Negative Calorie Adjustment

what CyberTone said, also if you are using a device that separates exercise from daily activity, IE: a polar device, you will get credit for the exercise, but it still will give you a negative adjustment if you don't reach your goal for daily activity set by MFP IE: if your daily goal is 2600, and you gain 500 from exercising, but you only have 3000 for the day, you will see a negative adjust of 100, but if you have 3200 for the day there will be a positive adjustment of 100. (2500 -100 + 500 = 3000) (2600 + 100 + 500= 3200)

It may be counting your steps as exercise. What do you have your activity level set too. How many steps do you average a day?

ChrisPontiff wrote: »

So right now I'm only using the iPhone to count steps and can't enable the negative adjustment. My calorie goal is 1,500 per day but it's subtracting calories for my steps and I get more calories available. Is this not accurate?

I have Pacer app which syncs my steps to mfp and gives me extra cals. Any extra exercise I do, I add it separately into the app. Also I set my activity here on mfp at sedantary. So my baseline is 1400 cals. Whatever extra I get from the app I eat back (70% only). Also, you can enable negative calories here on mfp through website. It's not possible to do it through the mobile mfp app.

ChrisPontiff wrote: »

So right now I'm only using the iPhone to count steps and can't enable the negative adjustment. My calorie goal is 1,500 per day but it's subtracting calories for my steps and I get more calories available. Is this not accurate?

^^ That is correct if you are looking at the dashboard on the Web version. But, it depends which dashboard you are looking at.

The mobile app dashboard uses Goal, Food, Exercise, and Remaining, but does not show Net on the dashboard. I think this method is simple and quite easy to understand and follow.

The mobile app equation is: Goal - Food (+ or -) Exercise = Remaining.

If you have earned exercise Calories, it will show + Exercise, and your Remaining increases.

If you have negative exercise Calories enabled, it will show - Exercise, and your Remaining decreases.

Since you don't have the option to enable negative Calories, the mobile app will show +0 Exercise until you actually earn more than your BMR + Activity Level.

---

The Web version dashboard displays the data differently than the mobile apps. This method is overly complicated and very confusing, at least it is to me.

The Web version dashboard displays Remaining on the top line, and displays Goal on the second line. If you look very closely, there is a vertical bar to the right of Goal, which means the Goal is not part of the equation to the right.

The Web version equation is: Food - Exercise = Net Food.

So, when you earn extra Calories from Exercise, on the Web version the positive Exercise Calories are displayed as being subtracted from the Food you have logged, which makes your Net Food Calories decrease, but that means that your Remaining Calories would actually increase.

Since Remaining = Goal - Net Food, as your Net Food decreases (becomes a smaller number), your Remaining will actually increase (become a larger number).

MFP uses two different methods to show the same overall equation. I just wish MFP would standardize on one or the other, preferably the mobile app method. It is yet another very confusing thing to new users not familiar with the differences.

Plus, I hesitate to even mentioned here the issue about how MFP incorrectly displays the Negative Calorie Adjustment on the Web version. But what the hey, here goes: although the underlying math is done properly, the Web version dashboard incorrectly displays and adds a negative number and winds up with an increase to the Net, instead of making us math nerds happy to display and subtract a negative number to get an increase to the Net. Yeah, TMI, sorry.