Totally confused! Net and Total Calories (Weekly Goals)

You shouldn't be basing your goal on anything - eat what MFP says to eat.

Without the Fitbit MFP is estimating your daily burn by your BMR and your selection of activity level with NO exercise done - right or wrong.

Then MFP takes a deficit.

By having Fitbit sycned, MFP is correcting it's estimate, and it happens to use the exercise diary to handle that calorie adjustment.
But that adjustment could be NO exercise and merely increased daily activity.

But once the daily burn is adjusted based on Fitbit's daily total at whatever point you are looking - then the same deficit is taken.

With Fitbit, the concept of NET really doesn't apply anymore, as I mentioned, it's not just exercise. So really forget the weekly net stuff, doesn't apply anymore since increased daily activity and exercise are all mixed together on Fitbit already.

So just eat to the goal that MFP gives you, that includes a deficit from whatever Fitbit says you've burned plus what MFP things you will continue to burn until midnight.

One kicker though by selecting Lightly Active. While that does cause your adjustments to be smaller through the day - and allows better planning perhaps, it also means that MFP has an assumed higher burn rate per minute.

So if your active day stops at say 9 pm, and you sit and sleep until midnight, and you reached your eating goal at say 9 pm - the next morning on first sync MFP is going to be corrected that you did NOT burn that higher rate from 9 pm until midnight - so you will actually have gone over goal.

But - if you always become inactive about the same time - the difference will always be about the same.

So you leave that much in the green for the last stuff you eat. Knowing that on correction the next day, MFP will lower it's daily burn, minus deficit, and you'll have met your eating goal.

woodybush wrote: »

Now I am totally confused about this. Am I right in thinking that if my daily life is sedentary, and my Jawbone says I haven't moved enough, then I will lose calories for that day?

What if you only get 1200 calories? Will it still take calories away?

Sorry if I sound stupid - I just have don't understand!

That happens with a Fitbit if you have negative adjustments enabled. Don't have a Jawbone. Not sure if it goes below 1200, I think it probably does but don't know for sure. The adjustment won't be big, I don't have them turned on but I can see it takes about 3000 "steps" or equivalent to get me a positive adjustment when set to sedentary.

I ended up having to do something different for mine. I have my calorie goal set in MFP. It's based on a couple of weeks average burn according to my Fitbit, minus any actual exercise I do, then minus a deficit. This way, if it's a normal slow day, what MFP says will be fine. I have turned off negative adjustments because Fitbit calculates your daily calories over the course of the day based on how much activity it's registering. Having negative adjustments means that MFP kept changing my calorie goal and I was getting confused!

So, essentially, I figured out a good daily calorie goal for me based on Fitbit and what MFP and other calculators said, and that's my MFP daily goal. Period. Weekends are usually less activity than work days, but it averages out over the week. When I do exercise and burn more than expected, then Fitbit will add that to MFP as extra calories earned for the day, which means I can eat a little more that day. This took a few weeks to figure out what I needed, but once I got it worked out, I was losing weight again.