Negative Net Calories
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Bwest66
Posts: 5 Member
Either I'm horrible at measuring servings, FitBit is off on converting steps to calories burned, my scale is totally off or my metabolism is slowing down. Before going too deep into my challenge, let me first say that I just want to know if MFP's calories burned "From normal activities" adjusts based on actual weight results you provide over time or if is just based on a demographic based math formula. If MFP's goals adjust then my net calorie issue will eventually result in an automated adjustment, otherwise I don't see a point beyond logging food for analysis elsewhere.
DETAILS
My food intake is either packaged foods (no significant chance of portion error), use a scale/cups as appropriate, or estimate my vegetables. Yes, I could be off but not by more than 5%.
On the FitBit side, I walk about 50 to 60 miles a week. I've done one mile test walks to check the steps to miles calibration. Yes, it was off 15% for treadmill but right on for mall (or linear trail) walking. Given the treadmill is about a third of my weekly walking I could easily discount the EXERCISE calories by 5% but that again wouldn't remotely make up the difference.
As for the scale it is a new digital at home, a digital at parents house (visited twice), or scale at the doctor's office (visited twice). They all are within 0.4 pounds of each other when comparing within an hour, so I really can't buy this is the issue.
At 3,500 calories per pound lost (yes I know this is a myth) and with all weight all measurements done just after waking the weight loss only accounts for 67% of the variance (assuming MFP's calories burned "From normal activities" is correct). I'm down 35 pounds over two months and thus would have expected "From normal activity" to drop but I haven't seen such.
ISSUE
Based on food logs I've eaten 26,057 calories in the last 16 days. Based on exercise logs (via FitBit) I've burned 66,829 calories but only 23,789 were used by MFP as the rest were considered "From normal activity". Subtracting eaten from what exercise calories MFP counts you get a NET food intake of 2,268 calories or 142 calories per day with seven of those days being negative and nine positive, but only once did I exceed the GOAL.
QUESTION
How can I adjust things to make the NET number meaningfully indicate how much extra food I can eat?
DETAILS
My food intake is either packaged foods (no significant chance of portion error), use a scale/cups as appropriate, or estimate my vegetables. Yes, I could be off but not by more than 5%.
On the FitBit side, I walk about 50 to 60 miles a week. I've done one mile test walks to check the steps to miles calibration. Yes, it was off 15% for treadmill but right on for mall (or linear trail) walking. Given the treadmill is about a third of my weekly walking I could easily discount the EXERCISE calories by 5% but that again wouldn't remotely make up the difference.
As for the scale it is a new digital at home, a digital at parents house (visited twice), or scale at the doctor's office (visited twice). They all are within 0.4 pounds of each other when comparing within an hour, so I really can't buy this is the issue.
At 3,500 calories per pound lost (yes I know this is a myth) and with all weight all measurements done just after waking the weight loss only accounts for 67% of the variance (assuming MFP's calories burned "From normal activities" is correct). I'm down 35 pounds over two months and thus would have expected "From normal activity" to drop but I haven't seen such.
ISSUE
Based on food logs I've eaten 26,057 calories in the last 16 days. Based on exercise logs (via FitBit) I've burned 66,829 calories but only 23,789 were used by MFP as the rest were considered "From normal activity". Subtracting eaten from what exercise calories MFP counts you get a NET food intake of 2,268 calories or 142 calories per day with seven of those days being negative and nine positive, but only once did I exceed the GOAL.
QUESTION
How can I adjust things to make the NET number meaningfully indicate how much extra food I can eat?
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Replies
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what!?0
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I think we need more details here before we can address the questions.
First off, are those total calories net (i.e. what is leftover after you've exercised) or gross? It looks like you're averaging just over 1600 cals/day. We don't know if that's enough because we don't have any of your statistics - height, weight, etc, and we don't have access to your food diary, so can't see what type of nutrition you are getting.
Also, if you are going by the FitBit, you are burning over 4000 cals/day, which seems quite extreme. Not sure how active you are, but again, it depends on weight and where you are in your journey. 35 lbs over two months is a lot, but if you have a lot to lose and you're just starting out, there are a lot of factors involved.
If you are really eating at such a large deficit, you should probably start increasing your daily caloric intake before you start causing damage to yourself.0 -
I think youre in kJ instead of calories.
