Activity level/xiaomi mi band/longterm

hazeleni

Hello everyone, i have been using myfitnesspal almost 5 years and i managed to lose more than 22lbs 3 years ago. I went into yo-yo lifestyle for a bit, and I still gain some and lose some. I think the first time I was miscalculating my calories as I didn't have something to measure my activity level and I was just estimating.
This time I want to lose a few lbs left (6-7 at most), mostly go to recomp. But I wanted to do it more slowly in order to be a longterm change and stop yoyoing.
I have always set my activity level as sedentary and i have a xiaomi mi band which I sync to fitness pal through google fit. For the last month I have been going on walks everyday, averaging 11-12k steps. 2-3 times a week I do a bodyweight only 30min program (only if my body feels okay, as I have a desk job)

But I get really lost with the calories: for example, for today my band shows 588cal for 16.5k steps, zepp life gives about the same, google fit goes to 1700 calories totally burned I assume and mfp gives 1360cal (sedentary+508 cal). The average comes close to 1700-1800cal TDEE. Does this sound okay and should I change my activity level? Exercise cal seems a bit much for my height (1.62cm and 56.5kg). Should I go to 1500 cal for a sustainable loss?

Thank you!

AnnPT77

OK, I'm kind of confused.

You say you've used MFP for 5 years, sometimes successfully losing weight. When you did that, did you lose weight at the rate you asked MFP for (number of pounds/kg per week) when you stuck with its calorie recommendation? How long have you had your Xiaomi band synched to MFP, and have you been following the adjusted calorie goal that the band and MFP estimated? If so, what was the result, compared to your goal?

You probably see what I'm getting at here: Your own history is your best source of guidance about what to do. I get that you've changed your activity level. But if you found MFP accurate (or the combination of MFP + Xiaomi accurate) in the past, they're likely to keep being accurate at a different activity level. That's not guaranteed, but if I were you, I'd behave as if it were accurate for 4-6 weeks, and see what your average body weight result is over that time period on average per week. (If you're adult, female, not yet in menopause, compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different menstrual cycles.)

For most devices (and I assume Xioami + Google Fit), it doesn't really matter what your activity level setting in MFP is. If you're more active than MFP expects (exercise or daily life) according to the tracker, you'll get calories added. If you're less active than MFP expects (and you have negative calorie adjustments enabled in MFP), you'll get calories subtracted. A different MFP activity level just means the size of the adjustment will be different, but the end result (by end of day) should be the same number of calories.

From my own personal experience, losing weight reliably but very slowly depends in large part on two things:
1. Having a very good estimate of your own unique calorie needs, and
2. Having a sufficiently reliable, consistent food logging practice.

If you don't have a good handle on your own weight loss history (logged calories, logged activity, and resulting weight loss), that probably means you'll need to spend some time running an experiment to really dial in your actual calorie needs. The estimates from MFP or trackers are close for many people, but they're just statistical estimates: They can be off high or low for a few people, off surprisingly far for a rare few, because that's the nature of statistical estimates. Until you test the estimate against your reality, you don't know how close to average you are. (Even trackers like Xiaomi/Google are estimating, not measuring calories. They're more nuanced estimates, but still estimates.)

As far as your exercise calories being correct or reasonable, remember that the calorie adjustment isn't just for exercise: It's for any movement or other calorie burn that the Xiaomi estimated while watching you, that is above what MFP expected from your MFP profile activity level. Extra . . . I dunno, housecleaning, or flute-playing, or anything . . . would count.

FWIW, I'm about 165 cm (5'5" for my fellow Americans), and 60kg (132 pounds) right now. You're slightly smaller and lighter. I'm probably much older (67), don't get nearly 11-12k steps (more like 4k steps on most recent days), but I exercise more than you do (60-90 minutes 6 days a week, mostly something people usually call cardio). I'd lose about a pound and a half a week if I ate 1500 calories (total intake). But I'm not you, and I'm mysteriously a good li'l ol' calorie burner for some unknown reason anyway.

So why am I telling you that? To illustrate that someone else really can't answer how many calories you need to eat. Their personal experience is more likely to be misleading than is the estimate that MFP or MFP+Xioami negotiate for you. At least the latter is based on statistical averages about regular people, whereas some other person's individual track record is about their idiosyncratic self.

I vote that you should believe what MFP+Xiaomi estimate for that 4-6 weeks, track carefully, then adjust your goal based on your personal experience. That should work.

hazeleni

AnnPT77 wrote: »

OK, I'm kind of confused.

