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pchca
Posts: 31 Member
I'm new to using one, and have a few questions. I initially set up MFP as sedentary, it said I should eat 1400 cal to lose weight. According to my fitbit, I log anywhere between 10k-15k steps a day. So I changed my setting to the one above sedentary, blanking on what it's called right now, and my cals jumped to 1700. Which is fine, but what I want to know is, do I eat the exercise calories that are added on to MFP? Example - yesterday it said I should eat 1700 cal as normal, but then also eat 390 exercise calories. So should I really be eating 2000 cal? I'm 34, F, 5'4", 197lbs. Very confused. I currently do not do any additional cardio other than walking, usually an hour a day. Thanks for the help
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Replies
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Your Fitbit is synced to your MFP account, yes?
If so, then the 390 is added to your original goal because you moved more than your activity level ("lightly active") would have predicted.
The activity level setting determines how many calories you start the day with. Fitbit then adds calories based on your actual activity (not your predicted activity, from your activity level). The only difference the activity level makes is how many calories you will start the day with (and when you will begin adding extra calories for activity).
So yes. If you are eating back your exercise calories, those 390 are part of your plan.0 -
fwiw, i keep my classification on sedentary on mfp, and do not sync my fitbit with it. i want to control the added calories that i consider exercise. walking from the couch to the bathroom isn't exercise imo but fitbit counts the steps. I do this because i eat back my exercise calories. #everysingleone
i do watch what it says on the fitbit site for calories i can eat and quite honestly its pretty accurate to what i eat on mfp, but i dont track food or weight loss there at all.0 -
fwiw, i keep my classification on sedentary on mfp, and do not sync my fitbit with it. i want to control the added calories that i consider exercise. walking from the couch to the bathroom isn't exercise imo but fitbit counts the steps. I do this because i eat back my exercise calories. #everysingleone
i do watch what it says on the fitbit site for calories i can eat and quite honestly its pretty accurate to what i eat on mfp, but i dont track food or weight loss there at all.
Good point... so maybe I should keep it at sedentary and just add the one hour walk I go on manually in to MFP? If I do that, I should eat whatever calories it adds? And I'll still lose weight?0 -
My only hesitation with putting it to sedentary is that I'm not sedentary. I rarely sit down during the day. Granted I'm not running around, but I am usually on my feet.0
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fwiw, i keep my classification on sedentary on mfp, and do not sync my fitbit with it. i want to control the added calories that i consider exercise. walking from the couch to the bathroom isn't exercise imo but fitbit counts the steps. I do this because i eat back my exercise calories. #everysingleone
i do watch what it says on the fitbit site for calories i can eat and quite honestly its pretty accurate to what i eat on mfp, but i dont track food or weight loss there at all.
Good point... so maybe I should keep it at sedentary and just add the one hour walk I go on manually in to MFP? If I do that, I should eat whatever calories it adds? And I'll still lose weight?
While it's true that your daily walking isn't exercise as we typically think of it, it does burn calories. Is there a reason why you want to count the calories from exercise differently from the calories you burn in daily life? They're all burned calories.
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janejellyroll wrote: »fwiw, i keep my classification on sedentary on mfp, and do not sync my fitbit with it. i want to control the added calories that i consider exercise. walking from the couch to the bathroom isn't exercise imo but fitbit counts the steps. I do this because i eat back my exercise calories. #everysingleone
i do watch what it says on the fitbit site for calories i can eat and quite honestly its pretty accurate to what i eat on mfp, but i dont track food or weight loss there at all.
Good point... so maybe I should keep it at sedentary and just add the one hour walk I go on manually in to MFP? If I do that, I should eat whatever calories it adds? And I'll still lose weight?
While it's true that your daily walking isn't exercise as we typically think of it, it does burn calories. Is there a reason why you want to count the calories from exercise differently from the calories you burn in daily life? They're all burned calories.
I was just going based off what besaro said. I honestly have no idea which is the best way to handle it, which is why I'm asking...0 -
janejellyroll wrote: »fwiw, i keep my classification on sedentary on mfp, and do not sync my fitbit with it. i want to control the added calories that i consider exercise. walking from the couch to the bathroom isn't exercise imo but fitbit counts the steps. I do this because i eat back my exercise calories. #everysingleone
i do watch what it says on the fitbit site for calories i can eat and quite honestly its pretty accurate to what i eat on mfp, but i dont track food or weight loss there at all.
Good point... so maybe I should keep it at sedentary and just add the one hour walk I go on manually in to MFP? If I do that, I should eat whatever calories it adds? And I'll still lose weight?
