Calorie Adjustment Confusion
Giggles_92
Posts: 1
Hello there!
I've gotten myself in a little bit of a muddle trying to understand how this calorie adjustment business works.
Both me and my mum have MFP linked up to FitBits which we wear all the time, and we log in any other exercise straight into MFP.
We have noticed (and can't explain why by comparing our settings) that the point at which we get calories "back" from the walking our fitbit has tracked occurs after a different number of steps, even though we are both set up in the same way.
By this I mean that we are both set as sedentary, to loose the same amount of weight per week and have negative adjustments enabled - every setting is the same, bar our height and weight (she being shorter and lighter than me, although our BMI is very close).
However, my mum's MFP starts giving her calories "back" from walking after around 5000-5500 steps, whereas I don't get anything until 7000-7500 steps - something I (well, we, really) just don't understand.
I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason for it, I just don't know/understand what it is, so if anyone is able to simply explain this to me I would be grateful!!
Thanks!
I've gotten myself in a little bit of a muddle trying to understand how this calorie adjustment business works.
Both me and my mum have MFP linked up to FitBits which we wear all the time, and we log in any other exercise straight into MFP.
We have noticed (and can't explain why by comparing our settings) that the point at which we get calories "back" from the walking our fitbit has tracked occurs after a different number of steps, even though we are both set up in the same way.
By this I mean that we are both set as sedentary, to loose the same amount of weight per week and have negative adjustments enabled - every setting is the same, bar our height and weight (she being shorter and lighter than me, although our BMI is very close).
However, my mum's MFP starts giving her calories "back" from walking after around 5000-5500 steps, whereas I don't get anything until 7000-7500 steps - something I (well, we, really) just don't understand.
I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason for it, I just don't know/understand what it is, so if anyone is able to simply explain this to me I would be grateful!!
Thanks!
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Replies
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Make sure both of your Fitbit account profiles are correct and also make sure both of you have disabled "calorie estimation" in your Fitbit profile settings.
MFP calculates the Fitbit adjustment every time it syncs with fitbit. MFP compares your total fitbit calorie burn at that time to what MFP expects that you should have burned. So MFP won't have good information to work with unless your fitbit profile is correct (height, weight, age and gender) and you sync your fitbit device when you can (ideally after significant activity if possible). There might just be a difference between the timing and frequency when each of you syncs your fitbit device to your fitbit.com account.
Also, what MFP is looking at is strictly calorie burn, so it doesn't have much to do with the steps (though knowing your step counts is helpful). The fitbit adjustment is for calories burned that MFP has no other way of knowing about--so any exercise logged is excluded from the fitbit adjustment. So it could be that if you logged a workout and your mother did not--she might start seeing a positive adjustment with fewer steps than you because the adjustment contains all her activity beyond MFP's estimate for a sedentary activity level. However, for you, MFP's standard would be what it expects for a sedentary activity level + the calories you burned during your MFP logged workout. So if there is a difference in what and when you are logging exercise that can also be why you start seeing adjustments at different step counts. The fitbit calorie burn is not about the step count strictly, it has to do with how much and how fast you move each minute and also your profile stats factor in.0
