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Really helpful email I got from MFP support re: fit bit sync etc..
Hi,
You burn a fair number of calories over the course of the day just by sustaining your normal bodily functions. Our estimate for how many calories you will burn is based on your weight, age, gender, and the activity level you report in your profile. From this, we subtract an amount of calories so that you will be at a deficit every day if you eat your calorie goal. Thus, you will lose weight because your body will need to burn some of its stored fat to make up the difference. We show this goal as your NetCalorie goal, and you are essentially counting down to zero from this goal, every time you log food that you've eaten.
If you log exercise, this represents EXTRA burned calories that our estimate of your normal activity has not accounted for. Because our goal is to keep you at a steady, healthy, sustainable amount of weight loss, you "earn back" these exercise calories as additional calories to eat. Exercising is like making a deposit in your calorie account. You make the withdrawal by eating. Because our initial calculation ALREADY puts you in a weight loss deficit, eating "back" the calories you exercised will not slow your weight loss, but it will nourish your body which is depleted after burning the extra calories. So, your calorie goal on our site starts at a number that counts down to zero as you eat, but exercise that you record pushes that number back up a bit, so that you don't undernourish your body.
The Fitbit site counts UP from zero, as it calculates how many calories you have burned over the course of a day. If, when our two sites compare their information, it seems that you are being more active on a given day than our general estimate takes into account, you "earn" those extra calories as well. Again, the goal here is to keep you at a healthy, steady calorie deficit. The relationship between our site and the Fitbit site takes into account any exercise you record. If, beyond our initial estimate of your calorie goal, and the exercise you log, the Fitbit shows that you are being more active than we expected, then you earn those extra calories back. The way our site accounts for this is to add JUST the difference in calories to your exercise diary as a "Fitbit Calorie Adjustment"
Because our site is counting down from a goal number to zero, and the fitbit.com site is counting UP from zero, you will never actually see, on our site, the number of calories that you see on the Fitbit site. What you will see is the anticipated DIFFERENCE between what you're burning in Fitbit's tracking of your movement, and what we expected you to burn based on our estimate, recorded as an exercise. The adjustment represents our projection of your calorie adjustment for the entire remainder of the day. As you are more or less active, the adjustment will become more precise. We base the projection on your activity level early in the day, and "assume" you will be "as active" the rest of the day. If this proves not to be the case based on later updates from the Fitbit device, we'll raise or lower your adjustment to fine tune it.
If you look back through your exercise diary pages, you will likely see some days in which a Fitbit calorie adjustment has been added, and others when it has not. The days where the adjustment appears will be the days that you were more active than usual, apart from any exercise that you logged as such using the MFP site.
Please note that the Fitbit integration can only ADD calories to your daily need, so it may be necessary to lower your MFP profile's activity level one notch or more, to give the Fitbit "elbow room" to do its work.
It is important to be sure that your profile information on our site and the fitbit.com site matches, in terms of your height, weight, age, gender, etc. so that the Fitbit is calculating your caloric burn as accurately as possible.
Let us know if that helps. Feel free to contact us if you have any other problems or questions. We wish you all the success in reaching and maintaining all of your diet and fitness goals0 -
Thanks that was very helpful!
I did figure out a lot of that over the last couple days and it seems to be making sense now. After I get my first weeks report I am going to change my MFP calorie goal to reflect the average for the week and then I think I will sync the two. So far I have burned more than my scooby calculation every day. And today I didn't even go to the gym!
Did you see the setting under :"food plan" where you set your goal weight and then it tells you how many calories you can eat that day based on previous activity? It goes up or down based on how active you are that day.0 -
yep I'm loving it... I've had a week of rest (no gym) and currently my average cut (I'm using -250kcal) is bigger than the tdee of strenuous exercise scooby gave me... and previously I was using moderate activity and trying to cut... no wonder I cut caving in to spike days... I am loving this... finally I can see that I'm not greedy or lacking self control... I have just been eating too too little even at 2000 kcal a day... now I'm on 2250 approx perday on rest so looking forward to a big dinner tomorrow as its my first day back at the gym so reakon ill be hitting 2500 or so!! :-) yummmmmmmy0