While it's true that your daily walking isn't exercise as we typically think of it, it does burn calories. Is there a reason why you want to count the calories from exercise differently from the calories you burn in daily life? They're all burned calories.
I was just going based off what besaro said. I honestly have no idea which is the best way to handle it, which is why I'm asking...
I don't know if there is a "right" way to handle this, but here is my thinking: I bought the Fitbit because I wanted to know how many calories I was actually burning in a day. I wanted to remove the vagueness of activity levels like "sedentary" or "lightly active." If I burn 200 calories walking around for the day for my job (or daily errands), that is as much of a burn as the 200 calories I burn from a daily run. And if I do both in the same day, I certainly want to know if I've burned 400 calories above my daily activity level.
So I do have it set up to sync and I do eat my total calories allotted -- not just the ones from intentional cardio exercise. Our daily walking is part of our total daily energy expenditure and that's why I do want to understand how many calories I'm burning with it.
Like I said, this is just how I do it.0 -
Ello,
Just interested as I was wondering the same thing.
Do you have to eat all the calories Fitbit suggests? Sometimes I just don't want anything else! Also I set my weight loss to 1lb a week so it's not too difficult to follow, but actually I'd quite like 2lbs.0 -
Ello,
Just interested as I was wondering the same thing.
Do you have to eat all the calories Fitbit suggests? Sometimes I just don't want anything else! Also I set my weight loss to 1lb a week so it's not too difficult to follow, but actually I'd quite like 2lbs.
Seems like the two opinions are very different :-/0 -
You never HAVE to eat the exercise calories. Some people suggest only eating half back anyway just in case of over-estimations. Fitbit is generally considered pretty accurate, as far as I've heard, though. I just walk, and I've found Fitbit's estimation fairly accurate there myself, so I eat them all back usually, or pretty close. I'd never miss the opportunity to eat more if allowed though, haha. If you're not hungry or weak or anything, you're probably just fine.0
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You never HAVE to eat the exercise calories. Some people suggest only eating half back anyway just in case of over-estimations. Fitbit is generally considered pretty accurate, as far as I've heard, though. I just walk, and I've found Fitbit's estimation fairly accurate there myself, so I eat them all back usually, or pretty close. I'd never miss the opportunity to eat more if allowed though, haha. If you're not hungry or weak or anything, you're probably just fine.
Thanks, but I typically find Fitbit and MFP to be different in what they're telling me to eat. Do you have them linked or only listen to one over the other?0 -
janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »fwiw, i keep my classification on sedentary on mfp, and do not sync my fitbit with it. i want to control the added calories that i consider exercise. walking from the couch to the bathroom isn't exercise imo but fitbit counts the steps. I do this because i eat back my exercise calories. #everysingleone
i do watch what it says on the fitbit site for calories i can eat and quite honestly its pretty accurate to what i eat on mfp, but i dont track food or weight loss there at all.
Good point... so maybe I should keep it at sedentary and just add the one hour walk I go on manually in to MFP? If I do that, I should eat whatever calories it adds? And I'll still lose weight?
While it's true that your daily walking isn't exercise as we typically think of it, it does burn calories. Is there a reason why you want to count the calories from exercise differently from the calories you burn in daily life? They're all burned calories.
I was just going based off what besaro said. I honestly have no idea which is the best way to handle it, which is why I'm asking...
I don't know if there is a "right" way to handle this, but here is my thinking: I bought the Fitbit because I wanted to know how many calories I was actually burning in a day. I wanted to remove the vagueness of activity levels like "sedentary" or "lightly active." If I burn 200 calories walking around for the day for my job (or daily errands), that is as much of a burn as the 200 calories I burn from a daily run. And if I do both in the same day, I certainly want to know if I've burned 400 calories above my daily activity level.
So I do have it set up to sync and I do eat my total calories allotted -- not just the ones from intentional cardio exercise. Our daily walking is part of our total daily energy expenditure and that's why I do want to understand how many calories I'm burning with it.
Like I said, this is just how I do it.
@janejellyroll is a more patient and nice person than I am and has phrased everything very nicely
The Fitbit to MFP "exercise adjustment" is incorrect use of terminology: it is not an exercise adjustment, it is a TDEE accounting adjustment.
It adjusts your MFP activity and exercise guesses so that they match what Fitbit measured as your exercise and activity based on the inputs it has recorded and received.
Now, is your Fitbit 100% correct? Is your logging on MFP 100% correct? Is your body performing according to the Mifflin St Jeor BMR formula both Fitbit and MFP use? That we do not know.
Chances are really good that for the vast majority of the population (assuming they log their food carefully and completely using a scale and appropriate entries), YES, they will be as close to 100% correct as you can hope for.
