Fitbit adjustment decreases

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radddogg
radddogg Posts: 11 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hi,

I'm having an issue with my fitbit. So last night I had 90 calories net spare but this morning it says I finished up 360 calories over! My fitbit adjustment is showing as 781 but before I went to bed it was over 1000. At some point it has changed its mind about the adjustment - this leaves me over on my calories! Worse still I've checked the last week and they have all changed too and I have now over-eaten because of this broken fitbit adjustment.

At the moment today I am showing 1494 calories gained so far through fitbit adjustment. This fitbit has been more trouble than its worth! Instead of helping me achieve my goals it is actively making me hopelessly miss them!

I have calorie estimation on and negative adjustments on as that is supposedly the most accurate. Am I doing something wrong?

Replies

  • niknokd
    niknokd Posts: 127 Member
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    Maybe it just hadn't synced when you went to bed but it did overnight? If you have a fitbit ultra to force a sync you can physically put it on the base station as if you were charging it. Try checking periodically throughout the day whether it's syncing
  • radddogg
    radddogg Posts: 11 Member
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    No, it did sync, I forced it to with the sync now button.

    And to prove it, yesterdays final fitbit adjustment was 903 calories. That is a difference of nearly 600 calories! That is half of my daily allowance!

    This is a joke and needs sorting - what a waste of money :(
  • watergallagher
    watergallagher Posts: 232 Member
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    Hm u pay for that.????????
  • radddogg
    radddogg Posts: 11 Member
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    I contacted Fitbit support and they said the calculation is solely down to MFP. They purely send calories burned as and when the device is synced. The calculation is then done by MFP. So come on then MFP, what's the score?
  • radddogg
    radddogg Posts: 11 Member
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    Just to prove there is a glitch I'll keep recording the calorie discrepancies until this gets sorted. Its 20 mins to midnight and I have 726 net calories remaining due to a Fitbit adjustment of 1740. Nothing drastic should change between now and midnight...surely?
  • radddogg
    radddogg Posts: 11 Member
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    Its saying 725 at the moment....let's try again in the morning
  • dstanley753
    dstanley753 Posts: 32 Member
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    I literally just watched my changed over the last hour or so...and it keeps going down. I took my fitbit off when I got home from the gym so no data has changed. What gives???
  • kauaibaby
    kauaibaby Posts: 25 Member
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    Bump... confused about this as well. I leave my fitbit on all the time and every 15 minutes it syncs.
  • radddogg
    radddogg Posts: 11 Member
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    So it went from 725 spare last night to minus 26 this morning! Good job I went for that run!!!!

    But I received a reply from MFP support last night and it would appear that this may be a sever case of PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair).
    I believe I have found the source of the inconsistency. Your FItbit timezone is set to London and your MyFitnessPal timezone is set to Pacific time. This would cause a huge issue in the estimation of the adjustment for current days, and would throw off your completed adjustments as well. Please update your timezone on MyFitnessPal to match your FItbit.com timezone.

    You can do that here:

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/timezone

    I suspect this resolve any outstanding issues with the Fitbit Adjustment. I look forward to hearing if this resolves the issue,

    Cheers,
    Scott
    MyFitnessPal Staff

    So I'll update my timezone and see what difference that makes.
  • glitteredgrave
    glitteredgrave Posts: 194 Member
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    Mine was doing that so I don't have it connected to mfp anymore. I just checked and my timezones are the same. Hmmm
  • radddogg
    radddogg Posts: 11 Member
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    I think its still doing it :-(

    Only have 60 spare for yesterday but I'm sure it was around 500 last night.. will try to check tonight
  • radddogg
    radddogg Posts: 11 Member
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    Yep, definitely still doing it. Went to bed with 700 cal spare, woke up and was over my cal allowance!
  • dstanley753
    dstanley753 Posts: 32 Member
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    Is no one from the MFP Staff on this??? I've contacted Fitbit as well.
  • MamaZappa
    MamaZappa Posts: 2
    edited December 2014
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    Whatever the cause, it's still happening nearly 2 years later. I checked my info late last night - even went for a quick walk around the house to hit a steps goal - and had 470 calories credited from exercise, enough to have a bowl of cereal. Today that 470 turned into 173 calories, putting me over my limit.

    I fixed my timezone (to Eastern, it was set to Pacific) after finding this thread, we'll see what that does.
  • LivingtheLeanDream
    LivingtheLeanDream Posts: 13,342 Member
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    have you tried resetting it? you wont lose your steps. The instructions are on the fitbit site.
    I've never had any problems like this. Have you checked to enable negative adjustments? that should sort it.
    I find if I do all my exercise earlier on in the day and then am a couch potato at night it will take a few calories off me as it had predicted me higher, but I'm only talking 50-100 cals.
  • bennettinfinity
    bennettinfinity Posts: 865 Member
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    I've had my Fitbit and MFP accounts synced for about 18 months now and have noticed this behavior consistently, though maybe not to the extent you describe.

    I've come to the conclusion that the adjustment algorithm is based on averages, so if you're particularly active early in the day, it averages your activity to that point and extrapolates it to the end of the day - resulting in an overestimate for the total daily burn; if you're more active towards the end of the day, this effect is mitigated.

    I've just learned to be aware of this behavior and not take the Fitbit adjustment at face value (particularly earlier in the day).

    And remember, your Fitbit account will also keep track of your calories and indicate how much room you have left for the day.

    Hope this helps.
  • Adc7225
    Adc7225 Posts: 1,318 Member
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    I don't have any suggestion for what you can do but I can tell you that I have been having issues with it syncing with MFP and the different apps. I have an iPhone 5s (not updated with the latest OS) an iPad 3 (also not updated) I use the apps and also access both MFP and FitBit via Safari they don't all sync as seamlessly as the used to. I am just hoping the bugs will be worked out soon. I would think the FitBit still has a great value because for me it still helps keep me active. I'm on staycation this week so I have to really make an effort to get my goal 13k steps each day. Without my Fitbit I would probably really underestimate my activity this week. Hang in there!
  • TheVirgoddess
    TheVirgoddess Posts: 4,535 Member
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    radddogg wrote: »
    Hi,

    I'm having an issue with my fitbit. So last night I had 90 calories net spare but this morning it says I finished up 360 calories over! My fitbit adjustment is showing as 781 but before I went to bed it was over 1000. At some point it has changed its mind about the adjustment - this leaves me over on my calories! Worse still I've checked the last week and they have all changed too and I have now over-eaten because of this broken fitbit adjustment.

    At the moment today I am showing 1494 calories gained so far through fitbit adjustment. This fitbit has been more trouble than its worth! Instead of helping me achieve my goals it is actively making me hopelessly miss them!

    I have calorie estimation on and negative adjustments on as that is supposedly the most accurate. Am I doing something wrong?

    Turn calorie estimation OFF.

    And remember - your FitBit adjustment is an estimation. If you're super active right before bed, FitBit is going to assume that you're going to be active for a while, and adjusts accordingly. If you're not active for a while, your adjustment will be off until it syncs again - syncing often will help this, too.

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