Am I overcounting calories burned by counting steps in addition to my activity level?

traciela · January 2016

I have been using MFP for a few days, and I enjoy it! I make entries for the food diary and exercise diary, and I completely understand the calorie adjustments.

This morning I decided to start using Google Fit to track my steps, and I connected this to MFP. Although I have selected an activity level, Sedentary, it is counting calories for my steps in my regular daily activity. Under "exercise" it is showing I have burned a couple hundred calories from walking around the office, walking to my car, shopping on my break, etc. My concern is that I initially assumed that this type of activity would already be assumed and accounted for when I selected sedentary activity, but now it is showing up as "exercise". So, now it has added to my calories remaining formula, allowing me to consume more calories. Before I added my steps, it would just register as zero exercise, apart from my manual entries for cardio activities, so I assumed the formula was adjusting accordingly, assuming I had the average calories burned for someone with more sedentary activity.

Am I overcounting calories burned by counting steps in addition to my selected activity level?

2kidsandatrip · January 2016

It can be a little confusing and I had the same question when I started with a fitness tracker. I also set my activity level at sedentary because I work a desk job... mfp does account for some activity when you set your activity as sedentary, but when you pick sedentary it really seems to believe that you don't move at all during the day. LOL! You could also be moving a little more than you realized and therefore you may not actually be a sedentary activity level. Either way, see what happens when you don't eat those calories back and see if you are on track for your weightloss, some people eat them all back, I ate about half back when I moved a little more in the day and I still had pretty nice losses. Good luck to you!

callsitlikeiseeit · January 2016

I don't have my fitbit connect to MFP at all as i dont eat back any of those calories. I eat back calories, but only those from deliberate exercise.

basically, if it was activity I did before, it doesn't get counted - it should only factor into calculating your daily activity level, at most.

erickirb · January 2016

I would assume some steps are accounted for in sedentary, maybe 3-4,000/day, so you would be double counting cals for the first few thousand steps

truelight_photo_craig · January 2016

I use mapmyfitness, and only track deliberate exercise. I set my activity level to sedentary, and usually don't eat back any of the calories burned. Don't overthink it.

retropactum · January 2016

I agree with @2kidsandatrip. You should be okay since a sedentary activity level implies very little to no activity, but it may take some trial-and-error.

I've had from MFPals get really messed up and wound up gaining weight; however, it seemed to be because they had their activity set to accommodate their daily steps already (i.e. most worked retail so they had it set at light or moderate activity, which would include there normal steps while working). When they linked there FitBit, it counted those steps that were already taken into consideration via the activity level again. This should not be the case if you are set at sedentary though.

wardshelia63 · January 2016

I am the same way. I try to stay under my food calories even though I exercise every day burning 400 to 600 calories and it tells me sometimes I have not consumed enough for the day. I have been at a stand still as far as weight loss which is very frustrating. But I have only been doing this since November and only been watching my calories closer only since December. I have also installed an app on my phone that tells me to drink water. I consume 13 cups of water a day (106.8 oz). This is what the app told me I should drink for my weight.

ewsopp · January 2016

I too use Google Fit and MyFitnessPal. I have them connected, but I have the steps disabled (myfitnesspal > steps > 'don't track steps"). It works great with this combination.

Ideally, there should be an option in MyFitnessPal to opt out of the default activity level so that we could accurately use step data from third part apps (like Google Fit). Until then, pulling in step data into MyFitnessPal seems like a bad idea.

Deej1020 · January 2016

Honestly, I don't count it. I don't really get the point. It's telling me I've burned all these calories, but I just go off of what actually exercise I've done that day. Now if I really was walking for exercise like around the retract I would definitely do that. But not walking to my car to get something and walking back in the house. It's nice to see how much accumulated waking I've done for the day, but I stick to actually working out activity to show what I've lost in calories

Am I overcounting calories burned by counting steps in addition to my activity level?

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