Why are calories being taken away

Presumably you have a step or fitness tracker linked to your account and you have negative adjustments enabled. You will have calories removed when you move less than your activity level (that you chose) would indicate for the day. This prevents you from canceling out your deficit.

You can change that setting - Go into Settings --> Diary Settings --> Scroll down to Calorie Adjustments and uncheck the box that says "Enable Negative Adjustments." This way it will still give you extra calories if your FitBit logs more activity for the day but won't take away calories.

janejellyroll wrote: »

Presumably you have a step or fitness tracker linked to your account and you have negative adjustments enabled. You will have calories removed when you move less than your activity level (that you chose) would indicate for the day. This prevents you from canceling out your deficit.

This^

I wear a FitBit (well sometimes) - I sync it to MFP where I have set my activity level to sedentary.

If I fail to "achieve" a sedentary status on any given day, then calories should be taken away. By the same token, I will get awarded calories for more activity.

Set your activity level in MFP that most closely matches your actual activity level. That way adjustments will be much smaller.

Without an activity tracker, MFP assumes what you say about your activity level is true. If you say you're lightly active, then MFP considers a lightly active lifestyle and the calories you'll burn. But if you're using a tracker, and you say you're lightly active but you don't move very much: MFP gets an adjustment from Fitbit *if you have negative calories enabled.

The answer is to choose a lower activity level OR move more.

OhMsDiva wrote: »

I do have mfp synced with my fitbit, but I will have to look and see what the settings are. All of this is foreign to me. I just know what my calorie allotment is for a day and I just go with that.

Also note that the "sedentary" setting does not mean being a couch potato all day. It still implies at least SOME movement. I keep myself on sedentary and it tends to even out. On the days I work from home, I tend to get ~150cal taken away from me unless I do a workout or at least go for a walk. But on the days I seriously leave the house, not only does it not take away but I might even get calories added.

I use a FitBit and I enabled negative calories. I set activity level on sedentary and yesterday, because I sat at home all day, MFP took about 150 calories away.

I have a question. What do you guys do on the days MFP gives you many more calories to eat? Do you eat them all? Half? None? Is FitBit (more or less) accurate?

OhMsDiva wrote: »

maidentl wrote: »

OhMsDiva wrote: »

I do have mfp synced with my fitbit, but I will have to look and see what the settings are. All of this is foreign to me. I just know what my calorie allotment is for a day and I just go with that.

As long as you're active enough it will "give them back."

I realize that, but I was just curious. As I stated before, I do not pay attention to the calories that I get or lose from exercise. I have a set amount of calories that I eat daily (1800)

I'm sorry, I guess I misunderstood your what your concern is.

Or at least I'd rather they lie to me in the opposite direction ha ha!

OhMsDiva wrote: »

kuroshii wrote: »

Artemiris wrote: »

I use a FitBit and I enabled negative calories. I set activity level on sedentary and yesterday, because I sat at home all day, MFP took about 150 calories away.

I have a question. What do you guys do on the days MFP gives you many more calories to eat? Do you eat them all? Half? None? Is FitBit (more or less) accurate?

It's rare that MFP gives me "many" extra calories. Depending on how much of a surplus I have and whether I'm actually hungry, I might eat at least some of them back. I'll check my nutrition levels and see if I'm particularly low in something (like protein) and maybe grab a slice of lean turkey or handful of nuts to nosh on. If my surplus is small or if I'm seriously not hungry I don't bother eating any extra.

If MFP is adding on lots of calories more often than not, you might consider bumping up your activity level so that your base amount is higher to start with. Just remember it will then take that much more away on your less active days!

Any day that I do any type of exercise I get extra calories. I have my setting set to sedentary but I also put that I expect to exercise 30 minutes per day 5 times per week. I realize that I get more calories because I have so much weight to lose. I do not really do strenuous or long workouts so I just look at it as getting some health exercise in since my job is a desk job and I am primarily sitting all day.

If you play with the settings you'll notice that MFP doesn't give many extra calories toward your goal because you said you expect to exercise a certain amount. I have mine set to sedentary and said I plan to workout 5 times per week for 40 minutes; I got 1260 calories per day. I then changed it to 80 minutes 5 times per week and got 1270 calories per day. 70 calories doesn't really account for 3+ extra hours of exercise.

Frankly, if you only want to eat a specific amount of calories per day, I'd suggest removing the sync between your Fitbit and MFP altogether. You aren't using it so why let it cloud things? In the settings you can also remove the calorie adjustments for exercise entered into MFP, if you wish.