Negative calorie adjustments confusion (with Microsoft Band)

What do you have your settings set as on MFP? You need to set it as "sedentary" and then let the band take over everything else. If you have it as anything else "lightly active" "highly active", etc.., then it is already accounting for activity in your calories.

For example, I have myself set as sedentary, which gives me 1410 calories each day. If my fitbit detects me not being sedentary, then it adds calories. For example, for me, I usually start seeing calories added to my diary once I hit around 2500 steps. Like, I had 1410 calories and so far today I have walked 4306 steps, so it is giving me about 100 calories extra. I just tried setting myself to "highly active" on MFP and now the fitbit has taken away 325 calories. It's because MFP assumes I am "highly active" with a goal of 2260 cals per day (which is WAY too many for me).

People might be able to help you more to know whats going on if you let us know your heigt/weight/age and what calorie goal MFP is giving you BEFORE any adjustments. And what you are actually getting AFTER adjustments.

This is very confusing. I think you believe that by exercising you are subtracting calories that you are able to eat for the day and that is not the case. Your devices and myfitnesspal are trying to demonstrate that you "earned" that many extra calories. It is debatable whether or not you should "eat them back" it depends on what your goals are. If you want to lose 2+ pounds a week the difference between calories in and calories out is going to get you there. If you eat the extra calories that you burned it will take you much longer.
And yes it sounds as though there is some confusion in your devices too. I do not have a fit bit but use my phone to track my steps. If I run 3 miles and come home and I log it manually under cardio and then MFP syncs with my phone and adds my steps it will count the run twice when in fact I only deserve credit for ONE exercise.

I asked the Microsoft Health / Band team - in person - about this and I've also contacted MFP previously. There are some math problems and a weird translation of the data during the sync that leads to what looks like a "sign error" in the synchronization. Because exercises look fine - but that makes the adjustments get "worse" due to the projected calories becoming increasingly mismatched (due to calorie burning / general activity).

So, the "Sedentary" vs. "Lightly Active" thing may play a role in this in terms of how this feature behaves - it's the first time I've heard of it, so I didn't think to ask. It's also, apparently, mostly up to how MFP uses the information that they've requested.

Microsoft's team has made MFP aware of the issue before, but MFP was not interested enough (i.e. other priorities are governing their software plans) to make a change to the actual synchronization engine. They are more concerned with making sure the sync basically functions rather than improving it (there were times when the sync would break, or new users would not be provisioned).

Very recently, they launched their own fitness gadget bundle, so I expect even lower interest in this issue.

What's very strange in the Windows Phone app is the Live Tile... its summary works correctly. But that math is different than what MFP ends up recording... (e.g. -159 calories should actually be reported as +159). So you see the right thing before you open the app, and then it's wrong inside MFP itself.

Clearly the Windows Phone developer at MFP knew what to do with the adjustment... but it contradicts the recorded summary in MFP itself.

FYI - Lose It! now syncs with Microsoft Health (and Fitbit and Misfit) - so it's possible that this is correctly accounted for over there. I am interested in switching if stuff like this isn't ignored. Lose It!'s food database isn't a good though.

rabbitjb wrote: »

I think there's a synching issue but I also think those burns are outrageous

727 calories for 40 mins on an elliptical and 335 for 25 mins on a treadmill

They would imply you weigh 186kg based on mets for walking at 3.5mph being 4.3

Yeah, I weigh just over 200Lbs, but my fitbitHR shows I burn about 300 calories just walking fairly briskly around my neighborhood 30 minutes a day. And, I'm losing weight at a really good pace, so I don't think it can be too far off.

I'm getting similar odd negative calories adjustments when I sync my HR monitor workouts to MRP via a Wahoo app. The issue comes up as a 'fitbit' adjustment though, I think, because I have an Aria scale synced to MFP (I do not have a Fitbit tracker). Everyday that I workout and use my HR monitor, I have to go into my MFP diary and delete the weird adjustment for that day and the day or two prior (not sure why it looks back and adjusts too).

My hypothesis, is that the calorie burn from HR goes to MFP which then get synced to my fitbit profile which for whatever reason decides to send data back to MFP. Rather annoying, but I'm dealing with it by simply deleting the adjustments.