Fitbit - extra calories from exercise

aroycepung · March 2016

I have my settings on sedentary so that my activity measured by fitbit will adjust calories for me. Unfortunately I keep having problems and was wondering if anyone else has run into this. MFP will tell me that I have earned so many extra calories from exercise and I will eat them back. Then, later in the day it will say I earned less exercise calories than it reported earlier. For example, today around 3pm it said I earned 122 extra calories from exercise so I ate them and now (5pm) it says I only earned 90 and I went over my daily calories by 32.. How could I be losing the extra calories I burned from exercise throughout the day when I am gaining more steps?

Anyone else having this happen?

Thanks in advance!

aroycepung · March 2016

And I am also having trouble with the two communicating in general. Fitbit and MFP cannot seem to sync up right a lot of the time, which makes it hard to be accurate with calorie counting.

holliebevineau · March 2016

That's strange. I have not have a problem so far with both apps syncing. It gives me so many extra calories that I can't eat them all back. I have the zip.

thunder1982 · March 2016

I have mine set to sedentary and let fitbit do the adj for me too. In reality I am lightly to moderately active 6 days a week and generally only 1 day of sedentary. That's without purposeful exercise. I usually get around 400 extra calories a day. At the moment I am not tracking food so am not measuring whether this is accurate.

I havent had any issues with my exercise calories except if I log into MFP without having recently synced my fitbit. What I mean there is sometimes I'll jump onto MFP as soon as I get to work, I have been up for 2 hours by this point and have probably done at least 1500 steps. But if I log on before syncing with my phone I'll sometimes see negative exercise calories because the last time Fitbit synced was midnight so they are assuming I am still sleeping.

So my suggestion is that you sync right before you decide to eat/look at exercise calories, maybe your syncing while doing activity and then havent synced again so its giving you exercise calories assuming your still walking around when you have actually been sitting for an hour, then once it does sync it realises nope you weren't walking that whole time and adjusts it back.

aroycepung · March 2016

I am also having a problem with my actual fitbit (charge) and am being sent a replacement so that might be part of the problem, but it seems to be more of a problem with the communication between fitbit's dashboard and MFP because the information on my fitbit seems correct.

I generally sync before I log my calories, but I'll check that and make sure I do each time. Not sure what is going on.

Lynnmi07 · March 2016

I've seen mine do the same thing. I figured it was because maybe the Fitbit has a predetermined amount of calories it expects you to burn in a day (based on the goals you added) so if you are really active earlier in the day it overestimates what you are going to burn and then has to correct later in the day... I could be making this all up though, maybe it's a glitch.

daydreams_of_pretty · March 2016

It does that on mine as well, and I believe it is because FitBit is projecting your exercise calories based on your activity level at the time. That means that if you're active early in the day but sit around later you will have a lower earned amount that previously projected. Similarly, mine is set to take away calories if I'm less active than usual. Sometimes on the weekends it will have taken away a lot of calories that I'll get back if I get moving. I think there's a way to turn this function off if you don't like it. Side note, you're still in a deficit! I've found that my FitBit creates bigger deficits than MFP. So there's that.

Colorscheme · March 2016

weird, I have no issues with either.

Maxematics · March 2016

My guess is that you have your Fitbit Food Plan set to Personalized instead of Sedentary.

When you have it at Personalized, Fitbit will give you a certain amount of extra calories based on what it expects you will be burning that day. If you move around less than Fitbit predicts, it will start making negative adjustments to your calorie allowance on MFP and you may overeat based on the changing number. If you set your food plan to Sedentary, you start with a smaller amount of calories, which will show up on MFP as either a negative adjustment or 0 when you start your day and you earn calories from there.

As an example, every morning, Fitbit takes away around 70 calories from me the moment I wake up. So my intake is 1600, but after the adjustment from Fitbit, MFP is saying I can only eat 1530. As I move around throughout the day, I keep earning calories and by the end my Fitbit adjustment gives me an extra 700 to 1100 calories to eat. If I had my Food Plan set to Personalized, Fitbit may start my day with 2100 calories because it expects me to burn at least 500 extra calories based on my patterns. If I just loaf around all day long, those extra calories will slowly decrease and by the end of the day I'll probably have a calorie allowance of 1500-1600 because I wasn't active.

You can change your food plan here:

aroycepung · March 2016

Thanks everyone! This makes sense. I am a graduate student and I walk to and from class in the mornings and remain fairly active. Then, I study later in the day so I am more sedentary. I do need to turn off this personalized function! I hate thinking I can eat a little extra and then have it taken away and end up going over! I am very short and close to my goal so I only have 1200 calories to eat without exercise and I want to eat every calorie I can haha.

OhMsDiva · March 2016

I just wait until the end of the day and then I sync my fitbit

Fitbit - extra calories from exercise

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