Exercise Calories?

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danmarbar
danmarbar Posts: 26 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I am currently 5'2" and 171 pounds. I linked MFP to Google fit, but now it keeps adjusting my calories for my steps. I average about 11k a day so it is adding hundreds of calories. This can't be right can it?

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  • juggernaut1974
    juggernaut1974 Posts: 6,212 Member
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    danmarbar wrote: »
    I am currently 5'2" and 171 pounds. I linked MFP to Google fit, but now it keeps adjusting my calories for my steps. I average about 11k a day so it is adding hundreds of calories. This can't be right can it?

    What did you put for your normal daily activity level?

    The adjustment is based on the difference between what your fit is calculating you're doing, vs. what you told MFP you were doing.

    So, for example, if you said you were sedentary (which I think MFP assumes is about 5,000 steps a day) and you're actually getting 11k a day, you're probably closer to active, so it's giving you more calories to account for it.
  • danmarbar
    danmarbar Posts: 26 Member
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    juggernaut1974 wrote: »
    danmarbar wrote: »
    I am currently 5'2" and 171 pounds. I linked MFP to Google fit, but now it keeps adjusting my calories for my steps. I average about 11k a day so it is adding hundreds of calories. This can't be right can it?

    What did you put for your normal daily activity level?

    The adjustment is based on the difference between what your fit is calculating you're doing, vs. what you told MFP you were doing.

    So, for example, if you said you were sedentary (which I think MFP assumes is about 5,000 steps a day) and you're actually getting 11k a day, you're probably closer to active, so it's giving you more calories to account for it.


    I put in active. It gives me a goal of 10k steps a day on here and of course I went over yesterday by about 1k. I have been deleting the extra calories when they add them, but it tried to add close to 500 calories.
  • ultrahoon
    ultrahoon Posts: 467 Member
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    Did you also enable negative calorie adjustments? If you don't it can only adjust one way, and wont be accurate.
  • danmarbar
    danmarbar Posts: 26 Member
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    ultrahoon wrote: »
    Did you also enable negative calorie adjustments? If you don't it can only adjust one way, and wont be accurate.

    No, I don't know what that is :open_mouth:?!
    I really want to do everything right so that I continue to lose weight.
  • macgurlnet
    macgurlnet Posts: 1,946 Member
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    I think the issue here is MFP doesn't sync correctly with a phone's step counter, and in turn the math is off and the calories you're getting are wrong.

    Adjust your activity level down to Sedentary - does the amount of the adjustment change? If MFP is doing the math correctly, it should.

    My guess is you will still see the hundreds of extra calories. MFP is supposed to start adding calories once your number of steps goes above your chosen activity level, but this doesn't seem to work properly with phone step counters.

    As an example: I get 1470 calories before exercise, set to Sedentary. I have a Fitbit. 10k steps adds ~400 calories.

    If I set myself as Lightly Active, I would see a smaller adjustment - more like 200, maybe less (I've never bothered to change it).

    For some reason, the adjustments don't seem to change for folks using phone step counters, just for those using a separate activity tracker.

    I hope that helps.

    ~Lyssa
  • danmarbar
    danmarbar Posts: 26 Member
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    macgurlnet wrote: »
    I think the issue here is MFP doesn't sync correctly with a phone's step counter, and in turn the math is off and the calories you're getting are wrong.

    Adjust your activity level down to Sedentary - does the amount of the adjustment change? If MFP is doing the math correctly, it should.

    My guess is you will still see the hundreds of extra calories. MFP is supposed to start adding calories once your number of steps goes above your chosen activity level, but this doesn't seem to work properly with phone step counters.

    As an example: I get 1470 calories before exercise, set to Sedentary. I have a Fitbit. 10k steps adds ~400 calories.

    If I set myself as Lightly Active, I would see a smaller adjustment - more like 200, maybe less (I've never bothered to change it).

    For some reason, the adjustments don't seem to change for folks using phone step counters, just for those using a separate activity tracker.

    I hope that helps.

    ~Lyssa


    The exercise calories do not adjust on any activity level. I will just unlink them I guess :)
  • macgurlnet
    macgurlnet Posts: 1,946 Member
    edited December 2015
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    danmarbar wrote: »
    macgurlnet wrote: »
    I think the issue here is MFP doesn't sync correctly with a phone's step counter, and in turn the math is off and the calories you're getting are wrong.

    Adjust your activity level down to Sedentary - does the amount of the adjustment change? If MFP is doing the math correctly, it should.

    My guess is you will still see the hundreds of extra calories. MFP is supposed to start adding calories once your number of steps goes above your chosen activity level, but this doesn't seem to work properly with phone step counters.

    As an example: I get 1470 calories before exercise, set to Sedentary. I have a Fitbit. 10k steps adds ~400 calories.

    If I set myself as Lightly Active, I would see a smaller adjustment - more like 200, maybe less (I've never bothered to change it).

    For some reason, the adjustments don't seem to change for folks using phone step counters, just for those using a separate activity tracker.

    I hope that helps.

    ~Lyssa


    The exercise calories do not adjust on any activity level. I will just unlink them I guess :)

    Yeah, I think that would be best! But, you can still use that step info for reference. You could always manually log a walk for an appropriate number of calories.

    For reference - another user posted this set of info about steps per activity level. You could use this to make an adjustment as needed.

    <5000 steps/day = 'sedentary
    5000-7499 steps/day = low active
    7500-9999 steps/day = somewhat active
    >or=10000 steps/day= active
    >12500 steps/day= highly active
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14715035

    ~Lyssa
  • ilex70
    ilex70 Posts: 727 Member
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    <5000 steps/day = 'sedentary
    5000-7499 steps/day = low active
    7500-9999 steps/day = somewhat active
    >or=10000 steps/day= active
    >12500 steps/day= highly active

    Thanks for sharing. I'm all over that chart depending on the day.
  • danmarbar
    danmarbar Posts: 26 Member
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    Thank you for the chart!

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