26057kJ = 6223kcal which divided by 7 is about ~950kcal a day0 -
MFP's calculated calories for normal activity do vary by your input weight, but you have to tell it to update the goals, it doesn't automatically change it with weight change. It doesn't adjust the results by how fast you lose weight, but uses a formula based on physical stats.
It also goes to a minimum of 1200 a day, so if you're at that number because you've set it to one of the higher weight loss speeds, you may not see a change.
In theory, at the end of the day your NET number should be at whatever MFP has set your goal for that day, rather than zero or negative, so with the amount of exercise you seem to be doing, you probably have 1000+ calories you could eat per day.
On the other hand, I have no clue about the accuracy of your exercise or FitBit results, or your physical state, so all I can say is how the website is set up.0 -
Wow, I can't believe how fast and helpful everyone is and sorry for the confusion. My old food logging program constantly reset your caloric intake to achieve your desired weight. MFP seems to be trying to do the same based solely on your exercise but hopefully I'm wrong and they also adjust your FROM NORMAL DAILY ACTIVITY (Goals page) periodically as your metabolism changes.
Yes, I'm early in my alas all too long journey to just being OVER WEIGHT per BMI, thus the 35 pounds isn't a big deal. My desire now is to slow the weight loss down to a more sustainable and healthy level. I hoped to use the MFP calculations to do this but currently it doesn't appear either NET or REMAINING are useful (see paragraphs below). Thus I'm left with just guessing based on daily weighing which has it's own issues and am looking to the community for some setting I accidentally set or to a periodic MFP recalc that has yet to occur.
My original question relates to the home page numbers you see each day. The NET listed there is just EATEN minus EXERCISE. Yes, my calories EATEN averages about 1600 calories per day. Yes, my normal daily activity per FitBit is regularly over 4000 calories per day (as I walk an average of about 8 miles a day) but MFP counts only 1500 as exercise and considers the rest FROM NORMAL DAILY ACTIVITY (from GOALS page). The result of all this math is that seven of the last sixteen days I have had negative NET calories.
Another way to look at the same numbers within MFP is at the bottom of the food diary page; it summarizes your food log for a TOTAL calories. It then resets YOUR DAILY GOAL to be the difference in what you ate from your actual goal plus any exercise beyond your NORMAL DAILY ACTIVITIES. Lastly it subtracts the numbers to get REMAINING which seems to indicate extra food you can eat but as I mentioned seems to over emphasize exercise calories, allowing you to eat beyond what you should.
The reason I say eat more than you should is that your metabolism changes constantly. Based on MFP math the 8.3 pounds I lost in those sixteen days at the mythical 3500 calories only explains 67% of the calories. Thus had I eaten what was listed in REMAINING under in the food log, I would have eaten one third more food then appropriate.
I did rerun the GOALS to force a recalculation and will do so a few days in a row to see if it adjusts based on my weigh-ins but would love to hear about any other settings change you've come across.
MY NUMBERS
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Hopefully the tabbing works but you could do the same calculations on your own MFP diary.
FitBit Weight Normal
Goal Eaten Exercise Net Calories lost Activity Remaining
12-Dec 1,350 1,337 1,553 (216) 4,243 - 2690 1,566
11-Dec 1,350 1,627 755 872 3,445 (1.00) 2690 478
10-Dec 1,350 1,802 1,344 458 4,034 1.70 2690 892
9-Dec 1,350 1,725 2,512 (787) 5,202 3.30 2690 2,137
8-Dec 1,350 1,494 2,469 (975) 5,159 2.70 2690 2,325
7-Dec 1,350 1,713 687 1,026 3,377 (1.00) 2690 324
6-Dec 1,350 2,185 648 1,537 3,338 (3.70) 2690 (187)
5-Dec 1,350 913 1,730 (817) 4,420 2.00 2690 2,167
4-Dec 1,350 1,498 1,720 (222) 4,410 0.40 2690 1,572
3-Dec 1,350 2,094 1,483 611 4,173 1.30 2690 739
2-Dec 1,350 1,787 1,379 408 4,069 0.60 2690 942
1-Dec 1,350 1,173 1,481 (308) 4,171 1.60 2690 1,658
30-Nov 1,350 1,813 1,397 416 4,087 - 2690 934
29-Nov 1,350 2,054 1,545 509 4,235 0.40 2690 841
28-Nov 1,350 1,273 2,137 (864) 4,827 - 2690 2,214
27-Nov 1,350 1,753 964 789 3,654 - 2690 561
Sum 21,600 26,241 23,804 2,437 66,844 8.30 43,040 19,163
Avg 1,350 1,640 1,488 152 4,178 0.52 2,690 1,1980 -
I'm not sure what the problem is. You appear to be running a daily deficit of 2500 calories, which is high but I gather you are very overweight. That deficit over 2 months works out to 40 pounds, which is within the error margin of the 35 pound loss you are measuring.
