Eating back Fitbit Burn Calories
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missdaffy2003
Posts: 5 Member
I just wanted some advice about whether you should eat back the burn calories or not. Seems to add a lot of calories onto my day. I haven't found anywhere that explains it.
Thanks
Thanks
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Bottom line - yes, eat back your calories!
And don't set an eating goal that is too aggressive. At most, you should aim for 1/2 pound per week per 25 pounds you have to lose.
Read the FAQ that heybales wrote. You can find it in the stickies for the group. Here's the link, to make finding it even easier:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10098937/faq-syncing-logging-food-exercise-calorie-adjustments-activity-levels-accuracy/p1
There was also a good discussion in another thread recently where heybales posted a video about one study and a link to a blog post he had done about another study. Here's a link to that thread.
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10116453/frustrated-still-not-sure-about-calories/p1
It's long. If you don't want to read it all, just look for heybale's post with the video and then another from him that links to his blog post.
What I took away from that thread was:
1) Don't try to lose weight too fast. It damages your ability to burn calories.
2) Exercise. It helps to maintain your ability to burn calories.
Eat back your calories, log your food accurately, and then, after you've done that for 3 or 4 weeks, look at your FitBit Weekly Reports for those weeks (and/or the 30 day graph of your intake vs. burn on your FitBit profile page) and see if your weight loss matches what is expected.
For instance, my 30 day graph shows that I've had an average daily deficit of 561 calories over that time (for a predicted weight loss of 561*30/3500 = 4.8 pounds). I've lost right around 5 pounds over that 30 days, so right on target.
Your results will not be exactly the same, but that sort of longer term view is the best way to figure out how accurate FitBit's calorie estimates are for you.0 -
Your Fitbit burn is your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure), aka your maintenance calories. If you eat at a reasonable deficit from that (250 calories per day for every 25 lbs. you're overweight), you will lose weight.
Eat back your Fitbit calories for several weeks, then reevaluate your progress. Food is fuel, and we should all be looking for the maximum number of calories at which we lose weight—never the minimum.0 -
Thanks I have been eating them back and being strict with food but over last few weeks weight loss has slowed. Was thinking the best way to keep it going into stop eating back so many!0
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missdaffy2003 wrote: »Thanks I have been eating them back and being strict with food but over last few weeks weight loss has slowed. Was thinking the best way to keep it going into stop eating back so many!
Or learn to log more accurately. They both accomplish the same thing—ensuring you're eating at a true deficit.
It'll take some trial & error to find what works for you. Your diary is private, but I noticed you log housework as exercise. That's already included in your activity level, so it should not be logged. And exercise logged in MFP overwrites your Fitbit burn during that time, so now you"be given yourself extra calories.0 -
I eat back a lot of mine, but generally not all unless I have a day where I want to. Set to sedentary and getting 10k-12k steps per day, my fitbit gives me another 350-400 calories a day. I usually eat about 200-250 of them (but would have no issue with eating more, I'm just not often that hungry. I get 1410 from MFP, and looking at the last five days, I average eating 1584, with between 100-300 left on the table (except for Saturday where I had 500 left, but was running around all morning and didn't eat anything til 3pm because i forgot.)
I've lost weight at almost exactly the rate I wanted to - I'm set to 1lb per week and in 26 weeks I've lost 24 pounds.0 -
I feel your pain on this one! I am at 1lb a week goal, starting with 1400 cal and fitbit added another 1219 calories on top of that, to have me eating 2619 calories today! That seems nuts!!!! Now, I did an hour of hard core weight lifting, and have walked over 13,000 steps already, but even then, it seems excessive! I try to stay around 1700-1900.0
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I feel your pain on this one! I am at 1lb a week goal, starting with 1400 cal and fitbit added another 1219 calories on top of that, to have me eating 2619 calories today! That seems nuts!!!! Now, I did an hour of hard core weight lifting, and have walked over 13,000 steps already, but even then, it seems excessive! I try to stay around 1700-1900.
You need to manually log lifting.
I'm guessing you had the HR type Fitbit, which HRM calorie burn is going to inflate lifting badly.
The step based devices will under-estimate badly since you burn much more than a few steps would appear.
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Be aware that for women, your BMR literally does change through the month.
So one week you may have a deficit 150-300 less than you think, another week will balance that out.
