Bodymedia calorie adjustment questions

syk731
syk731 Posts: 34 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
First post here. I've tried searching, but didn't find the answer to my question, and I hope someone can help me.

I track my food with MFP and I also have a Bodymedia Link to track my activity/exercise.

I've noticed that when I link the Bodymedia first thing in the morning before I get out of bed (I like to look at my sleep), I already have a BodyMedia calorie adjustment. This seems odd to me, because I haven't even done any activity yet, so I feel like I shouldn't have exercise calories first thing in the AM. This number is usually around 400.

I usually work out right after I get out of bed, and then sync again, and the calorie adjustment number gets bigger. How much bigger depends on how much/what kind of exercise I do, but it typically goes up to 700-1000. However, I've also started noticing that later in the afternoon (I have a sedentary job, so I do most of my activity first thing in the AM, and then I'm not that active until I get home from work), that the calorie adjustment number gets smaller than it was earlier in the morning.

I don't quite get this, as I figure that I'm only burning more calories as the day goes on, so how come this number gets smaller (some days - not all days) as the day goes on? I thought that this calorie adjustment number was accounting for any exercise/activity that the BodyMedia was picking up that was beyond what MFP calculated for me based on my profile settings. But if this is the case, why does the number get smaller sometimes as the day goes on?

Replies

  • syk731
    syk731 Posts: 34 Member
    So this morning, right when I woke up, I synced the BodyMedia. My total calories burned so far was 420. Yet my adjusted exercise calories in MFP was 489 - more than my total for the day so far. This doesn't make sense to me.

    I exercised and then my bodymedia has total calories at 856 and MFP has the calorie adjustment at 839.

    Am I doing something wrong?
  • syk731
    syk731 Posts: 34 Member
    Now my exercise calories are 660, down from this AM.

    Anyone?
  • ssdivot
    ssdivot Posts: 193
    Hi there,

    I've had my Bodymedia Link almost a month now. I thinkg I know exactly what you are talking about. I don't think you can see it in the BM app, but if you go to the activity manager at the Bodymedia Fit website, and look at your calorie burn early in the day (after having updated it say after you get up in the morning), it will show how many calories you burned so far, and if you mouse over the light blue area of the bar denoting the rest of the day, it shows "a burn estimation" for the whole rest of the day. Also gives a message like "we estimate you'll be blah blah calories below or above your target". Ok so its transferring that to MFP and MFP is using it to make a calorie adjustment to what you should eat because it thinks it knows how much you're going to burn that day.

    Like you though, I have found that the calorie adjustment (and thus the esitmate the BMF is making of what your total burn for the day will be) is very high to start out, particularly if I exercise early in the day. Then it adjusts as the day goes on. I think its just a quirk of the system that maybe hasn't been ironed out well. I know the BMF will adjust itself as time goes on and it gets your routine down and "learns" etc. I dont know if it will apply to this feature or not though. Because I can't say that mine seems any better at estimating what I'll burn for the rest of the day than it was at the start.

    I now know how many calories approx I will burn based on what I did that day, based on just seeing the end of day burns from my BMF. So I'm pretty good at estimating about how much I will be over or under. Before I got into the groove I just waited til the next day to eat back any calories that I had "earned" the previous day. So that the earned calories MFP was using was the actual calorie burn for that day rather than an estimate.

    Maybe someone who has more info about this will chime in, it is a good question!

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