Negative Adjustment

NBENG
NBENG Posts: 12 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I recently bought a fitbit one that I plan to wear all day to track my walking. However I use a Polar H7 at the gym to track running/spin/strength training and etc. Would it be wise to enable this setting? I haven't found info on if you mix two devices. It all seems to be targeted to when you use a single device and the frequency in which you use it.

Replies

  • andielyn
    andielyn Posts: 233 Member
    I have a Fitbit plus a Polar HRM and have the negative calorie adjustment enabled, and my activity level on MFP set to sedentary (desk job here) and the Fitbit and MFP sites synced. When I burn more calories from walking or activities the Fitbit tracks then it appears on here under exercise as a calorie adjustment from exercise. I use my Polar like you do for other activities and I track those here and they transfer over to Fitbit and override any calorie burn during that period to avoid double dipping. In short, yes, I would enable it.

    Hope that answers your question.
  • SkinnyGirlCarrie
    SkinnyGirlCarrie Posts: 259 Member
    I don't have the negative calorie adjustment enabled, but that is just my preference. I wear my FItbit one all day and I wear my Polar H7 chest strap when doing my workouts (treadmill, cardio, etc). I use the iCardio/Digifit app and sync that to Fitbit so that Fitbit overwrites those calories for that period of time. I then sync MFP and Fitbit and eat back some of my exercise calories. I am set to sedentary on both sites because with my desk job I find if I don't make time to be active then I only end up with about 4000 steps a day.

    editing to add - one reason i don't do the negative adjustment is because i almost always do my workouts in the late afternoon/evening, sometimes not until 8pm, and don't like having calories taken away from me during the bulk of the day.
  • andielyn
    andielyn Posts: 233 Member
    I should clarify as SkinnyGirl did--the negative calorie adjustments come into play when you burn LESS than MFP calculates. I also have my Fitbit set to estimate calories burned during the day.

    The reason not to would be the same reason SkinnyGirl said especially if you do not have calorie estimation set on the Fitbit.
  • NBENG
    NBENG Posts: 12 Member
    Thanks guys. That is pretty good info. I use Digifit as well for my HRM. I think you guys have me enough info to set it up.
  • Alluminati
    Alluminati Posts: 6,208 Member
    I used to have it on but seeing my food go over to the red started to annoy me so I turned it off
  • Drewbacca81
    Drewbacca81 Posts: 1
    I don't see where the option to turn on negative adjustments is located? The site keeps saying to do it in Diary Settings, but there's no box there. Did it get changed to a different location or was it removed?
  • dopeysmelly
    dopeysmelly Posts: 1,390 Member
    I do the same as SkinnyGirl. I did have the negative calories enabled for a while, and if you're not meeting your step/exercise target it could be motivating when you see calories being taken away. I'm now in maintenance and I'm pretty good at meeting my exercise target, so I switched it off last week.
  • omma_to_3
    omma_to_3 Posts: 3,265 Member
    I did not have good results using the fitbit and an HRM and letting them adjust MFP, even once it was an option to turn off the negative adjustment. I run, and I prefer to use the calories off my HRM (well, back then, I don't use my HRM anymore). If I entered those as an override to my Fitbit numbers, fitbit would always adjust my values downwards so at the end of the day, I'd have fewer calories than if I just left my base (sedentary) calories alone and added my HRM burn from my run. Really weird.

    Probably not explaining it well, but this is the type of thing I'd see:

    Normal sedentary day, with a 3 mile run, but do NOT enter HRM calories in:
    Base calorie target for my settings: 1250 calories
    End of day calorie target with fitbit adjustment: 1575 calories (essentially, adding in about 325 calories for my run)

    The exact same day, only this time, I enter in my 3 mile run HRM calories, to override fitbit's estimation:
    Base calorie target for my settings: 1250 calories
    HRM calories entered for 3 mile run (including start and end times): 295 calories
    Expected end of day calorie target: at least 1545 calories (depending on if fitbit thought I was more active than sedentary the rest of the day)
    Actual end of day calorie target after fitbit adjustment: 1480 calories

    It just made no sense to me. I was entering fewer calories for my run than fitbit did.

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