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SuzCruz159
SuzCruz159 Posts: 28 Member
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Hello! I got my BMF on 9/20 & still trying to figure out these numbers.
Yesterday I did 10.8 mile bike ride so with that and all the day's activity it's showing 1:55 Moderate activity.
This morning I did 50 mins Les Mills Pump, it's showing I did 3 mins of moderate activity. If I did step aerobics or running would it record more because my feet are moving more?
Is there anyway to manually change the amount of time? I have my workout listed in MFP, will that transfer over at some point?
Thanks for the help!

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  • SJCon
    SJCon Posts: 224
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    you can go into your "Setting" than "preferences" and toward the bottom you will see where you can adjust the "met" trigger points for moderate and vigorous. By changing those values and looking at your dashboard you will see the change on the brown and yellow sections of your activity. I play around and set mine to where they are about where my heart rate is in zones for training. Brown for my "Fat burn" or low range and Yellow for my moderate range. They do not seem to have any effect on calorie calculations. I think they are more of a psychological "Activity measure, the same with steps.

    Oh if you list your exercise in MFP put only One calorie burned or you will double dip. The actual work you do while wearing your BMF is seen in the sensors as temp change etc.
  • SuzCruz159
    SuzCruz159 Posts: 28 Member
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    I'm usually good with gadgets (my sister calls me "Gadget Girl") but this is confusing the heck out of me. I changed my exercise to 1 in MFP & it went up about 7 pts in BMF so I just deleted the exercise from MFP & nothing changed in BMF. In MFP it shows "BodyMedia calorie adjustment 125" under Cardio Exercise.

    The other thing, I set my goal weight & I want to lose 2 lbs per week, doing moderate exercise.
    It looks like this on my activity manager:

    Calories Burned 3290 (target) 2223(actual)
    Calories Consumed 2290 (target) 1212 (actual)
    Calorie Balance 1000 (target) 972 deficit (actual)

    According to this, I set my target calories to be consumed in MFP to 2290, is this the correct way to do it? When I entered my goals in MPF it gives me 1574 allowed per day, that's a difference of 716 calories. 2290 just seems like a lot. I bike 3x a week 30-60 mins each time & do Les Mills Pump 3x a week for 45-55 mins each time. It's hard to judge what is Moderate or Vigorous. When my husband & I go biking 16-18 miles, my average speed is a slow 8-10 mph. In MFP it's listed as <10 mph leisurely. Let me tell you, it is NOT leisurely for me, but for my husband who is 100 lbs lighter than me it's not so strenuous for him.
    I still have at least 100 lbs to lose (down 61 so far). Today I just had a hard time to get my calories in. It seemed like I was eating or having a protein shake all day long.
    Sorry to blurt this all out. I'm kind of on the fence about sending this back because I just don't see how it can help me. I read so many reviews & watched YouTube videos before purchasing it. I really want it to work!
  • SJCon
    SJCon Posts: 224
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    For me I find terms like "moderate exercise' as knid of nebulous so I am "Sedentary" on Both MFP and BMF. Basically I am saying I will log all calories I burn exercising. MFP will go ahead and make an estimate to get what they think would be my TDEE (Total Daily energy expenditure), this is my BMR plus and allowance for what they consider "Sedentary". That may or may not be your TDEE, in fact it probably isn't, as you do "Extra" stuff like exercise you have to enter it and that increases you calories for the day that you should/could consume to keep you deficit. Bodymedia will do the same thing as well but the numbers won't match and BMF will probably be higher. Being conservative I use MFP's number, also you can't really mess with it like you can with BMF number. BMF has a slider in settings that let you move it to match MFPs goal. Once both match than your good to go, as you do your exercises they will show up as calories burned over your estimate and the extra will sync over to MFP to boots your budget there as well so they will move together.

    This is how I do it and then over time you will have history for your normal TDEE and you can just make your budget a percentage below that. I have found that when I use my HRM and compare it to the burn in BMF the are VERY close but that may not be true for everyone. I also like the flexibility to be lazy or sick or at work and not having to worry about missing some exercise that was in my "Moderately Active" estimate.

    Perhaps someone else can explain it better.
  • SuzCruz159
    SuzCruz159 Posts: 28 Member
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    I will keep playing with it! I suppose it may take some time to get to know my activity, etc. Thanks so much for your help!
  • lovebig30
    lovebig30 Posts: 167 Member
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    I have my bodymedia set to 2lb a week and mfp to 1.5 so my calories are about the same on both. bodymedia gives you calories based on your activity level and does't seem your hitting that burn maybe go in and change calories to lower both goals to something more your speed. my goal is to burn 2880 a day and most day I go over I work 50 hours on my feet and exercise 4 to 7 timesa week. . my calories to eat are 1880 I average over 2000. pulling up my report ive average a 682 calories defect over last two weeks I lost 3.8 lb in those 2 weeks. so it must be working. I have mfp set to moderate active level and anything I burn over on bodymedia is transferred as over as a adjustment to mfp depending on the day it ranges from 100 to 900 calories.
  • adiposediet
    adiposediet Posts: 26
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    Love this thread! I got set up with BodyMedia on Saturday and have been going crazy because my "net" on MFP has been dangerously low. I think I need to tweak my settings!
  • GeekyTechMom
    GeekyTechMom Posts: 3 Member
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    So this thread is old, but I started with the BodyBugg and have been pushed over to BMF. I have decided to use the mobile logging on MFP. I can give you a hint on this though... the deficit is what you aim for. If you want to lose 2lbs a week, then you want a 1000 calorie deficit each day. If you want 1lb it would be 500 each day. If you burn different calories each day, like most of us, just make sure that you have the proper deficit. Luckily the info you log into here goes to BMF. It is really easy to see your deficit there. I did come here and set my exercise to zero and then did a manual goal and set it at the calorie range for a 1000 deficit. I don't know yet how it will correlate, but my guess is that it will be easier for me just to log food here and use the BMF site to see where I am at on my calorie deficit. BMF also will guesstimate how much you will burn for the day, just scroll over the blue bar next to the calories burned. Before my workout, it will generally say I'm going to be 900 short. Today after my workout it said I will be 138 calories short, so I know I need to move a bit more or eat less to meet my deficit. I do however always eat at least 1200 calories, so I don't put myself in starvation mode.
  • verdemujer
    verdemujer Posts: 1,397 Member
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    I'll chime in to to say that BodyMedia doesn't do a good job recording bicycling. There's something about the way bicycling works that it just doesn't pick it up in the moderate/vigourous category. But since I started tracking my rides in Strava I have noticed that my calories burned in BodyMedia are pretty close to what I burned in Strava so I feel that the armband is actually being accurate on the calories I burn. I just look at the mod/vig as just another data bar and don't really care about it as much as the burn levels. I customize my settings for what I eat as my doc as me on a special diet so it's what I eat, not how much I need to look at over all. That being said, this month (Nov 2013) I'm in a MFP challenge where I have to exercise at least 20 min everyday, track all I eat and drink, and stay at my calorie goal. Since I was going closer to my calories that I could eat back in the last couple of months and this month I'm really trying hard to stick to what my consumpution goal is (1700 or so), I'm actually seeing some movement off the plateau. I find I really need both sites to make this whole thing work.
  • Room112
    Room112 Posts: 7 Member
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    If you have a HRM, use it to record your calories for certain exercises such as cycling, aerobics and weight training. Take the BMF off while you exercise and use the off-body feature to input the calories that you recorded on the HRM. That way you can still use the BMF to log your daily expenditure without worrying about accuracy.

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