Fitbit and MyFitnessPal

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darciekay
darciekay Posts: 7 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hi!

So I have a Fitbit Flex I wear it all the time, like you're supposed to. I recently linked it to myfitnesspal and my diary shows a Fitbit calorie adjustment. When I run the Fitbit counts it as active minutes and counts calories that way, but on myfitnesspal is says i only burned two calories for the day. Should I still log in my exercise on seperately on myfitnesspal app? Or should I just leave it as is? I am kind of confused about this whole thing so any explanation would be helpful!

Thank you:)

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  • rugbyphreak
    rugbyphreak Posts: 509 Member
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    FitBit is supposed to sync with your phone and then with your MFP account. When I get my 10k steps in, I "earn" an extra 800-900 calories on MFP. If it isn't syncing correctly, contact the MFP help people in the Contact Us section at the bottom of the webpage. Sometimes MFP just refuses to sync with fitness trackers. It was out for a day or two last month. If it's not adding in your extra calories, I would manually log them. Just make sure you take notice when it starts adding them back in so that you don't double your burn.
  • ZBuffBod
    ZBuffBod Posts: 297 Member
    edited May 2015
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    Let's say you did some form of exercise using an external app/measurement and registered 200 calories burned, your MFP account will show those calories. Right below that, the FitBit line will show adjusted calories burned.

    FitBit estimates a certain number of calories burned based on your entire day's activities, whether deliberate or just moving around. So if FitBit thinks you burned 250 calories, the adjusted number per that FitBit line will show 50 calories.

    If you did not record any intentional exercises, your FitBit line will show 250 calories.

    Hope that makes sense.

    ****Take a look at my exercise diary from yesterday...I did Jillian Michael's 30 day shred, plus a 3 mile walk. You will see that FitBit estimated I burned a total of 478 calories; however, since I only recorded 463, it added in the adjustment of 15 calories.
  • AJOjr
    AJOjr Posts: 24 Member
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    I leave it as is, and allow for negative adjustments too. FB works with the idea that through out the day you burn calories and depending on what you do those calories increase for that time period. MFP gives you a set amount of calories based on your set activity level and allows you to add in calories from exercise. When you combine the two there is a formula to adjust your calories from exercise. If you have your activity level on MFP at a higher level, you have to move more for your FB to catch up to the calories allotted in MFP.
    I don't know if that is written well enough to explain how it works, I didn't get much sleep and am not as clear as normal.
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
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    darciekay wrote: »
    I have a Fitbit Flex I wear it all the time, like you're supposed to. I recently linked it to myfitnesspal and my diary shows a Fitbit calorie adjustment. When I run the Fitbit counts it as active minutes and counts calories that way, but on myfitnesspal is says i only burned two calories for the day. Should I still log in my exercise on seperately on myfitnesspal app? Or should I just leave it as is?

    Your default MFP calorie goal is activity level minus deficit. Your Fitbit burn is TDEE (total daily energy expenditure), aka your maintenance calories. If you eat at a reasonable deficit from that, you will lose weight.

    Adjustments are the difference between your Fitbit burn and your MFP activity level. Click on any adjustment to see the math MFP used to calculate it, but a 2-calorie adjustment means you've burned 2 calories more than your activity level.

    If (and only if) you enable negative calorie adjustments in your diary settings, eating your adjustments means you're eating TDEE minus deficit. You can learn more in the Fitbit Users group: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/1290-fitbit-users

    No need to log any step-based activity—your Fitbit is tracking it for you. Log non-step exercise (like swimming or biking) either in Fitbit (that's what I do) or in MFP—never both. Exercise logged in MFP overwrites your Fitbit burn during that time.
  • ZBuffBod
    ZBuffBod Posts: 297 Member
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    Oh yeah, forgot to mention the negative adjustment feature.
  • darciekay
    darciekay Posts: 7 Member
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    Thank you everyone for your input! It's been really helpful and makes more sense to me now! Appreciate it:)

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