Enable Negative Adjustments

danleroux76

Without this setting we get
Calorie goal - food + exercise

With it I get
Calorie goal - food - exercise

So exercising is substracted? In other words if my goal is 2000 per day and I burn 2000 calories exercising, I cant eat? That doesn’t make sense.

vljordan22

Hi I have a similar question related question, I log my exercise which adds calories to my goal 👍🏻 that’s fine. But doing that seems to negate any steps I’ve done that would also add extra calories to goal ( albeit a small amount)… it seems I don’t earn extra calories if I formally log exercise such as my bike ride road…
Any thoughts ideas appreciated.. 🙏

mtaratoot

danleroux76 wrote: »

Without this setting we get
Calorie goal - food + exercise

With it I get
Calorie goal - food - exercise

So exercising is substracted? In other words if my goal is 2000 per day and I burn 2000 calories exercising, I cant eat? That doesn’t make sense.

Not exactly, although it is confusing. Here's how I think it works (I don't use that feature).

Let's say you list your activity level as "Very Active," and you get a calorie goal of 3000 calories. Your fitness tracking device will monitor your activity throughout the day. If you're behind schedule, then it adjusts that 3000 calories down a bit based on not being as active as you say. The idea is that it prevents you from eating too much in the middle of the day and end up not getting as much activity as you expected.

Let's say that your calorie goal is 2000 without activity. That goal of 3000 was because it assumes you'll burn an extra 1000 calories over your baseline. If you exercise and burn 2000 calories, your 3000 will rise to 4000, but not 6000. If you exercise and only burn 500 calories, your goal will adjust down to 2500.

Does that make sense?

I think that's how it works. I'm 92% sure, but not 100%.

AnnPT77

mtaratoot wrote: »

danleroux76 wrote: »

Without this setting we get
Calorie goal - food + exercise

With it I get
Calorie goal - food - exercise

So exercising is substracted? In other words if my goal is 2000 per day and I burn 2000 calories exercising, I cant eat? That doesn’t make sense.

Not exactly, although it is confusing. Here's how I think it works (I don't use that feature).

Let's say you list your activity level as "Very Active," and you get a calorie goal of 3000 calories. Your fitness tracking device will monitor your activity throughout the day. If you're behind schedule, then it adjusts that 3000 calories down a bit based on not being as active as you say. The idea is that it prevents you from eating too much in the middle of the day and end up not getting as much activity as you expected.

Let's say that your calorie goal is 2000 without activity. That goal of 3000 was because it assumes you'll burn an extra 1000 calories over your baseline. If you exercise and burn 2000 calories, your 3000 will rise to 4000, but not 6000. If you exercise and only burn 500 calories, your goal will adjust down to 2500.

Does that make sense?

I think that's how it works. I'm 92% sure, but not 100%.

That's also my understanding. The adjustment process is trying to reconcile the number of calories MFP expected us to burn (based on our activity level setting in the MFP profile) with the number of calories the tracker estimates we actually did burn.

If our MFP activity level is set higher than the activity level a tracker sees us as actually doing, and negative adjustments are turned on, MFP can adjust our calorie goal downward. If negative adjustments are turned off, MFP will only ever increase our calorie goal. That's probably not a good thing.

That's assuming a properly implemented interface between a particular brand tracker and MFP. IMU, the Apple implementation is questionable.

@danleroux76, what is your MFP activity level setting, and why? And what brand/model tracker do you have sync-ed to MFP?

mtaratoot

Interestingly enough, even though I don't have negative calories turned on, I experienced some the other day.

My device (a Garmin) usually keeps adding active calorie expenditure from my normal day-to-day activities. Sometimes it means that I end my eating day pretty close to my daily goal, but by bedtime, I have burned more and am farther below my goal than I'd like. I try to stay fairly close. There's a reason it's a goal.

Well, the other day I was in a surplus. That's no problem. It was a small surplus, and I'd been in deficit many days in a row. I think it was from some cheese, and I enjoyed it without any regrets. Oddly, as the evening continued, without eating anything else, my surplus got larger. Instead of my day-to-day activities adding to my deficit, it was actually taking away active calorie expenditure it had already reported to MFP. I thought that was just weird.