FitBit Help...

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shocktastic
shocktastic Posts: 106 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi there..I am a bit confused. I just got my FitBit and I synced it with MFP..I have the exact same settings (weight/goal, etc) and My FitBit Dashboard says I get approx 1600 calories a day (that is with the -500 deficit)..And my MFP account says I get 1330 calories a day? And on top of that FB is tracking calories burned and deducting them from my Calories on MFP..SO confused don't know what I am suppose to be doing now? Can anyone shed some light in LAMENS terms..! Thanks

Replies

  • GauchoMark
    GauchoMark Posts: 1,804 Member
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    what is the calorie adjustment that fitbit made to MFP and what are your goals set at?

    The fitbit is going to log your activity during the day and when it syncs, it will make activity adjustments to MFP. That is normal and exactly how you want it to work (unless you have some special reason not to). All fitbit sends to MFP is total calories burned, then MFP adjusts that to match what it has set up. So, you can have your goals set up differently on the sites and it won't matter - each site will follow its OWN goals. So, if you want them to match, set up the goals the same.

    I will mention that until you get close to midnight, the fitbit number may be off a little because it tries to predict how many calories you are GOING to burn, but that usually is just of by about 50 calories or less.
  • beccaroo7
    beccaroo7 Posts: 6
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    Hi, I just got a fitbit and had the same problem. You can personalize you calorie goal in fitbit to match your calorie goal in myfitnesspal. Just log on to fitbit and at the top it should say dashboard, log, community, premium...just click log, then go down to food plan and click the blue setting tab and it will say change your daily calorie estimate, just click personalize and you can put in the same calorie goal thats in myfitnesspal.
  • shocktastic
    shocktastic Posts: 106 Member
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    It won't let me personalize it..Just gives me an option of Personalized and just bases it off past activity won't let me put in a number and Sedentary and then it drops it super low..UGH..I don't get this at all! Thanks
  • GauchoMark
    GauchoMark Posts: 1,804 Member
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    the "personalized" option is just telling the fitbit that you want it to estimate your future activity based off past history.
  • shocktastic
    shocktastic Posts: 106 Member
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    SO should I put it at "Sedentary"?? New at this so forgive my ignorance!
  • GauchoMark
    GauchoMark Posts: 1,804 Member
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    on the fitbit site, it really doesn't matter what setting you put in. You are still going to go by MFP, fitbit will just supply MFP with how many TOTAL calories you burned for the day.

    I rarely even log into fitbit's site. I use MFP to log all my food, so I'm not trying to hit a goal on fitbits site.

    As far as marking sedentary or not, are you talking about on MFP's site? Again, it doesn't REALLY matter because fitbit is going to adjust your activity level to whatever it needs to be anyways by doing a calorie adjustment. I'd set MFP to sedentary and let your actual activity that is measured by fitbit increase your calories as needed.
  • beccaroo7
    beccaroo7 Posts: 6
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    Ok...go to log..then click food..go down to food plan, click the arrow key until it says plan summary...then click edit plan, it will show your goal weight just click next and it will say food plan..go to bottom and click set my own calorie target and you will be able to set your calories.
  • vegapsi
    vegapsi Posts: 25
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    How I do it is this: Set up MFP to sedentary and to maintain. At the end of the day, on MFP, you should still show you have 500 calories remaining if that's your goal deficit, or 250, etc and your fitbit dashboard will be right on. It's not a perfect system but it works pretty well for me.
  • GauchoMark
    GauchoMark Posts: 1,804 Member
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    How I do it is this: Set up MFP to sedentary and to maintain. At the end of the day, on MFP, you should still show you have 500 calories remaining if that's your goal deficit, or 250, etc and your fitbit dashboard will be right on. It's not a perfect system but it works pretty well for me.

    why set up MFP to maintain then manually try to reserve a deficit? Wouldn't it be easier to just set MFP up with a loss goal so it includes your deficit so all you have to do is have zero calories remaining at the end of the day?
  • shocktastic
    shocktastic Posts: 106 Member
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    Ok...go to log..then click food..go down to food plan, click the arrow key until it says plan summary...then click edit plan, it will show your goal weight just click next and it will say food plan..go to bottom and click set my own calorie target and you will be able to set your calories.

    Thank you!! Got it!!
  • shocktastic
    shocktastic Posts: 106 Member
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    How I do it is this: Set up MFP to sedentary and to maintain. At the end of the day, on MFP, you should still show you have 500 calories remaining if that's your goal deficit, or 250, etc and your fitbit dashboard will be right on. It's not a perfect system but it works pretty well for me.

    why set up MFP to maintain then manually try to reserve a deficit? Wouldn't it be easier to just set MFP up with a loss goal so it includes your deficit so all you have to do is have zero calories remaining at the end of the day?

    Thank you!
  • vegapsi
    vegapsi Posts: 25
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    How I do it is this: Set up MFP to sedentary and to maintain. At the end of the day, on MFP, you should still show you have 500 calories remaining if that's your goal deficit, or 250, etc and your fitbit dashboard will be right on. It's not a perfect system but it works pretty well for me.

    why set up MFP to maintain then manually try to reserve a deficit? Wouldn't it be easier to just set MFP up with a loss goal so it includes your deficit so all you have to do is have zero calories remaining at the end of the day?

    Because of the issue the OP brought up, they aren't the same numbers between MFP and Fitbit. I'd rather go off my custom TDEE that fitbit does for me while using MFP to track my food/macros as I find it easier than the Fitbits food tracker. Find the Fitbit group in here, there's a TON of info on it and I spent a lot of time just reading through threads when I first got mine.
  • tehzephyrsong
    tehzephyrsong Posts: 435 Member
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    I have a Fitbit Zip. My Fitbit calorie [burn] goal is approximately my TDEE; I use that number to subtract and find my MFP calorie [consumption] goal. I can't quite get MFP to estimate my TDEE equal to Fitbit's estimation, but whatever, if MFP is estimating it a little higher than that just means I'll eat less because it'll show fewer exercise calories. I don't let Fitbit make negative calorie adjustments because my schedule is erratic and I can't usually sync until late, and I've stopped logging exercise through MFP. Basically, Fitbit just tracks my exercise. I wear it all day, only take it off for sleeping and showering (and *ahem* *wink nudge*...which I do log here, lol).
  • LAnne16
    LAnne16 Posts: 272 Member
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    I have a Fitbit Zip. My Fitbit calorie [burn] goal is approximately my TDEE; I use that number to subtract and find my MFP calorie [consumption] goal. I can't quite get MFP to estimate my TDEE equal to Fitbit's estimation, but whatever, if MFP is estimating it a little higher than that just means I'll eat less because it'll show fewer exercise calories. I don't let Fitbit make negative calorie adjustments because my schedule is erratic and I can't usually sync until late, and I've stopped logging exercise through MFP. Basically, Fitbit just tracks my exercise. I wear it all day, only take it off for sleeping and showering (and *ahem* *wink nudge*...which I do log here, lol).

    How do you log that?! the *wink nudge* I've been so curious... hahah.

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