So you really need a month's worth of data to get the idea based on actual weight loss, and eating levels, what your real TDEE is.
But at least starting on the high side is safer than the low side. Even if it means you lost out on 2 lbs weight loss during the month.
Better than losing 2 more than expected - but it was muscle mass.0 -
I average 10-15k steps per day. Should I be set to sedentary or lightly active? I seem to be struggling with weight loss. I do have a severe vitamin d deficiency as well which is being treated.0
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I average 10-15k steps per day. Should I be set to sedentary or lightly active? I seem to be struggling with weight loss. I do have a severe vitamin d deficiency as well which is being treated.
Whatever works best for you. I leave mine set at sedentary, even though I average more than 15K steps a day. However, I don't need to plan my food for the day ahead of time, so I can adjust what I eat to what I burn.
I don't have an active job (okay, I don't have a job at all - I'm retired), and my true inclination is to be sedentary - I have to work at being active - so I think using the Sedentary setting is most appropriate.0 -
I have MFP set to sedentary. I aim for 10k steps but I average 8k steps a day. This is much more than sedentary. I know this - and so I'm happy to eat my exercise calories back.
I do however have the occasional "very lazy" day. On those days I am less than sedentary.
So I keep MFP at sedentary. I enabled negative adjudtments on fitbit ( which mean I don't over do it food wise on them lazy days).
This works for me. The fact that I usually earn extra calories by moving is more motivating to me that losing calories by not moving. But it's all down to personal preference. If your activity is more consistent to mine you might prefer a more accurate reflection on MFP.0 -
missdaffy2003 wrote: »I just wanted some advice about whether you should eat back the burn calories or not. Seems to add a lot of calories onto my day. I haven't found anywhere that explains it.
Your Fitbit burn is your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure), aka your maintenance calories. Your MFP calorie goal is your activity level minus deficit. Adjustments are the difference between your Fitbit burn and your MFP activity level.
Enable negative calorie adjustments: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings and eat back your adjustments for several weeks. Then reevaluate your progress.
Food is fuel. We should all be looking for the maximum number of calories at which we lose weight—never the minimum.0 -
My FitBit is about 10% too generous with calorie burns, and I assume some margin of error in logging food as well. So I try not to eat back *all* of my FitBit calories. If it's a day where I know I've been more active then I'll tend to get a little closer.
When I was eating exactly to the meal plan settings, my weight/fat loss stalled as well.
You're just going to have to pick a strategy, give it a week or two, and then adjust as necessary.0 -
Sorry, a bump for me to read later0
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I eat back 100% of my adjustments, lost the weight, and have maintained for nine months. In fact, I've lost another 4 lbs. in maintenance—meaning my Fitbit burn is actually less than TDEE.
Trust your Fitbit for several weeks, then reevaluate your progress.0 -
editorgrrl wrote: »missdaffy2003 wrote: »Thanks I have been eating them back and being strict with food but over last few weeks weight loss has slowed. Was thinking the best way to keep it going into stop eating back so many!
Or learn to log more accurately. They both accomplish the same thing—ensuring you're eating at a true deficit.
It'll take some trial & error to find what works for you. Your diary is private, but I noticed you log housework as exercise. That's already included in your activity level, so it should not be logged. And exercise logged in MFP overwrites your Fitbit burn during that time, so now you"be given yourself extra calories.