You say you've used MFP for 5 years, sometimes successfully losing weight. When you did that, did you lose weight at the rate you asked MFP for (number of pounds/kg per week) when you stuck with its calorie recommendation? How long have you had your Xiaomi band synched to MFP, and have you been following the adjusted calorie goal that the band and MFP estimated? If so, what was the result, compared to your goal?

You probably see what I'm getting at here: Your own history is your best source of guidance about what to do. I get that you've changed your activity level. But if you found MFP accurate (or the combination of MFP + Xiaomi accurate) in the past, they're likely to keep being accurate at a different activity level. That's not guaranteed, but if I were you, I'd behave as if it were accurate for 4-6 weeks, and see what your average body weight result is over that time period on average per week. (If you're adult, female, not yet in menopause, compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different menstrual cycles.)

For most devices (and I assume Xioami + Google Fit), it doesn't really matter what your activity level setting in MFP is. If you're more active than MFP expects (exercise or daily life) according to the tracker, you'll get calories added. If you're less active than MFP expects (and you have negative calorie adjustments enabled in MFP), you'll get calories subtracted. A different MFP activity level just means the size of the adjustment will be different, but the end result (by end of day) should be the same number of calories.

From my own personal experience, losing weight reliably but very slowly depends in large part on two things:
1. Having a very good estimate of your own unique calorie needs, and
2. Having a sufficiently reliable, consistent food logging practice.

If you don't have a good handle on your own weight loss history (logged calories, logged activity, and resulting weight loss), that probably means you'll need to spend some time running an experiment to really dial in your actual calorie needs. The estimates from MFP or trackers are close for many people, but they're just statistical estimates: They can be off high or low for a few people, off surprisingly far for a rare few, because that's the nature of statistical estimates. Until you test the estimate against your reality, you don't know how close to average you are. (Even trackers like Xiaomi/Google are estimating, not measuring calories. They're more nuanced estimates, but still estimates.)

As far as your exercise calories being correct or reasonable, remember that the calorie adjustment isn't just for exercise: It's for any movement or other calorie burn that the Xiaomi estimated while watching you, that is above what MFP expected from your MFP profile activity level. Extra . . . I dunno, housecleaning, or flute-playing, or anything . . . would count.

FWIW, I'm about 165 cm (5'5" for my fellow Americans), and 60kg (132 pounds) right now. You're slightly smaller and lighter. I'm probably much older (67), don't get nearly 11-12k steps (more like 4k steps on most recent days), but I exercise more than you do (60-90 minutes 6 days a week, mostly something people usually call cardio). I'd lose about a pound and a half a week if I ate 1500 calories (total intake). But I'm not you, and I'm mysteriously a good li'l ol' calorie burner for some unknown reason anyway.

So why am I telling you that? To illustrate that someone else really can't answer how many calories you need to eat. Their personal experience is more likely to be misleading than is the estimate that MFP or MFP+Xioami negotiate for you. At least the latter is based on statistical averages about regular people, whereas some other person's individual track record is about their idiosyncratic self.

I vote that you should believe what MFP+Xiaomi estimate for that 4-6 weeks, track carefully, then adjust your goal based on your personal experience. That should work.

Thank you! I didn't own a tracker back then so I have no idea if I was spot on with my calculations, i just added activity on mfp. I believe I was losing rapidly ( i think at one point I went from 65 kg to 52kg in less than 4 months so it feels like a huge loss now) as I was obsessing over calories.

Sometimes MFP and Xiaomi have vastly different calculations, for example yesterday MFP gave me 830cal for 13k steps and 20 min of light exercise, this seems excessive.(totaling to 2100 calories for the day while google fit gave me 1700 cal). But it always slips my mind that it calculates all activities of daily life and not just heart rate 180 lol. I will be trying to be mindful of that .

At the end of the day I am just going to wait it out and play with the calories allowed, but since it's my first time trying to do it properly and sustainably I am trying to figure the algorithm.
Thank you for taking the time to answer to me!

westrich20940

It sounds like you are saying that you burned 830 calories of active energy with 13k steps. I think that sounds high to me. Like that's what you burned on top of your BMR.

Example...if I ran 1.5 hours on a flat route (~11 min mile and likely 150-160 BPM heartrate)...I'd burn like ~700 calories. Exercise, even moderate difficulty doesn't really like...shred calories. And that's a lot of work to burn 700 cals. The example here is based on my stats and something simply like -- you weighing more than me would mean you'd burn more calories doing that same activity...but - for reference sake.

I think your plan of waiting it out and seeing what happens is the best. Assume your tracker is accurate and see if you gain like that - bc otherwise it seems you have a good understanding of how MFP/calorie deficit works. If you slowly gain or don't lose then you can be more confident that your fitness tracker might be a bit inaccurate.