Very confused about this fitbit business

lauriej143
lauriej143 Posts: 8 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Ok, so after trawling through the site I really couldn't find the answer to my question!

I just got a fitbit and I am really confused. I have synced them up etc and it is calculating that I should eat 1700 calories per day (well this obv goes up and down dependent on activity level).

My question is what do I set my calorie goal in MFP at? I currently have it set at BMR and then would eat back the exercise calories input from fitbit. Do I set MFP at the goal fitbit sets and just delete the exercise that it adds in? Thanks!

Replies

  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
    MFP has a Fitbit Users group: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/forums/show/1307-fitbit-users

    Go to the "Apps" tab http://www.myfitnesspal.com/apps/show/30 and connect your Fitbit & MFP accounts. MFP sends your water & aggregate meal data to Fitbit. Fitbit sends your TDEE to MFP, and MFP adjusts your calorie goal. Do not log any step based activity. Log non-step workouts in Fitbit or in MFP. The choice is yours.

    It will take trial & error to find what settings work best for you:

    Enable negative calorie adjustments:
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

    Lower your activity level:
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/change_goals_guided

    Enable/disable Fitbit's calorie estimation:
    http://www.fitbit.com/user/profile/edit

    Edited to add that Fitbit pro-rates your calories by time of day (and goes way below 1,200), so I ignore it & follow MFP's calorie goal. Again, YMMV.
  • dawlschic007
    dawlschic007 Posts: 636 Member
    There are a few ways you can do this.

    1) Enter your calories settings on MFP as 1700 and then don't eat above that. I'd still enter your workouts here because it's nice to have an accurate track record for them but just know not to go above the 1700 unless you are really active that day.

    2) Change FitBits settings to match MFP's. So for instance, I have mine set to lose 0.5 lbs per week on both MFP and FitBit and make sure your activity levels are set correctly on both. That will balance out to be essentially the same thing on MFP and FitBit, but they will just look a little different at the start of the day since FitBit already includes your activity levels in the calorie count for the day and MFP doesn't because they want you to workout more.

    Either one works, it just depends on how you want to view the data.

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