How come your headings are in cute italics? I feel deprived - like my MFP experience is somewhat diminished

Click on your adjustment to see the math used to calculate it.

MFP has calculated that by 11:59 p.m. you will have burned 1,170 calories more than your MFP activity level.

If huge adjustments freak you out, then increase your activity level. 26,000 steps is not sedentary! http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/change_goals_guided

Just be sure to enable negative calorie adjustments: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

Any discussion of walking counts or doesn't count as exercise has NO bearing on the fact it does indeed burn more calories, especially if MFP was unaware you were going to walk that much from selecting say a non-exercise activity level of Sedentary or Lightly Active.

If you only walk and stop increasing speed and keep losing weight - then eventually walking is no longer a workout for your body. Merely a calorie burning activity, and not a great one at that compared to others.
Is it exercise depends on what exercise means to you.

And it is simple.

Eat 632 more calories for that day.

Simple. You don't have to understand anything else.

There are some nuances to improve estimates (you do realize everything is an estimate, right, unless you are confined in-building during a research study) if you go to extremes and those estimates start adding up.

For instance, lets say you loved this high protein granola cereal.
And found out that when measuring it per serving compared to weighing it per serving, you were getting an extra 75 calories per bowl eaten you weren't accounting for.

75 is decent amount, but might balance out in the day eating 2000 in total, so perhaps no big deal not to correct it.
But what if you ate that bowl 5 x daily?
Now is that difference a big deal? Would it be better to be accurate now?

Same with Fitbit.
Step based is based on distance and mass. If you had your weight entered wrong by 10 lbs - would you imagine it's close enough anyway - or would you want to correct it?
Easy correction, sure.

What if you did a treadmill or track walk of known distance and the Fitbit was off by 10% - would you imagine that would be close enough - or would you want to correct it?
Is it worth the effort to test to confirm?

Once that is done though, it's done. Now distance is good, weight is good, calorie burn estimate is good.

So now unless you see massive steps when you were sitting, or lack of steps when you were moving - you got a good estimate to use.

But guess what, some workouts don't have good calorie burn estimates when looking at steps.
How many steps in the pool when swimming? None? Would you manually log you swam 1 hr to have a better estimate?

Don't freak out and stress over it, but also be aware of the limits of ANY tool.
Even your multi-tool may be missing a screwdriver small enough for glasses screw, but you know you can use one of the blades. And you snap it off.

Or MFP as tool by itself, YOU are the one selecting how much you burn daily by selection of activity level - but did you select right?
Did you stress out over the great potential inaccuracy of MFP before you got the Fitbit?
Or did you realize how great it can be?

Liftin4food wrote: »

A lot of the conflicting opinions come down to the fact that a lot of people don't understand how fitbit and MFP work together.

I trust my fitbit. I eat my calorie adjustments back. It's doing a great job for me.

^This. I eat back my adjustments, lost the weight, and have maintained for nine months. Trust your Fitbit for several weeks, then reevaluate your progress.

I just trusted my Fitbit, I am losing @1lb. a week, as I told it I wanted to do. I read both MFP fitbit group postings and Fitbit.com, so I understand where your confusion is coming from.

I wear my fitbit on my non dominate wrist, I wear it inside, the LEDs face the veins, I never have to shift the position of it on my wrist. It is so comfortable, I forget it is on most of the time. My activity level is set to sedentary in both apps (I'm short this seems to work better for me) I do fitness classes for seniors and walk 12K daily now, I worked up to that. I eat some of the extra calories most days, occasionally I go over 100 to 200 calories, sometimes I am right on it. I use a digital scale, cups and measuring spoons, scan labels to record my calories. Main point is I am losing it at the projected rate.

It works a treat for me. Try just relaxing and enjoying the simplicity of it all.

No. It will still add over what your maintenance is. I'm on lightly active and still earn 350-500 calories after a long day at work (usually 12-15,000 steps). I think the guide is 6-7000 steps is considered lightly active.

You just need to decide on a strategy and stick to it for awhile to see if it works, Christine. None of us knows if that's an accurate burn for you. It looks right to me, or at least comparable to what I would burn for that many steps and I have always eaten what Fitbit tells me to eat. But until you actually either eat back all your calories, half of your calories, or none of your calories for a month or so and gauge your results against Fitbit's prediction for you, you're not going to be sure.*

I also agree that most MFP users do not understand how Fitbit works.


*that means choose just one of those options and do it consistently. Not jump around from one to another.

Just to give you an idea of how accurate the Fitbit can be, I did the math for the past 30 days. For reference, I have a One. My average daily burn for the month was 3057 calories. My daily average intake was 2832. Difference between the two 225 calories (I'm set at 250cal deficit, but don't always stick exactly to it). Mathematically I should have lost 1.9lbs in the past month. I lost 1.6lbs. I'd say that's pretty darn close for what is nothing more than an estimate.

I manually log all of my non-step exercises, and weigh as much of my food as is practical. I just eat what MFP/Fitbit tell me to eat, and lose just about the predicted amount of weight. I'm sure if I was 100% accurate with my intake measurement, it'd be even closer, but sometimes it's just not feasible to weight everything.

I currently work from home remotely and most of my exercise is walking. I have my activity level set to sedentary and let Fitbit=>MFP adjust my calories based on activity. I have had work bomb days where I barely move away from my computer and it's good to see the consequences in the form of a smaller calorie allowance.

Thank you Nancy! That explained it well.

I will leave my setting at sedentary, because I don't want to be automatically allotted more calories at the beginning of each day by setting a higher activity level on MFP. I want to earn them directly through walking. I enjoy seeing the impact my activity has on the # of 'bonus' calories I'm allocated through Fitbit.

I am retired and inactive except for walking 15k steps a day. I have my activity level set for sedentary. Prior to getting this my second fit it I was using Map my fitness app to log my walking outside and on the treadmill. Now I let fitbit do the lot. I try not to eat back calories but occasionally go over my daily allowance when I am hungry. Maybe I should up to lightly active which just means that at the end of the day I would have a deficit of maybe 400 to 500 calories instead of 700 to 900 calories. Makes no difference if you are not eating back the deficit. Probably in the mind but not the body.

focused4health wrote: »

I am retired and inactive except for walking 15k steps a day. I have my activity level set for sedentary. Prior to getting this my second fit it I was using Map my fitness app to log my walking outside and on the treadmill. Now I let fitbit do the lot. I try not to eat back calories but occasionally go over my daily allowance when I am hungry. Maybe I should up to lightly active which just means that at the end of the day I would have a deficit of maybe 400 to 500 calories instead of 700 to 900 calories. Makes no difference if you are not eating back the deficit. Probably in the mind but not the body.

You really should eat back your exercise calories. Losing weight tends to induce the body to become more efficient at using the calories you eat. Exercise can help counteract that but only to a point. If you have too big a calorie deficit you're not going to lose fat faster, you're going to lose muscle. The recommendation is 1/2 pound per week for every 25 pounds you have to lose and 1 pound a week is a 500 calorie daily deficit. Your calorie allotment from MFP already has the deficit you asked for built into it, so when you don't eat back your exercise calories, you're creating an even bigger deficit. Perhaps too big. I have MFP set for a 250 daily calorie deficit, but I know that I can safely lose up to 1.5 pounds per week, so if I have more than 500 calories left at the end of the day, I have a bedtime snack.