Fitbit information and experience

MPD6944

You do not have to enter your calories into both programs. The link between Fitbit and MFP works both ways. If you enter your food into MFP, the summary for your meals will transfer over to Fitbit, just as your steps, activity minutes and exercise minutes from Fitbit will show up in MFP. Both programs will show more detail about their logs, but the important stuff moves back and forth automatically. If you were to put something in both programs, you would be either double-credited (exercise) or penalized (calories).

Thanks! I'm thinking maybe mine isn't synching right or something, as I put the food in the MFP but I don't see on the FitBit app the calories eaten still says 0. That's why I thought we had to put them in both places. Maybe I should uninstall and reinstall the FitBit app?

I just double-checked my dashboard and it's definitely showing my calories eaten so far today, so it's not a system problem. Uninstalling and reinstalling the app couldn't hurt. You might also try deleting the sync and then setting it again if that doesn't work.

I figured out the problem and mine is working perfectly now - yay!

SherryTeach

The One will give you extra calories for stair and hill climbing.

It doesn't affect calories. The floors is just a stand-alone number. I mean, the motion/steps of climbing stairs does but not the altimeter reading.

I thought that fitbit did add calories for stair climbing. During my time in San Francisco, I sometimes had 80-90 flights of stairs from the hills. I ended up with a way higher calorie count for those days, even factoring in the steps compared to my normal counts.

WalkingAlong

They say it doesn't and I think that's true because I've had days with weird weather where it credited me hundreds of floors when I did zero but my calorie count was the same as usual. You can't delete floors and they tend to get crazy high in some weather conditions so they sort of have to make it not add to calories.

But I think that the accelerometer does detect more impact and a greater motion of your body from walking on inclines and give you a higher calorie burn for that. It definitely doesn't estimate calories by 'steps x Y'. The impact and speed and amount of motion matters.

philco41

Thanks for all the replies. I follow most of the suggestions made, but still encounter the same problems after a few months of use. I carry a pedometer also which I know to be quite accurate in terms of step counting. Fitbit is in general about 15-20% off from my pedometer readings, usually on the high side. It has to be the arm movement. (I probably spend a lot of time scratching my head wondering why my fitbit is so off, and fitbit counts it as steps...) Fitbit seems to count most steps at the same rate. When I used just my pedometer to count and record my walking on MFP, I counted only active walking, and my figures were much more accurate. In those days, I would have 200-300 extra calories. I am walking a bit more now, but fitbit wants to give me 700-900 extra calories earned. If I ate them all back, I'd be back over 200 lbs. by now. If I lost weight at the rate MFP now says I should at the end of each day, I'd probably be under 160 by now. It's a bit frustrating. I finally gave Fitbit a 3 star review on Amazon, and called it an "overpriced marginally accurate pedometer with a few extra bells and whistles." I'm thinking of sticking it in my pocket with my pedometer to see if it does better. Has anyone tried this?