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I thought having a Fitbit and connecting it to myfitness pal will have the correct answer for our target weight loss calories, but it seems to me, that we are simply playing a game of wait and see. I've put weight back on using these apps together, I dint understand the mathematics behind them at all. If myfitness pal team is reading this, what I think they need to do is check their app for the BMR calculation . It doesn't seem to me that it's is being implemented properly. If Fitbit give you a calorie burn of 3000 calories a day then why should I have an increase in calories I eat with myfitness pal . The 3000 calories that goes back into myfitness pal should be deducting my BMR, then I should get a more realistic figure in exercise calories. So instead of adding back 3000 calories it should be CALORIES BURNED=3000, LESS BMR AS DETERMINED BY MYFITNESS PAL (say 1500) = 1500 , LESS DEFICIT TO ATTAIN A WEEKLY LOSS ( Say 250 a day ) = 1250 calories added , then the difference between myfitness pals daily calculated calorie consumption ( say 1800 a day ) = + 450. The amount of calories added back for a 3000 calorie a day burn should be 450 not 1800 . I think the teams at both Fitbit and myfitness pal need to go through their software and include a BMR calculation. I know this is a lengthy and probably confusing answer. I've been using Fitbit for over 2 months with MFP and this is the only formula I could arrive at to solve this mystery of excessive calories that are coming back into MFP. I hope someone sees this and fixes this simple error0
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beirutbomber wrote: »I thought having a Fitbit and connecting it to myfitness pal will have the correct answer for our target weight loss calories, but it seems to me, that we are simply playing a game of wait and see. I've put weight back on using these apps together, I dint understand the mathematics behind them at all. If myfitness pal team is reading this, what I think they need to do is check their app for the BMR calculation . It doesn't seem to me that it's is being implemented properly. If Fitbit give you a calorie burn of 3000 calories a day then why should I have an increase in calories I eat with myfitness pal . The 3000 calories that goes back into myfitness pal should be deducting my BMR, then I should get a more realistic figure in exercise calories. So instead of adding back 3000 calories it should be CALORIES BURNED=3000, LESS BMR AS DETERMINED BY MYFITNESS PAL (say 1500) = 1500 , LESS DEFICIT TO ATTAIN A WEEKLY LOSS ( Say 250 a day ) = 1250 calories added , then the difference between myfitness pals daily calculated calorie consumption ( say 1800 a day ) = + 450. The amount of calories added back for a 3000 calorie a day burn should be 450 not 1800 . I think the teams at both Fitbit and myfitness pal need to go through their software and include a BMR calculation. I know this is a lengthy and probably confusing answer. I've been using Fitbit for over 2 months with MFP and this is the only formula I could arrive at to solve this mystery of excessive calories that are coming back into MFP. I hope someone sees this and fixes this simple error
EVERYTHING is an estimate.
How good depends on how much effort you put in to it.
You can have sloppy inaccurate food logging - guess what you'll get - sloppy results of weight loss, if any.
You can have inaccurate daily burn to base your eating goal on. Either MFP's default based totally on you selecting a non-exercise activity level, and then honestly logging your exercise calories that are rough estimates.
Or using Fitbit but leaving known inaccurate calorie burns.
Or you can log food by weight, and use Fitbit corrected for what it won't do well.
Everything else is merely options that make it easier to plan as the day goes on to meet that eating goal that may and should change as day goes on.
So yes, wait and see is ONLY best estimate outside research study to see what your true average daily maintenance really is - based on actual weight loss (unless it was water weight or muscle weight - aghhhh, more inaccuracies).
But then your normal weekly routine can easily change - so that goes out the window.
The BMR calc isn't the issue, as it's only estimate too. Based on formula from study using healthy weight participants with average ratio of LBM to FM (Lean Body Mass to Fat Mass).
The BMR activity factor MFP uses outside of Fitbit better estimate, is from recent studies and is decent too - if you selected correctly. But obviously, there is more than 4 levels of daily activity, infinite. Hence what Fitbit attempts to do.
You'll need to read the FAQ 2nd section to see where your math is wrong and the way it's done is very correct.
Basically, that 3000 Fitbit calories INCLUDES your BMR level calorie burn, and so does the MFP estimate of daily burn without exercise.
Therefore the Fitbit 3000 daily burn - say 2400 MFP estimate of daily burn with no exercise = 600 positive adjustment.
Now, whether that was exercise or increased activity doesn't matter. You burned 600 more than MFP thought you would.
Now, you could either add 600 to 2400 = 3000 - 500 deficit = 2500 eating goal.
Or easier and what MFP does,
MFP daily burn 2400 - 500 = 1900 eating goal no exercise days + 600 adjustment = 2500 new eating goal.
Same result - same deficit.
Your BMR does NOT need to be considered separately since it's included in both.0 -
EVERYTHING is an estimate. How good depends on how much effort you put in to it.
You can have sloppy inaccurate food logging—guess what you'll get—sloppy results of weight loss, if any.
^This. All the calorie counts & burns are nothing but estimates, so it takes trial & error until you're actually eating at a deficit.
Have several metrics: the scale, waist size, progress photos, your step count, strength & endurance… And keep adjusting your intake (calories in) until you get the desired results.0
