Fitbit users

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treeselynn78
treeselynn78 Posts: 14 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
MFP keeps changing my exercise cals. Yersterday I had around 890 exercise cals which was great...today I log on and it changed yesterdays from 890 to 310. How can that be?? How can I lose cals I've already burned??? This is not the first time this has happened. I can't keep an accurate count if it changes after the fact....so frustrating.

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  • brianpperkins
    brianpperkins Posts: 6,124 Member
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    Do you have negative calorie adjustments enabled in your settings?
  • treeselynn78
    treeselynn78 Posts: 14 Member
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    I'm not even sure what that means....if that's a default setting then yes.
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
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    MFP has a Fitbit Users group: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/forums/show/1307-fitbit-users

    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 (not including exercise). 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 http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings 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.)

    It will take trial & error to find what settings work best for you.
  • 4legsRbetterthan2
    4legsRbetterthan2 Posts: 19,590 MFP Moderator
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    If you go to the apps tab on your computer and then settings there is a setting for negative calorie adjustments. Usually MFP will reconize exercises that fitbit can't really track (weight lifting). I have seen though that for exercises like running or walking that MFP is supposed to depend on fitbit for fitbit will negatively adjust. So basically if you log a run or a walk yourself but do not take your fitbit with you then fitbit is going to tell MFP you did not actually do it.
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
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    Do not log step based exercise. Non-step workouts can be logged either in Fitbit or in MFP. (Leave your Fitbit on during your workout.) I find Fitbit's burns to be way more accurate than MFP's one-size-fits-all guesstimates.

    Edited to add that you should be sure Fitbit's calorie estimation is disabled:
    https://www.fitbit.com/user/profile/edit

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