maintenance calories, then subtracts some calories from that if you asked to lose weight (adds some if you wanted to gain) and gives you a base calorie goal to eat, to accomplish your weight-management goal. However, it won't put you below the minimum calories of 1200 for women, 1500 for men.

Philosophically, you're supposed to set your MFP activity level based on daily life activity excluding intentional exercise (job, chores, etc.), then log your exercise when you do some, and eat those calories too, keeping the same weight management goal intact.

Your fitness tracker measures various aspects of what you do all day (maybe arm movements, heart rate, distance per GPS, altitude changes, etc.), and estimates how many calories you burn doing what you do, also using demographic data in your user settings for that device.

When you synch a fitness tracker to MFP - still speaking generically, not in terms of Apple's implementation - it effectively does two things. One is to recognize calories from your exercise (in effect, may or may not create line items other than the general adjustment number, depending on the device). The other is to decide whether you were right about your activity level, and adjust if you weren't. (Again, that may just be lumped into one adjustment number.)

Periodically, MFP and the tracker compare notes and exchange data. The core of this is to compare the tracker's total calorie number to MFP's expected maintenance calories, and adjust your eating goal in MFP to keep your same weight management goal in play (i.e., lose X pounds a week, or whatever). In effect, the adjustment covers both exercise and daily life activity. With some devices, it may be adjusted and re-adjusted multiple times over the course of a day, but by the end of the day, they should be in agreement (the "why" may not be obvious).

If you enable negative adjustments, MFP will feel free to remove calories from your goal that day (if you're less active than the base maintenance calorie level it expected), reducing your eating goal.

If you don't enable negative adjustments, MFP will only increase your eating goal if you're more active than it expected. If you're less active than it expected (with negative adjustments not enabled), there's zero adjustment. In effect, that would give you a slower loss (or faster gain) than you asked for.

Like I said, my understanding is that Apple doesn't do this correctly, so results may differ. I've read here that if you synch Apple to the Pacer app, then Pacer to MFP, that will work right . . . but I'm not an Apple person, so I haven't done that.

heybales

For most trackers and their linked accounts - if the tracker says you burned in total less than MFP thought you'd burn by your guess of activity level - Neg Adj means MFP would in essence lower that daily burn, then take a deficit from that. If you never went below then no effect.

So you'd keep say a 500 cal deficit even if MFP thought you'd burn 2000, but you really burned only 1800.

Now, MFP won't go below 1200 / 1500 for women/men for lower limit, no matter what.

Now we come to the problem with Apple.

Notice how the device account is telling MFP what you burned in total for the day, then MFP has easy math from that. If exercise is sent too, MFP does math so not duplicated.
Total means Total = base burn + extra activity + exercise.

Apple sadly does NOT send Total - they send the base burn figure, which ends up being pretty close to MFP's Sedentary. Leads to bad math. Apple's going to do what Apple wants to do. And MFP was thrilled they finally did the work to send anything after years of their customers screaming at MFP to do something (like MFP can do Apple's work), they left it as is.

So here's what happens if you have accounts linked.

Apple sends incorrect daily burn 2000 - 2000 MFP estimated daily burn - any known workouts on MFP say 300 = neg 300 Adjustment.

base eating goal 1500 (500 cal deficit there) + workout 300 + Adj neg 300 = ....... 1500.

So when doing more you are actually increasing deficit.

Let's say you increased your activity by 300 cal not a part of exercise logged.
MFP isn't aware of that at all - even bigger deficit.

Increasing deficit when trying to benefit from exercise is completely axxbackwards. But there ya go.


Now - if you don't link accounts, but merely have the watch as a step-source - which means MFP is doing some super-rough estimates of daily burn merely on steps (no distance, no knowledge if steps is part or not of logged exercise), then the effect isn't as bad.
You'll get extra credit for what appears to be extra activity at least - but then it will be lowered when a workout comes over because MFP has no idea if steps was part of it or not, so to avoid double counting - subtract.

cwolfman13

stephaniea09 wrote: »

Can someone provide a better explanation of what Negative Calorie Adjustment is? The explanation on the website is very confusing to me.

A bit about my situation: I wear an Apple Watch all the time and track my workouts on it. I have Apple Health linked to MFP and I have also selected my Apple Watch as a pedometer to track my steps and log them onto MFP.

Right now in my journey I am currently using up my additional calories that I have earned from workouts as more food (I think my Active Level is off and I am more Active than I assumed).

Is Negative Calorie Adjustment for me? Thanks!

Most of these trackers provide a reconciling calorie adjustment between what you've set as your activity level in MFP and what your actual activity level is per your device on a given day. If you're set to sedentary and you are more active than that per your device, you get a reconciling adjustment up. If you're activity level is set higher and you're not actually that active, you get a "negative adjustment" to reconcile the fact that you aren't actually as active per your device as the activity level you selected in MFP.

springlering62

It’s all out of whack lately recording steps. I generally get about 15,000 or so a day, was averaging 25,000 a day when out of town last week. Apple is only recording about 7,000 a day to MFP and pummeling me on negative calorie adjustment to the point it wipes out 30-40% of excercise calories to make up for my “lack of step activity”.

Fortunately I’ve been at this long enough to know how much I need to burn versus eat, but I feel for new users trying to gauge.

I may go back to my old system of “no negative adjustment “ to get a better handle and see if it gives steps back to me.

raemac2021

I feel dumb, I still don’t get it. I use an apple watch and am trying to lose about a pound a week and generally I get a +300 something calories added to my amount per day for activity. Are you saying Apple is calculating something wrong and I should ignore that 300 and only eat to my base #?

