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Ability to adjust energy requirements due to ADHD stimulant medication

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bradf1969
bradf1969 Posts: 1 Member
in Feature Suggestions and Ideas
It would be really good to have an option (toggle switch?) to adjust my daily energy requirements to take into account my ADHD medication. I'm yet to find a health and fitness app that does this. I'd bet that whoever does implement something useful, would find themselves with a whole new customer base. My medication raises my heart rate by 10 - 15% at least, even when I'm sleeping. This obviously raises my daily kj burn, and coupled with never becoming hungry, makes maintaining weight really difficult. So an app, that adjusts its food requirements accordingly, and also sends notifications to remind you to eat, would be an attractive option for the ADHD community.
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  • belinus6767
    belinus6767 Posts: 3 Member
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    The thing with your heart rate and such is, even if you were wearing a monitor, it would assume you're moving to get it at that rate.

    And if your heart rate is lower than 90bpm, any calculation would be inaccurate.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,366 Member
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    Heart rate going up doesn't necessarily mean more calories are being burned. Heart rate goes up for a lot of reasons - warm environment, dehydration, high emotion, and more.

    Heart rate is used as a proxy for calorie burn because (simplifying) when you work harder physically, your body needs more oxygen in order to burn more calories, so your heart beats more frequently to respond to that oxygen demand. As you get fitter, your stronger heart pumps more blood (so more oxygen) per beat, and your heart rate for that exercise intensity decreases, but you're not necessarily burning significantly fewer calories as a result.

    If your ADHD meds make you move more, then they may make you burn more calories. But I'm betting the size of that effect would be very individual, not something MFP could capture in a setting.

    Even for those of us not taking ADHD meds, MFP's calorie estimate is just a starting point. We can follow the estimate for 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual cycles if that applies), then compare average weekly loss to our target loss. That gives us the information we need to adjust intake to a more personalized (so more individually accurate) level.

    That same approach should work fine for you, even if your ADHD meds increase your calorie expenditure beyond the norm for people your size, age, and activity level. I had to adjust my intake quite significantly upward so as not to lose weight too fast at first, and I don't even take a medication that would cause such an effect. It happens.

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