Am I missing something...?0 -
On the FitBit side, I walk about 50 to 60 miles a week. I've done one mile test walks to check the steps to miles calibration. Yes, it was off 15% for treadmill but right on for mall (or linear trail) walking. Given the treadmill is about a third of my weekly walking I could easily discount the EXERCISE calories by 5% but that again wouldn't remotely make up the difference.
QUESTION
How can I adjust things to make the NET number meaningfully indicate how much extra food I can eat?
Your Fitbit distance estimate is irrelevant to your Fitbit calorie burn estimate so forget that parameter. It just does your stride length times your steps count, for people who enjoy seeing a distance number.
My advice is forget the silly MFP "NET" thing and just use the Fitbit data. Your body doesn't differentiate between 'exercise' and 'activity' or even 'BMR'. All that matters is your total average burn and your total average intake.0 -
MR_Knight, you're right in a general sense but my concern/hope was that REMAINING would become useful in determining how much additional food I earn from exercise.0
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Your Fitbit distance estimate is irrelevant to your Fitbit calorie burn estimate so forget that parameter. It just does your stride length times your steps count, for people who enjoy seeing a distance number.
My advice is forget the silly MFP "NET" thing and just use the Fitbit data. Your body doesn't differentiate between 'exercise' and 'activity' or even 'BMR'. All that matters is your total average burn and your total average intake.
Yes the MFP food log does transfer to FitBit and maybe their estimation of metabolism is more dynamic. Still love using MFP for it's speedy logging and huge food list.0 -
I got lost in there somewhere but first off your metabolism isn't changing as you lose weight. Your metabolism changes very little over your lifetime unless you have some disease factor effecting it. Also MFP will adjust your calorie intake budget based on you logging your weight loss. It doesn't look at what you want to weigh or any other factor than taking your current weight, height, sex and activity level into account to calculate a daily calorie budget.
If you have Fitbit synched with MFP then Fitbit will send the calories burned over to MFP once you get to a number larger than what MFP has deemed to be the average number of calories burned for someone with your statistics. It's not individualized to you in particular and if you are using MFP it expects that you will eat back those extra calories. It's assumption is that your NET number will be the same as you calorie budget at the end of the day.
ETA: If you break your questions down into something more like plain English rather than a university lecture period you're more likely to get people to give you the answers you're looking for.0 -
Are you entering your exercise manually? If so... don't. It's already included in your "Fitbit calorie adjustment" and logging it manually will result in a double deficit count, which sounds kind of like what you're experiencing here. If you log other exercise besides step-based exercise (e.g., swimming or rowing), log it on fitbit.com and it will carry over in the adjustment. Logging it elsewhere can sometimes result in double-counting -- or, in my experience, a crazy loop that ends up showing a 10,000-calorie deficit or more for one day. #truestory0
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I got lost in there somewhere but first off your metabolism isn't changing as you lose weight. Your metabolism changes very little over your lifetime unless you have some disease factor effecting it. Also MFP will adjust your calorie intake budget based on you logging your weight loss. It doesn't look at what you want to weigh or any other factor than taking your current weight, height, sex and activity level into account to calculate a daily calorie budget.
If you have Fitbit synched with MFP then Fitbit will send the calories burned over to MFP once you get to a number larger than what MFP has deemed to be the average number of calories burned for someone with your statistics. It's not individualized to you in particular and if you are using MFP it expects that you will eat back those extra calories. It's assumption is that your NET number will be the same as you calorie budget at the end of the day.
ETA: If you break your questions down into something more like plain English rather than a university lecture period you're more likely to get people to give you the answers you're looking for.
Thank you for the response and yes I've watched for and avoided double counting ... hopefully ;-D
As for the "far too much complex detail" I just don't now how to explain that there's no way I could eat nearly 3000 calories and lose 2 pounds a week, even with my current long walks.0 -
Are yo updating your weight regularly on your Fitbit and MFP accounts?0
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