Even if they are off (absent medical, or unusual conditions, or things not working properly), I've seldom seen them be 10% off much less the 50% off most people automatically assume.
So, set a reasonable and safe deficit. Reasonable deficits are generally defined as up to 20% off of your TDEE (25% while obese).
So, a 500 Cal deficit implies a TDEE of 2500 (2000 if obese).
A 750 Cal deficit implies a TDEE of 3750 (3000 while obese),
a 1000 Cal deficit implies a TDEE of 5000 Cal (4000 while obese).
That TDEE number is the total "burn" Fitbit comes with at the end of the day at midnight.
As you can tell, for most people a reasonable deficit will be somewhere between 250 and 500 Cal, not the 2lbs so many people on MFP choose to subject their body to.
Yes, this means that weight loss will take longer. Deal with it. A reasonable deficit will also result in less lean mass lost. and potentially avoid a host of other issues.
Anyway: set a reasonable deficit.
Eat your kibble as per what MFP and Fitbit tell you that you can.
Use a trending weight application to evaluate your weight loss and avoid reacting (counterproductively) to water weight swings. Since you have a Fitbit.com account, both trendweight.com which I use and weightgrapher.com can be automatically connected. (Happy Scale iPhone, Libra Android, though, again, I like trendweight and it automatically connects to Fitbit... so there).
After a few weeks (and we're talking month-ish here not three days later), evaluate your progress by comparing your scale and trending weight changes (convert to calories by multiplying by 3500 per lb of change) to what you ate as per your MFP logging and to what Fitbit thought you expended.
Compare the figures and come up with a correction factor that you can use moving forward, not forgetting to re-evaluate that factor every few weeks.
I like to compare both scale and trending weight as a sanity check; but, I base my personal correction factor off of my trending weight.
As I have remained in a deficit over a period of now coming up to 2 years, the correction factor has moved from +0.5% to my current -5.5%... In other words Fitbit was under-estimating my burn by 0.5% and now it is over-estimating it by 5.5%.
Which means that I should NOT be eating back EVERY "exercise adjustment" calorie, though I admit to sometimes not limiting myself to a 94.5% eat back!
Last note:
Fitbit is meant to come up with a TOTAL NUMBER OF CALORIES for the day. They use their own formulas which are NOT 100% the same as MFP.
Your walks on Fitbit and some of your other activities, get more credit for the duration of the activity than they deserve. BUT, Fitbit also gives you less calories for working on your computer than it should. And it doesn't really account for the extra calories you spend while standing and not moving as compared to sitting and not moving.
So, it is designed to encourage you to move more. And it is designed to also do a pretty adequate job of providing millions of people with useful information about their daily caloric expenditure.
If you're not willing to trust the gadget by enabling integration and negative adjustments and then applying a correction factor based on your trending weight change... why use it?
Grab a paper and pencil a chronometer and a pedometer and sit there calculating all your activity in 5 minute increments throughout the day. The compendium of physical activities will provide you with the numbers to use... you don't need no stupid gadget!0 -
You never HAVE to eat the exercise calories. Some people suggest only eating half back anyway just in case of over-estimations. Fitbit is generally considered pretty accurate, as far as I've heard, though. I just walk, and I've found Fitbit's estimation fairly accurate there myself, so I eat them all back usually, or pretty close. I'd never miss the opportunity to eat more if allowed though, haha. If you're not hungry or weak or anything, you're probably just fine.
Thanks, but I typically find Fitbit and MFP to be different in what they're telling me to eat. Do you have them linked or only listen to one over the other?
I use fitbit for my TDEE and set my deficit off of that, I ignore MFP's calorie recommendations, I just use MFP for tracking food intake0 -
I use MFP for food and fitbit for exercise. I ignore the calorie food part of fitbit0
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janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »fwiw, i keep my classification on sedentary on mfp, and do not sync my fitbit with it. i want to control the added calories that i consider exercise. walking from the couch to the bathroom isn't exercise imo but fitbit counts the steps. I do this because i eat back my exercise calories. #everysingleone
i do watch what it says on the fitbit site for calories i can eat and quite honestly its pretty accurate to what i eat on mfp, but i dont track food or weight loss there at all.
Good point... so maybe I should keep it at sedentary and just add the one hour walk I go on manually in to MFP? If I do that, I should eat whatever calories it adds? And I'll still lose weight?
While it's true that your daily walking isn't exercise as we typically think of it, it does burn calories. Is there a reason why you want to count the calories from exercise differently from the calories you burn in daily life? They're all burned calories.
I was just going based off what besaro said. I honestly have no idea which is the best way to handle it, which is why I'm asking...
