Fitbit calorie adjustments

meggieemegz

So I've been eating healthy and counting calories for about 2 years now. At first I just followed the basic rules of eating at least 1200 calories a day, and exercising and I never worried about net calories or anything like that. I lost a lot of weight but now I noticed I feel like I'm at a plateau. I just got a fitbit about two months ago and have been using that. For awhile I read online about net calories, and I work on my feet all day at work sometimes 8 hours. 3-4 days a week, but only two of those days are long days. For example, I'm in retail and stocking and walk around my store all day. So I thought that I needed to eat back half of those calories (which I assumed I was burning a whole lot) so I figured I probably actually started to gain weight because it didn't help. So now I thought if I was to buy a fitbit it would be easier to sort it all out. And so far it has been pretty good, I went back down to eating 1200-1300 calories a day. My BMR is 1600. But do I even count what I do at work? On my days off I'm sedentary without a doubt unless I go to the gym but I usually would count those into MFP. So at the end of the day when I sync my fitbit, it adjusts my calories in MFP and ups them according to how I much I walked. But is it adding all the calories I burned? Or is it just adding enough so that I at least net 1200? And are these even the types of exercise calories I should eat back because it's not heart rate increasing type of exercise? I'm 5'7, 19, F and I'm currently at 180. I want to do whatever is best for my body. So I'm not sure if I eat these back or what? I find a lot of contradicting answers online. For example my fitbit only adjusted 187 more calories for me to eat which calculate to 1200, but is that everything extra I've done today or what? I worked about 5 hours and walked 1.3 miles? Any help would be appreciated

meggieemegz

Any help anyone?

Ataris9

Hi there!

I'm new to fitbit also, I've had mine for about a week and half and thoroughly enjoy the motivating factor of completing my goal for the day. I'm not really sure how it works, but if I tracked steps for the day it will transfer over to MFP. It's nice to know I have those extra calories to eat, so initially I did eat it back.

However, looking over the past few days, I don't know how accurate the calories burned are because I'm just walking around and I feel that I personally don't burn as much as fitbit says I do, so I've removed fitbit from MFP and decided not to count them.

If your daily activity is more vigorous than regular walking then I think it sound count. However, this is just my opinion, maybe a veteran fitbit user can have a more insightful response.

betreich

I started using a fitbit last May, but only discovered MFP this January, so have been using MFP since 6/1, and have my fitbit tied into it. How it seems to work is this - My activity level on MFP is set to lightly active - (my days are very different activity wise due to the kind of work I do). It seems that if I do more than aprox 5000 steps fitbit does a positive adjustment and gives me some more exercise calories. I assume if you have MFP set at a higher activity level the step number will be higher before you get a positive adjustment. I think it works brilliantly. I do log actual exercise differently - I recently got a HRM which I believe gives a more accurate calorie burn for my exercise - running, and cycling (which fitbit cant count properly). You can also set up so that fitbit does a negative calorie adjustment, so if you don't reach the activity level you have set MFP at it will take some away. I don't have MFP set to do that as would be very rare not to log at least 5000 steps, and psychologically that would be awful! By the way, I almost always eat back almost all of my exercise calories, and the weight is coming off as expected. Hope this helps.

meggieemegz

So I am right to eat back some calories from a 8 hour work day of walking around the store, lifting heavy things, stocking, etc? I don't eat back little workouts. I just wanna make sure I'm not ruining what I've burned

youdontknowwhatyousaw

Yes, because you're more active on that day than MFP assumed you would be.