Would allowing negative calories only confuse me more?

heybales

raemac2021 wrote: »

I feel dumb, I still don’t get it. I use an apple watch and am trying to lose about a pound a week and generally I get a +300 something calories added to my amount per day for activity. Are you saying Apple is calculating something wrong and I should ignore that 300 and only eat to my base #?

Would allowing negative calories only confuse me more?

It's hard to get when there are 2 options for how MFP interacts with activity trackers - Apple included.
It adds confusion when advice is given and it's unknown which method someone is using.

If you are getting an Apple Adjustment that big - you have it the better option. (because the actual better option is done incorrectly by Apple)

Go to that adjustment in your Exercise Diary, tap or tap and hold on it - you'll be shown more details.
Can you post a screen shot?
Or at least write out the figures?
This will allow confirming.

And on Negative option enabled - it ONLY matters when you receive no positive adjustment and could be burning less than MFP expected.
If you are trying 1 lb a week - that means 500 cal deficit daily.
MFP estimated a daily burn based on your selected Activity Level already - say Sedentary and 2000 calorie daily.
Eating goal would be 1500 then.

But if your steps indicate you burned less than 2000, you should have a negative adjustment then to whatever you did burn, say 1800.
Then 500 deficit means eating goal 1300.
If you don't have that Neg option enabled, eating goal would be 1500 still, and only a 300 deficit, right.

raemac2021

@heybales - thank you!



This is a pretty typical day for me. The 3 short leisurely walks are walking my dog (shorter due to weather) & the others are my apple fitness plus “classes” - typically HITT & strength training. & 5 min of pilates, core or cool down yoga/stretch.

I see it has my steps with a 0 ext to them.

does this help? Am I good just doing what I am doing and assuming it is ok to eat most of those 300 calories back? or should i use the negative adjustment? It all still confuses me which is why I usually eat about 150-200 of them and call it good.

heybales

Here's an example of why Negative can be needed when you have a lot of time logged as workouts.

I can have a 2 hr bike ride on Sat for 1500 calories. Outside of that I'm way less than sedentary, not comatose at least.

So I'll get 1500 for the ride added, but an Adjustment of neg 300. So outside of the exercise I was way less than MFP was estimating.
If I was going for 1 lb weekly - I'd barely have a deficit possibly.

Sadly on other non-exercise days, I'm also below sedentary by perhaps 100-200 calories.
So if I had no Neg Adj enabled, I would have no where near enough deficit for 1 lb weekly.

So that line about calorie adjustment being 0 could be for same reason - outside of the exercise you could be NOT meeting your selected activity level. And it would be appropriate to have a negative adjustment, to counter all the positives added by the exercise.

Tap and hold on that line for a screen with more info - that's the one to screen shot.
Do the same day, as that's a good example to use.

raemac2021

ok, here is what I got from the same day, hope this is right




thanks for showing me all this stuff I didn’t know existed on this app!

heybales

So that was a good example - you would have gotten a negative adjustment, plus the exercise calories. Your accounts are NOT linked between MFP & Apple - so you don't get the issue with math when that happens.

So MFP has your daily burn at 2120 - 320 = 1800
BMR is 1440 x 1.25 Sedentary activity factor.

1 lb loss or 500 cal deficit means base eating goal would be 1300. (if you really held to being not very active as was selected)

But you are more active.
All the exercise logged on it's own is 320.
But using the Apple steps reported and not knowing what steps are already part of the known exercise, MFP estimates you burned in total 2049. (could have been more calories if few of the steps were in some of that exercise)
I'd be curious what your Apple side of the data gave for your total daily burn that day.
Was MFP close?

So kind of Apple 2049 - MFP estimated 1800 - known workouts 320 = Adjustment neg 71 if enabled.

Base eating goal 1300 + workouts 320 + adjustment neg 71 = 1549 new eating goal. (yours was 1620 that day?)

So do you eat to that amount?
Depends on how much you trust Apple getting the calorie burn right for that logged exercise.
I'd actually suggest yes, as a few of those actually seem low balled.

But I would enable Negative adjustment because of what you see occurring.

And just to be clear - if you didn't log any of that exercise or less of it, then the MFP estimated daily burn from the steps (the wording makes it sound like that is from Apple but it's not) would have been higher, the MFP Calories burned would have been less (due to less logged workouts), and the result would have ended up with just a big positive Adjustment of around 300 calories.

But frankly having MFP estimate a calorie burn purely from steps only, or getting a workout from Apple that saw distance and time - keep the small workouts and take the negative adjustment when it happens.

raemac2021

@heybales Thanks so much, this helped a lot! Apple had my total expenditure that day at 2407 so a 300 difference from MFP.

I think I am going to turn negative calorie adjustments on for a bit and see how it goes. 👍🏻🙂

heybales

Hmmmm.

Ok, with Apple higher, that means when MFP calculated calorie burn from steps, it was on the low side.

And likely when it saw the workouts come over, not knowing how many of those calories was already accounted for in it's calorie burn from steps, to avoid duplicating it removed too many.

Curious, if you tapped on one of the existing workouts as if to edit, or perhaps start adding a new workout - are you required to enter a start and duration time? You can cancel the process after looking.

Thanks for being a willing volunteer, it's been 6 months since last person was willing to provide info, and I'm always curious if things changed for the better yet. As you can tell, doesn't appear to.

springlering62

You can’t edit an Apple Watch exercise within apple, although you can edit it once it transports into MFP.

I presume that’s to keep people from cheating on challenges.

heybales

Good catch - I did mean within MFP.