Can someone help me to understand “Calories Remaining” indicator?

connor_manning

IMG_0036.png

Just want to see if someone can help me wrap my head around this? I get the Base Goal - Food consumed, obviously.

But why is exercise also being subtracted from the total? The picture is just from my steps for the day before I go for a run or spend time in the gym later.

Just want to make sure I understand how it works correctly. Thanks!

AnnPT77

Do you have a fitness tracker synced to MFP, and negative adjustments enabled? If yes, one way a person can get negative exercise calories happens when the tracker sees less calorie burn than the person's MFP profile settings had caused MFP to estimate as base calories.

connor_manning

@AnnPT77 I do have it set like that. Should I turn the negative exercise calories off then?

AnnPT77

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48524690#Comment_48524690

I wouldn't turn negative adjustments off. That would mean MFP would add calories when the tracker saw you being more active than MFP expected, but never correct the calorie goal in cases where the tracker saw you as being less active than MFP expected. That doesn't seem like a good thing to me, because it would make the calorie goal less realistic or predictable, seems like.

First, let's clarify something: If the screen shot you posted happened only part way through the day, it may be misleading. With at least some trackers, MFP and the tracker may compare calorie figures multiple times per day. At the times when the day isn't over yet, they sort of project, estimate . . . guess? . . . what's going to happen by the end of the day, based on what's happened so far. Depending on how you distribute activity through your day, like highly active early but sedentary later or vice-versa, some of those intermediate calorie adjustments may seem a little weird. By the end of the full day, i.e., midnight-ish, the tracker should be reconciling the total activity it actually saw with what MFP expected. That total/final adjustment should be semi-realistic.

That's just background info, though. You could still get a negative adjustment for the full day.

Did you by any chance set your MFP activity level in a way that included both your daily life activity, plus your exercise activity? Or just set it higher than may be realistic a fair fraction of the time? If so, that's what I'd suggest changing.

In general, MFP expects you to set your activity level based on daily life excluding intentional exercise. If you have a tracker synced and enable negative adjustments, by end of day the calorie adjustments will still reconcile what the tracker saw with what MFP expected even with a high activity level setting, but you have more chances of getting negative adjustments even by end of day, if you happen to be less active than the activity level setting assumes.

Some people who sync trackers even decide to set their MFP activity level to sedentary/not very active - the lowest activity level, even when that's not true - so that any adjustments they get are likely to be positive adjustments. (I suppose there could still be a negative adjustment if sick so stayed in bed all day or something, but that would be rare, right?)

I'm not sure what I'm writing is going to be clear, but I hope so. The TL;DR is that I'd suggest setting your MFP activity level on the lowest realistic setting or lower, but keeping negative adjustments enabled. That would likely give you more positive adjustments than negative ones, overall, by end of day. You might still get some odd intra-day adjustments, but that ought to give you the most realistic final goal overall. After you have a bit of experience with the adjustments, you'll get a better feel for what to expect by end of day.

Also, remember that if you end up with a bunch of extra calories you can/should eat at the end of a day, but aren't hungry or don't want to eat close to bedtime, you can bank those calories and eat them later. I wouldn't hold onto them forever, but some people like to have some extras on the weekend, or something like that.

One final thing: Keep in mind that all of this is just estimates, MFP's calorie needs estimate, your tracker's calorie burn estimate, even your food log. They just need to be workably close estimates, not exact.

On the food logging side, that's about being as complete and accurate as practical without going crazy-obsessive about it.

On the calorie burn side, that's about testing out your calorie goal by sticking close to it on average for 4-6 weeks (minimum one full menstrual cycle if you were female), then comparing real-world average weekly results to what you expected. That length of time will give you enough real-world experience to adjust your calorie goal if necessary.

You probably wouldn't do this, but some people think the trackers measure our calorie burn. They seriously, seriously don't. The do provide pretty nuanced estimates, but those estimates are still based on population-average data for similar demographics. Not every individual is average! Most people are close, but a few aren't.

I'm one of the weirdos. My good brand/model fitness tracker - one that others report as estimating well for them - underestimates my calorie needs by 25-30% compared to nearly 10 years of careful logging data. That's hundreds of calories per day! (MFP underestimates by a similar amount, BTW.) It's rare to be that far off, but it's possible. It's not that the tracker is inaccurate, it's more like I'm non-average. 😉😆

Figuring that kind of thing out is what the 4-6 week trial idea can help with. Decent odds you'll be close to the estimates, but . . . it's good to know one way or the other.

If this doesn't make sense, isn't clear, or you have questions, please ask. If I can't answer, maybe someone else can.