Fitbit, exercise, calories. I am so confused! Help!

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kcm105
kcm105 Posts: 50 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I thought I had this pretty much down, but after reading some of these threads I'm beginning to wonder if I'm doing it all wrong.

MFP has calculated my daily calories as 1440. I put that I'm sedentary, want to lose 1 pound per week, and I workout 6 days a week for 25 minutes a day. I also wear my Fitbit all day every day. When I exercise, I log that exercise on MFP and put in what time I started and for how long. I assumed this sort of nullified any steps my Fitbit recorded during that time period and instead just used my estimated calories burned.

So for example, if I take 10,000 steps in a day, but really 3000 of those were during exercise, MFP only gives me calorie credit for the 7000 steps (or at least for whatever it's determined is above and beyond just what it takes for me to survive in a day). Is this right? Have I been doing it wrong?? Some explanations on this board have scrambled my brain and I'm wondering if I'm making it too easy and giving myself more exercise calories than I'm actually earning. Help!

Also, yes, I've been losing weight at an acceptable pace, but I'm sure that will slow down soon. The first 10 pounds or so seem to always be the easiest, so I want to do my best to be prepared. Thanks :)

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  • 4legsRbetterthan2
    4legsRbetterthan2 Posts: 19,590 MFP Moderator
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    yes that sounds about right (and that is what I do)

    I usually compare my intake for the day against the total calories burned on fitbit and make sure my deficit is still there too just to double check, but so far it has been correct
  • christina2012
    christina2012 Posts: 8
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    That was my understanding too when I linked my fitbit, and if I recall correclty if you click on the "fitbit adjustment line" it will explain that you will burn X amount of calories doing nothing all day - that any calories burned above that will be added to your MFP as exercise calories to choose to eat or not eat.

    And I have also found that if you let your fitbit input calories burned into MFP and you add a line lets say for 45 min walking - MFP knows to adjust the exercise calories, so for example if your fitbit adjustment line states you have a 200 calorie defecit and you add an exercise that would be 150 calories - your fitbit calorie reading would than be 50

    Hopefully that makes sense ... haha

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