Fitbit calories

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Kristink_Vaughn
Kristink_Vaughn Posts: 29 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm confused about how the Fitbit calories burned transfers to mfp. For example, my Fitbit says I burned 1035 but on mfp it says 23. How is this calculated?

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  • Picchickolo
    Picchickolo Posts: 6 Member
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    Does your fitbit track your heart rate?
  • Ready2Rock206
    Ready2Rock206 Posts: 9,488 Member
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    MFP assumes you'll burn calories too - so you only get calories added after you burn above the amount MFP assumes you'll burn so you're not double dipping.
  • EvanKeel
    EvanKeel Posts: 1,904 Member
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    You may find this useful : http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10098937/faq-syncing-logging-food-exercise-calorie-adjustments-activity-levels-accuracy
    Why doesn't my MFP Exercise Diary - Fitbit calorie adjustment equal my workout calorie burn?

    Because that MFP figure is not exercise.
    That figure is the difference between Fitbit's total daily burn which includes your exercise, and what MFP thought you'd burn with no exercise.
    Any difference includes exercise and daily activities. You could have no exercise and big positive adjustment from being very active. You could have big exercise and no positive adjustment from being very inactive that day outside of exercise.
    You can see this fact by clicking on the "i" for more info on that Fitbit calorie adjustment line.

    You should enable Negative Calorie adjustment too for sick or lazy days.
    MFP - Settings - Diary Settings - Calorie Adjustments - Enable Negative Adjustments.

    The reason it's put under exercise is so MFP correctly increases your eating goal, so the same deficit is maintained. You do more, you eat more, same deficit. MFP is merely correcting it's estimate of daily burn, which is based on your selection of activity level, and if you selected wrong, you get big adjustments, and then deficit is taken.
  • redwoodkestrel
    redwoodkestrel Posts: 339 Member
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    Your Fitbit tracks ALL the calories you burn during a day, INCLUDING the calories that are used to just keep you alive - you can look more closely at your calories burned graph and you'll see that your Fitbit is showing a baseline of calories that you burn every 5 minutes - for me, it's 5.5 calories. Here's what mine looks like for the day - and you can see, even when I'm sleeping, I'm still burning 5.5 calories every 5 minutes:
    zd0511d8k6ll.png

    But if your Fitbit and MFP are synced, the Fitbit will only sync extra calories burned above what you've set your activity level to.

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