Honest MFP/Fitbit/weightloss questions with details

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FutureMrsEssman
FutureMrsEssman Posts: 81 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Okay, I try to research as much as possible before I ever post anything, but I can not exactly understand my beloved fitbit and my beloved mfp right now. So, here goes:

First things first my personal details:
25 year old/female/5 feet 4 3/4 inches/199.6 lbs/3.3 lost in the last 8 days/Not currently exercising but ex-athlete/Measurements 43-38-45/office job but consistently 10,000+ steps a day at work/Activity level set at sedentary/ Has food weight and weighs everything I eat (Veggies, seasonings, dressings, sauces, etc.)/ pre-planned meals I make at home/ Weight loss set at 1lbs a week/ No HRM yet/

Question one:
Mpf says I should stay around 1550 cals a day but with the new fitbit syncing my steps it is almost doubling my calories per day. I've been sticking with 1550 (sometimes a bit extra) and I'm losing weight steadily right now without working out so I feel I should just keep going with that until I start to plateau. Work has been chaotic so I have not been able to get a good workout program going yet.

1.)Should I be eating my exercise calories?
2.)Should I wear my fitbit working out, or leave it off and chart my exercises on mfp?
3.)Or Does my fitbit accurately calculate my exercise so i don't need to add it to mfp?
(I hear a lot of people double up stuff accidentally so I'm trying to avoid that)
4.)Are my current calories too low, or okay? Other than work right now i get home, clean, cook, and then I sit for the rest of the night.

God, I feel like I had so many more questions, haha. Hopefully I can get a few answers and hopefully put my mind at rest. Thank you all!

Replies

  • Adc7225
    Adc7225 Posts: 1,318 Member
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    I'll give this a shot!
    1. Eat back about half of your exercise calories from what you log on MFP.
    2. Wear your fitbit but also log your exercise on MFP, fitbit will pick it up and in your Fitbit and MFP are linked it will synchronize.
    3. I would work with the MFP calorie suggestion with half of your logged exercise calories. You have to remember that Fitbit count calorie burn from basically just being alive, when you wake up you have already burned calories. Don't eat those :)

    It's okay to ask questions, this process is mind boggling at times - then one day you will have that aah moment.

    Welcome and good luck!
  • ariel3561
    ariel3561 Posts: 27 Member
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    If your fitbit and MFP accounts are synced then when you enter your workout into MFP it subtracts the extra fitbit calories. So if you wear your fitbit all day and while working out and you enter a workout that burns 300 calories it will just subtract those 300 calories from your fitbit adjusted number. A lot of it is trial and error and just assuming there's some inaccuracies and differences of calculation between the websites. Sometimes you just have to use common sense because counting calories in never 100% accurate.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
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    Yr fitbit is adding 600 - 1100 calories so it is recording a lot more activity than you told MFP you did in your normal day. I would carry on for now if it's working.

    If you log exercise in MFP and include the times you may get a more accurate picture, the times are used to ignore Fitbit corrections during that time period when you have manually logged exercise.
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
    edited January 2015
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    All that

    Plus fitbit extrapolates to end of day based on activity already acheived so if you walk a lot early on and then don't it might over-estimate and be out during the day so in the early stages best to check back next day ...it adjusts over time to patterns of behaviour

    Also make sure goals, time zones are the same on both and you've set your actual stride length on fitbit
  • FutureMrsEssman
    FutureMrsEssman Posts: 81 Member
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    Thank you all very much. I really appreciate the help and you've put my mind at ease.
  • Panthers89
    Panthers89 Posts: 153 Member
    edited January 2015
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    I would also recommend changing your activity level on MFP from sedentary to lightly active. I read on your post about having an office job, but, in reality, nobody is completely sedentary, as long as you move around even a little bit per day.

    I agree with all of the other recommendations.

    Good luck!!!
  • ckejmommy
    ckejmommy Posts: 9 Member
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    MFP just had a great article on whether or not to eat exercise calories. It stated that we tend to overestimate the calories burned and underestimate the calories consumed, so that it is not necessary to eat all of your exercise calories earned. In instances of extreme workouts or calories burned some of those calories should be consumed to maintain energy.

    This post was extremely helpful to me as well, great questions.
  • Zx14chick
    Zx14chick Posts: 255 Member
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    Panthers89 - You mentioned changing your activity level. When I increased mine to lightly active (I walk to work) from sedentary, it seemed to really increase my starting number of calories so I changed it back. It was something like 1200-1440. I thought it would be best to keep it at the lower number. It's so mind-boggling sometimes! I guess I should just leave it as is because I'm finally starting to see changes by staying below my MFP calorie intake.
  • brightsideofpink
    brightsideofpink Posts: 1,018 Member
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    rabbitjb wrote: »
    All that

    Plus fitbit extrapolates to end of day based on activity already acheived so if you walk a lot early on and then don't it might over-estimate and be out during the day so in the early stages best to check back next day ...it adjusts over time to patterns of behaviour

    Also make sure goals, time zones are the same on both and you've set your actual stride length on fitbit

    Quoting this for emphasis. I thought I knew a lot about my fitbit but it took me a while to learn this myself. The projections for calories are based on your patterns and they assume you'll continue the activity you've already entered. Its possible to have a mfp adjustment of 500 calories at noon, only to wake up and sync the next day and find out you only actually earned 250. Syncing often helps. I also always leave a buffer now because it always overestimates my activity between whenever I go to bed and midnight when it resets. The earlier I go to bed, and the more active my day was, the larger the over-projection.

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