Fitbit calorie adjustments

brandnewsnickerpuss
brandnewsnickerpuss Posts: 110 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I don't know if anyone else is experiencing this, but the Fitbit seems to be WAY over-estimating my calories burned. If I walk for 60 minutes at a slow pace and enter that on MFP, it says I've burned about 255 calories, which for my weight sounds about right. But then Fitbit comes along and "adjusts" my calorie burn by another 250 or so, which adds more calories to "eat" for my day, which makes me feel way out of whack. Should I be trusting this, or is there a flaw in the syncing?

Replies

  • catfive1
    catfive1 Posts: 529 Member
    Fitbit is already counting your steps for your everyday activity. If you log your walk into MFP it is a double entry. ie: Fitbit has already accounted for it.

    This is my take on it anyway.
  • Joannesmith2818
    Joannesmith2818 Posts: 438 Member
    ^ what catfive says. Only log exercises that Fitbit cant track in MFP, like cycling or weightlifting.
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
    Don't log step based activity. That's what the adjustments are for. Log non-step based activity (like swimming or spinning) either in Fitbit or in MFP--never both. If you choose to log in MFP, you'll be asked for start & end times. Then MFP overrides your step data during that time.

    MFP has a "Fitbit Users" group: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/forums/show/1307-fitbit-users

    Edited to add an explanation of exercise adjustments:

    When you set up your MFP account, you specified an activity level: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/change_goals_guided MFP used your answer, plus your age, sex & height, to estimate how many calories you burn every day (your TDEE). Then you set your weight-loss goal, and MFP subtracted the appropriate deficit to calculate your daily calorie goal.

    Once you link an activity tracker to your MFP account (via the "Apps" tab at the top of every page), you start getting calorie adjustments. If your tracker says you burned more calories than MFP estimated, you get a positive adjustment (meaning more calories to eat). If you enable negative calorie adjustments and you burn less than the MFP estimate, you will lose calories. (But negative calorie adjustments will never drop your daily calories below 1,200.)

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