MyFitnessPal and Fitbit with sleeping

that is incorrect. The only exercise that you would put into MFP would be stuff beyond the level of activity you entered to start with. So if you put in "sedentary" for desk job, little exercise and then you walked 3 miles out of the ordinary for you, you'd put in those 3 miles and could eat back some portion of those calories. Most people only eat back a portion of exercise calories due to the fact most things overestimate burn.

Edit:typo

The Fitbit counts calories burned throughout the day including any exercise calories such as running/walking and just moving in general. (it's not very good at biking or swimming etc..) But the Fitbit also includes those calories that you burn just by being alive, so throughout the day your Fitbit is constantly adding calories until midnight when it resets back to zero. So when you wake up in the morning you may have 500 calories showing on your Fitbit Dashboard just from being alive during the night. When connected to your MFP account it will only add extra calories above and beyond the limit set by MFP. So if Fitbit says you have burned over you MFP limit it will add a calorie adjustment to your calories allowing you to eat more. If you have negative calories turned on it will even take calories away from you if you don't move enough.

For example, for me it's easy to explain what I mean because I am at maintenance. I set my activity for Sedentary even though I am not. MFP gives me 1310 calories at that level based on my height and weight. However as I move throughout the day I get a bigger and bigger calorie adjustment. Some days I earn nearly 1000 extra calories so that MFP will tell me I can eat 2310 calories. I shoot for a calorie adjustment of at least 400-500 extra because I like to eat! I don't usually eat back all of my extra cals because I am concerned about it over estimating the burns. This has been working for me and I have been maintaining for a little over a year.

You may not want to set yourself as sedentary, unless you are of course. If you have enough to lose, you will want to make sure your level of activity is accurate for you, be it sedentary or lightly active or whatever. It will make your numbers more accurate for weight loss. It still works the same way. Fitbit will only add a calorie adjustment when your calorie burn goes above the limit of what MFP sets for you.

You do NOT need to log any walking/running exercise in MFP. That's what the Fitbit does! However if you do other sorts of exercises then you may want to log them. You will have to add the time you do them so that it will override the Fitbit burns for those times so you are not double dipping. Hope this all made sense.

hmmm... Are you sure you have both accounts set up with all the same information? Plus Fitbit will estimate what it "thinks" you will burn by the end of the day based on past history. Check to see if you have calorie estimation turned on or off in the Fitbit dashboard. Go to your settings and you will find it there. I have mine turned off. My fitbit numbers and MFP numbers are within one or two calories of each other. But I'm in maintenance, so not sure if that is why mine match up so well.

pantherbl wrote: »

LickingSnail wrote: »

Editing because my brain farted and I just realized something..

You logged your sleep in fitbit. that is where it is coming from. If you delete that it will go away.

I never log anything other than my actual exercise, I put my fitbit "to sleep" when I sleep and it logs my sleep that way, I never actually log it as an exercise.
If I forget to or I fall asleep before my fitbit is asleep I just don't track my sleep for that day - its not the end of the world. The way you logged it makes it look like an exercise.

I just try to make a little experiment - I added run exercise to Fitbit when he calculated 81 cals "just for living". For running he added 301 cals. But in MFP I have got 390 extra cals.

So MFP adds all cals from Fitbit, not only from exercises... what the reason?

click the little "i" next to your fitbit adjustment on MFP and it will tell you what calorie burn it is basing the extra calories on. Some things to check:

- Make sure "calorie estimation" on fitbit.com is turned off
- Make sure your time zones match

I did have a fitbit adjustment that was off a couple days ago. For whatever reason, MFP thought my fitbit calorie burn was 20XX when it was really only 18XX. Even after midnight, it didn't re-adjust. I should go back and look to see if it's fixed itself now that I think about it.