Negative Calories and Exercise

MadFrankie99

Hi guys,

Just got a Jawbone Up and on the second day of using it. I'm pretty techy so get the ins and outs but one thing I've just noticed has got me thinking and there must be a way around it.

I've allowed negative calories to enable me to see how close my TDEE is against the 'sedentary' option on MFP. I have a desk job and know I don't do much moving during the day, (I'm hoping the Up will inspire me to a few laps around the cap park)...

I log all my food on MFP and also my cardio exercise, (I'm doing T25 daily so lots of plyometrics etc that the Up wouldn't accurately calculate), so just leaving the Up to count steps and any dog walking I do.

I've just looked at todays adjustment, (and I know it's a guesstimate for the whole day based on what I've done so far), and I get the following:

Up projected burn 2244
MFP calories burned 2587 (inc 260 from my T25 exercise)

Therefore Up has adjusted MFP by -343

Now the problem I have noticed is that effectively the Up adjustment doesn't take into account my exercise while the MFP does, meaning the Up adjustment is cancelling out my exercise calories. In reality the difference is 343 - 260 = 83...therefore Up should adjust by -83 calories...

I can't find a setting to include or exclude exercise and I want to allow negative calories as it will encourage and tell me that I need to do more walking to fit into the sedentary category and help me lose weight.

Does anyone know how to stop or correct this?

editorgrrl

No need to log step-based activity, as your UP is already tracking that for you. Non-step exercise can be logged either in UP or in MFP. (I find UP's burns to be way more accurate than MFP's one-size-fits-all guesstimates.)

It will take trial & error to find what works for you. Since you don't like logging in MFP, try logging in UP.

MadFrankie99

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. The problem I think is that the Up doesn't, (I tried yesterday), and probably can't accurately log my T25 exercise. It is a lot of squats, lunges, compound movements including sit ups, planks etc. If the Up could do this accurately then I'd probably refuse to wear it and burn it accusing it of witchcraft!

So, I have to log this exercise in MFP, however everything else is done on the Up, (walking the dog etc), the problem is that as the Up doesn't know about the T25 exercise I put into MFP, (I can't see a way to get them to sync exercise calories from MFP to Up), it's taking calories off me that I have actually expended.

So are you saying that I can log exercise in the Up and it will sync back to MFP in terns of calories burned? Is there a way to do this the other way, to log it in MFP and get the Up to take it into account?

editorgrrl

Food only syncs one way, from MFP to UP. Exercise syncs both ways. When you log in MFP, you're asked for start & end times and MFP overrides your step data during that time.

You log workouts in UP by touching the orange activity tab, then the + in the top right.

Edited to clarify that you should log in one or the other—never both.

MadFrankie99

Hi,

Thanks, I must be missing something as I don't have times in MFP when I add my T25 cardio...I'll go and do some investigating.

Ideally I'd like to log food and 'alternative exercise that the Up couldn't calculate' in MFP and then have the UP for just daily walking etc so it sounds like it should all be working that way.

I'll go and play...wonder if it's because the exercise is one I've added in the 'My exercises' section so doesn't have the info the Up needs...

Thanks again, off to play about on the MFP website.


EDIT > Actually just re-reading what you are saying I think I've found the problem - I shouldn't add my exercise until I actually am about to do it - especially if MFP overrides any step data during that time.

For example, if I was to now add a 25 minute exercise, (that I will actually be doing tonight), MFP would assume it to be being done now. If during the next 25 minutes I walked 1000 steps MFP would ignore those steps as it assumes I was doing the exercise at that time...so again I would lose calories...

I think I get it now, slightly twisted logic but understandable. It's almost trying to pre-empt that the user will try to log the exercise in MFP as well as take the data from the Up so it deletes it itself. I'd prefer to say that if I added an exercise in MFP that it isn't something that the Up would log so is extra but hey ho...at least I know...

MadFrankie99

Hi, me again. Still confused, I'm sure the Up isn't logging the exercise I'm putting into MFP.

I'm not getting a time option when I put it into MFP and looking at the Up graph the 30 minutes when I did the exercise is down as 0 steps with nothing else there to show some exercise.

How does exercise show on other peoples graphs? Is it a little icon or does it translate the calorie burned into the step equivalent?

EDIT > For completion if others have a similar question. I've found on various Up forums and the Jawbone support website itself that MFP doesn't pass exercise info to the Up, only the other way around.

So, if you want to log exercise you need to do it in the Up app, and just log food in MFP. Either that or log it in MFP but expect your Up calorie deficit to be out by the sum of your MFP logged exercise, (ie of MFP says you have burned 300 calories on exercise and the Up adjustment is -300 then you are actually bang on your calorie amount).

mkc401

This is seems to be a common question as I've seem it posted in a few different areas...

MadFrankie, I agree with you that you only log exercise in Up and food in MFP, but my question is that the calories burned in Up don't really come over to MFP as high as I would expect, see below.

I've been using both Up and MFP together for about 5 months now, and I still have questions on how the Up measured activity translates to the exercise calories reflected on MFP. At the end of the day, or whenever I sync Up, shouldn't my "Active Burn" calories on Up be the same as my "exercise" calories on MFP? I seem to get a much lower adjustment in MFP than what is shown on Up.

That all said, I do think the Up Active Burn calories are a little inflated, so I have been still adding exercise calories to MFP ...but I give them a haircut or only input what I know I burned from a treadmill, calculator, etc. I just wonder if I'm giving myself too much of a break by adding these on top of the puny :-) adjustment coming in from Up?

editorgrrl

At the end of the day, or whenever I sync Up, shouldn't my "Active Burn" calories on Up be the same as my "exercise" calories on MFP? I seem to get a much lower adjustment in MFP than what is shown on Up.

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 & weight, to estimate how many calories you burn every day (minus 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.)

Cameo530

MadFrankie, I just came on here looking for an answer to that exact question. When I log "extra" exercise in MFP, the math just doesn't make sense. I was kayaking earlier this evening and took my UP off and wore a HRM to track what I burned while paddling. When I entered that in MFP, the numbers went screwy. And there's no way to enter kayaking in UP besides using "Other Exercise" which overstated the calories burned, even at the easiest setting. I had to fiddle with the amount of time to get an accurate number. Hopefully this is something they'll address in an update or something.

MadFrankie99

MadFrankie, I just came on here looking for an answer to that exact question. When I log "extra" exercise in MFP, the math just doesn't make sense. I was kayaking earlier this evening and took my UP off and wore a HRM to track what I burned while paddling. When I entered that in MFP, the numbers went screwy. And there's no way to enter kayaking in UP besides using "Other Exercise" which overstated the calories burned, even at the easiest setting. I had to fiddle with the amount of time to get an accurate number. Hopefully this is something they'll address in an update or something.

Hi, yeah I find it quite annoying. I get that the Up wants to calculate your total burn but it forgets that it can't do it accurately for all things and I find adding an exercise to MFP far, far easier than on the Up app.

I'd like there to be an option for the Up to ignore any exercise put into MFP when comparing calories burned that way it would all be fine.

MadFrankie99

Hi,

One new development, it seems that if I add exercise to the previous day the Up doesn't change it so I've started to work out my calories as if I had entered the exercise on MFP and then actually add it back in the day after.

Bit of a faff but it just means that my numbers and graphs are correct by the end of the week.