I don't know if there is a "right" way to handle this, but here is my thinking: I bought the Fitbit because I wanted to know how many calories I was actually burning in a day. I wanted to remove the vagueness of activity levels like "sedentary" or "lightly active." If I burn 200 calories walking around for the day for my job (or daily errands), that is as much of a burn as the 200 calories I burn from a daily run. And if I do both in the same day, I certainly want to know if I've burned 400 calories above my daily activity level.
So I do have it set up to sync and I do eat my total calories allotted -- not just the ones from intentional cardio exercise. Our daily walking is part of our total daily energy expenditure and that's why I do want to understand how many calories I'm burning with it.
Like I said, this is just how I do it.
@janejellyroll is a more patient and nice person than I am and has phrased everything very nicely
The Fitbit to MFP "exercise adjustment" is incorrect use of terminology: it is not an exercise adjustment, it is a TDEE accounting adjustment.
It adjusts your MFP activity and exercise guesses so that they match what Fitbit measured as your exercise and activity based on the inputs it has recorded and received.
Now, is your Fitbit 100% correct? Is your logging on MFP 100% correct? Is your body performing according to the Mifflin St Jeor BMR formula both Fitbit and MFP use? That we do not know.
Chances are really good that for the vast majority of the population (assuming they log their food carefully and completely using a scale and appropriate entries), YES, they will be as close to 100% correct as you can hope for.
Even if they are off (absent medical, or unusual conditions, or things not working properly), I've seldom seen them be 10% off much less the 50% off most people automatically assume.
So, set a reasonable and safe deficit. Reasonable deficits are generally defined as up to 20% off of your TDEE (25% while obese).
So, a 500 Cal deficit implies a TDEE of 2500 (2000 if obese).
A 750 Cal deficit implies a TDEE of 3750 (3000 while obese),
a 1000 Cal deficit implies a TDEE of 5000 Cal (4000 while obese).
That TDEE number is the total "burn" Fitbit comes with at the end of the day at midnight.
As you can tell, for most people a reasonable deficit will be somewhere between 250 and 500 Cal, not the 2lbs so many people on MFP choose to subject their body to.
Yes, this means that weight loss will take longer. Deal with it. A reasonable deficit will also result in less lean mass lost. and potentially avoid a host of other issues.
Anyway: set a reasonable deficit.
Eat your kibble as per what MFP and Fitbit tell you that you can.
Use a trending weight application to evaluate your weight loss and avoid reacting (counterproductively) to water weight swings. Since you have a Fitbit.com account, both trendweight.com which I use and weightgrapher.com can be automatically connected. (Happy Scale iPhone, Libra Android, though, again, I like trendweight and it automatically connects to Fitbit... so there).
After a few weeks (and we're talking month-ish here not three days later), evaluate your progress by comparing your scale and trending weight changes (convert to calories by multiplying by 3500 per lb of change) to what you ate as per your MFP logging and to what Fitbit thought you expended.
Compare the figures and come up with a correction factor that you can use moving forward, not forgetting to re-evaluate that factor every few weeks.
I like to compare both scale and trending weight as a sanity check; but, I base my personal correction factor off of my trending weight.
As I have remained in a deficit over a period of now coming up to 2 years, the correction factor has moved from +0.5% to my current -5.5%... In other words Fitbit was under-estimating my burn by 0.5% and now it is over-estimating it by 5.5%.
Which means that I should NOT be eating back EVERY "exercise adjustment" calorie, though I admit to sometimes not limiting myself to a 94.5% eat back!
Last note:
Fitbit is meant to come up with a TOTAL NUMBER OF CALORIES for the day. They use their own formulas which are NOT 100% the same as MFP.
Your walks on Fitbit and some of your other activities, get more credit for the duration of the activity than they deserve. BUT, Fitbit also gives you less calories for working on your computer than it should. And it doesn't really account for the extra calories you spend while standing and not moving as compared to sitting and not moving.
So, it is designed to encourage you to move more. And it is designed to also do a pretty adequate job of providing millions of people with useful information about their daily caloric expenditure.
If you're not willing to trust the gadget by enabling integration and negative adjustments and then applying a correction factor based on your trending weight change... why use it?
Grab a paper and pencil a chronometer and a pedometer and sit there calculating all your activity in 5 minute increments throughout the day. The compendium of physical activities will provide you with the numbers to use... you don't need no stupid gadget!
Wow, this is a really excellent explanation. I will be incorporating some of this into my replies on future Fitbit question threads for sure. I think the distinction between tracking "exercise calories" (which many people are more used to) and TDEE is important for new Fitbit users to understand.0 -
I appreciate all the feedback. Thank you0
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