It depends how you got your goal number. If it was set by MFP then you net that number. If you used a calculator to find your TDEE then your activity is included in that number so you just eat that.

Set your MFP weight-loss goal to .5 lb. per week for every 25 lbs. you need to lose.

Enable negative calorie adjustments in your MFP diary settings.

Follow your MFP calorie goal, eating back your Fitbit adjustments.

Bottom line: your Fitbit burn is your TDEE (aka your maintenance calories). If you eat at a reasonable deficit from that, you will lose weight.

The Fitbit burn target is merely a goal. You set it to whatever level leaves you at at realistic eating goal when you remove a deficit.

Say you know you want to eat about 2000 daily, you can sustain that.
And you want to lose 1 lb weekly, or 500 cal deficit daily.
So you set the daily burn goal to 2500.
Knowing when you reach it, you get to eat 2000 or more for the day.

That goal has no bearing on any math the MFP does, nor on what Fitbit sends to MFP to do math with.

You can mimic the TDEE - 10-20% by picking a weight loss goal on MFP that equals about the same amount.

For instance, you burn 2500 as goal and usually reach it, you want 20% goal, that's 500 deficit calories - bam - 1 lb weight loss goal on MFP.

If you'd rather just manually make an eating goal that is 10-20% off your average weekly TDEE as shown by Fitbit (with corrections to exercise as needed on Fitbit site), then you'll need to unsync your accounts and lose the ease of use.
But if you like a single daily eating goal for better planning, and workouts are consistent and about the same, then that can workout.

But you can't sync and maintain a single eating goal.

You can fiddle with the MFP activity level and attempt to minimize any calorie adjustments from syncing, and having a really small range of eating goals.

Take your Fitbit weekly email for stats, and see what your average daily burn was.

Divide that TDEE by the BMR that MFP is using. Apps - BMR calc.
There's your personal activity factor, much better than any rough 5 level TDEE chart could give you.
Now to make MFP close, use the Activity level with the closest factor, not under, closest.
Sedentary - 1.25
Lightly Active - 1.4
Active - 1.6
Very Active 1.8

Set your activity level to that which is closest. Set weight loss goal to maintain.
Now manually set your eating goal to 10-20% less than average TDEE.

Now your daily eating goal will go up and down slightly as you hover around that average TDEE.

Variance could be big still if you have like just 3 days of big exercise workouts. Big negatives, big positives.

adriat wrote: »

So - when my Fitbit syncs with MFP - am I supposed to be eating the extra calories the MFP gives me (ie...is it still on track with my original 1.5 per week goal?) Or do I still need to stick with the original (no activity) amount of calories? Sorry for post hijacking!!!
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This is my question as well...I just started using my FitBit with MFP today. Previously, with MFP doing my calculations I was on 1220 calories and then whatever I earned for my workout that day...sometimes I ate the extra and other times I did not. Now that I have it linked with FB, I still input the activity on MFP with the starting time it indicates and now I get the activity calories from my workout plus the adjustment from FB. Am I suppose to eat this new total for the day? I am so confused!!!! I hope someone can help in English without all those calculations, etc lol Thanks much!

So the MFP goal adjusts with the activity which includes the 500 deficit? Sorry so lame

Thanks so much for your answer - I have been struggling with the same thing. In my head I am so hesitant to eat the extra calories after a good workout. When I look at the math you've put up, then it begins to make sense and I've adjusted my burn on FB after averaging my calories burned for a week. I am on the short/small side, and so for a lazy day, we're talking pretty darn low, which just shows I need to keep moving.