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Syncing calorie burn confusion

playthagame
playthagame Posts: 5 Member
edited November 21 in Social Groups
Hiya,

I recently got a Fitbit Charge HR but have only just came back to myfitnesspal today and I am a bit confused about the calories burned in a workout syncing with myfitnesspal. I done a workout this morning which burned 250 calories. I realise that the adjustment is made on what the difference is between fitbit total and what myfitnesspal estimates you to be burning. I am on 1200 cals a day on myfitness pal and due to whatever myfitnesspal thinks I should be burning, I think its about 1894 I am not getting any calories back from my workout. I am super super hungry and I am wondering whether I need to make some kind of adjustment to get some back as a deficit of 650ish calories a day seems an awful lot.

Thanks very much for any help!

Replies

  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
    edited July 2015
    Connect your accounts at http://www.myfitnesspal.com/fitbit

    Set your goal to .5 lb. for every 25 lbs. you're overweight: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/change_goals_guided

    Enable negative calorie adjustments: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

    Ignore your Fitbit calorie goal and follow MFP's, eating back your adjustments. My adjustments were wonky at first, but they got better—almost as if MFP was "learning" my routine.

    Edited to add you can click on any adjustment in your diary to see the math MFP used to calculate it.
  • playthagame
    playthagame Posts: 5 Member
    Okay thanks!

    Think it might just take a bit of getting used to cause when i used mfp before I always just added stuff manually.
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
    Yeah, using MFP + Fitbit is very different than using MFP alone.

    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.

    If you want your Fitbit exercise to appear in your MFP newsfeed, post a status update.
  • kayla_who
    kayla_who Posts: 540 Member
    I'm having the same issue. I just got back on fitbit and myfitness pal and yesterday was a fairly active day. I used mapmywalk to track walking a nature trail. In the past all 3 apps have synced up and everything was hunky dory. Yesterday according to fitbit I did a total over 8000 steps but at the end of the day fitbit subtracted all calories counted by mapmywalk and then some. So I ended the day with calories subtracted for exercise. FYI I have my calories goal manually set to 1600, not based on activity level.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    kayla_who wrote: »
    I'm having the same issue. I just got back on fitbit and myfitness pal and yesterday was a fairly active day. I used mapmywalk to track walking a nature trail. In the past all 3 apps have synced up and everything was hunky dory. Yesterday according to fitbit I did a total over 8000 steps but at the end of the day fitbit subtracted all calories counted by mapmywalk and then some. So I ended the day with calories subtracted for exercise. FYI I have my calories goal manually set to 1600, not based on activity level.

    So if MFP already new about a workout manually entered or synced over, then that increase in daily burn is known.
    If Fitbit didn't say you burned even more - then negative is very true.
    Just means you didn't keep as active.

    But, another issue - you aren't getting the effect you think you are with a manually set goal - unless you wanted a different block deficit then say 500 or 250, but still want to keep that no matter the activity.
    But if that 1600 goal is based on estimated TDEE (which Fitbit is trying to do daily now), then you can't sync accounts.

    The FAQ in the stickies will help explain all of this in either the 1st or 2nd section. For the OP too.
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