Negative calorie adjustment (fitbit)

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lorib642
lorib642 Posts: 1,942 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
My fitbit has a feature that if it is turned on and synched with mfp subtracts from your calorie goal if you haven't burned enough calories, and adds when you have. I don't know if other people would even notice, they probably never go under, but it encourages me to get moving.

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  • TheBeachgod
    TheBeachgod Posts: 825 Member
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    I had to disable that since I'm at maintenance and it was subtracting calories instead of leaving them alone if I hadn't burned enough. I don't know if that's a glitch or if MFP/Fitbit think you should eat less than your minimum maintenance calories if you want to maintain your current weight. 6evg4qeo6lex.gif
  • HutchA12
    HutchA12 Posts: 279 Member
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    TheBeachgod wrote: »
    I had to disable that since I'm at maintenance and it was subtracting calories instead of leaving them alone if I hadn't burned enough. I don't know if that's a glitch or if MFP/Fitbit think you should eat less than your minimum maintenance calories if you want to maintain your current weight. 6evg4qeo6lex.gif

    Wouldn't MFP be guessing your maintenance and your fitbit br correcting MFP to give you a truer calorie burn number based on less activity? Like an average work day your fairly active so fitbit bumps it up but in the weekend you have a netflixathon so it lowers for the day. I don't have a Fitbit just curious.
  • TheBeachgod
    TheBeachgod Posts: 825 Member
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    That may be. I never thought of it that way. I know I bounce ± between the same 1-3 pounds ever since I disabled it though so that's working for me.
  • macgurlnet
    macgurlnet Posts: 1,946 Member
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    HutchA12 wrote: »
    TheBeachgod wrote: »
    I had to disable that since I'm at maintenance and it was subtracting calories instead of leaving them alone if I hadn't burned enough. I don't know if that's a glitch or if MFP/Fitbit think you should eat less than your minimum maintenance calories if you want to maintain your current weight. 6evg4qeo6lex.gif

    Wouldn't MFP be guessing your maintenance and your fitbit br correcting MFP to give you a truer calorie burn number based on less activity? Like an average work day your fairly active so fitbit bumps it up but in the weekend you have a netflixathon so it lowers for the day. I don't have a Fitbit just curious.

    This is pretty much what it's doing. It works the same way whether you're losing or maintaining.

    MFP assumes you'll burn XXXX calories based on activity setting. Fitbit sends back info about your actual activity and MFP adjusts using that info. It's expected behavior.

    ~Lyssa
  • AlphaHowls
    AlphaHowls Posts: 1,924 Member
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    DO NOT TRUST THE ADJUSTMENTS!!!! Over the last week everything appears to be going haywire. One minute it looks like you have the calories (exercise) and the next it is all screwed up and taken away. All my numbers and data for the last two months is now screwed up (thanks MFP). Neither MFP nor fitbit consider it a problem and I have been emailing back and forth, but since they do not see any issues, well, it will not be fixed.
  • lorib642
    lorib642 Posts: 1,942 Member
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    AlphaHowls wrote: »
    DO NOT TRUST THE ADJUSTMENTS!!!! Over the last week everything appears to be going haywire. One minute it looks like you have the calories (exercise) and the next it is all screwed up and taken away. All my numbers and data for the last two months is now screwed up (thanks MFP). Neither MFP nor fitbit consider it a problem and I have been emailing back and forth, but since they do not see any issues, well, it will not be fixed.

    Thanks. I didn't know there was a problem.
  • macgurlnet
    macgurlnet Posts: 1,946 Member
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    AlphaHowls wrote: »
    DO NOT TRUST THE ADJUSTMENTS!!!! Over the last week everything appears to be going haywire. One minute it looks like you have the calories (exercise) and the next it is all screwed up and taken away. All my numbers and data for the last two months is now screwed up (thanks MFP). Neither MFP nor fitbit consider it a problem and I have been emailing back and forth, but since they do not see any issues, well, it will not be fixed.

    It's working fine for me, but I've definitely seen the same from other people.

    So, just keep an eye on your account and see if it's doing wonky stuff or if it's behaving :)

    ~Lyssa
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,853 Member
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    Assuming integration works correctly (which currently is not the case for many people), negative adjustments bring in line MFP's guess as to your activity level with FITBIT's detection/estimation of the calories you've burned.

    So, if you believe that your Fitbit is 100% accurate, you need to follow the negative adjustments.

    This does not mean that your Fitbit is 100% accurate. For many people Fitbit over-estimates or under-estimates TDEE. In general these errors in estimation are small (<5%); but the size of these errors does depend on how well you are logging your food in MFP.

    In general everything is estimation including your scale weight.

    About the best you can do is enter your daily scale weight in a trending weight program such as www.trendweight.com or www.weightgrapher.com (or both), which automatically acquire data from your Fitbit account (or Libra for Android/happy scale for iphone for people without fitbit accounts).

    Then you can use your trending weight changes to figure out if they correspond to your expected logging results and correct accordingly.
  • chastity0921
    chastity0921 Posts: 209 Member
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    Mine told me I had lots of extra calories from exercise the other day, and when I look back now it says it was negatively adjusted like 900 calories and I'd weigh more in 5 weeks than I do now. Something is definitely wrong haha.
  • lorib642
    lorib642 Posts: 1,942 Member
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    Oh, that is weird. No, mine seems okay

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