logging elliptical and fitbit

depends on if youre eating back exercise cals or not.

i used a fitbit for awhile (just wasnt my thing) i didnt eat back any of the calories it gave me, just what i manually logged. i still counted the STEPS, just not the calories burned, if that makes sense.

If you're asking so you can have the correct calorie intake, I wouldn't worry about the calories burned during exercise and from normal activity. I let my progress towards fat loss dictate my calorie intake and not my daily activity. Go for the goal you're actually interested in.

What I do and what I recommend to people is to eat at a calorie level that allows you to make good progress towards your goal. If you are trying to lose weight, eat so you drop 1-2 lbs/week. This assumes an average calorie burn from you getting in all of your workouts. This will be different for everyone, so you'll have to do some trial and error to figure it out. I'd start ~2200 cal/day. Hit this goal, along with your macros and getting in your workouts, for 2 weeks. If you lose 1-2 lbs/week, you're good to go. If you lose too much, increase your intake and repeat. If you don't lose enough, reduce your intake a bit and repeat. After a few cycles, you'll figure out what works for you in your situation.

I have a Fitbit Surge HR, it's really accurate. I log my activities (elliptical / tread mill / arc / cross trainer) into MFP making sure I put the exact start time and duration. After that Fitbit will just count the overage, if there is one. It won't double count as long as you put in the start time and duration. Also, if your Fitbit has the timer option, don't start it and log into MFP at the same time or you'll get a double count. I only use my Fitbit timer to make sure I'm getting an accurate burn... MFP over estimates the calories burned for various activities. For example... the other day I did 45 minutes of Zumba (athletic version), MFP gave me close to 500 calories burned and my Fitbit gave me around 300. So although I logged it in MFP, I adjusted the calorie burn down for accuracy. OR... to make life easy, just let the Fitbit do your tracking for you and don't bother to log exercise in MFP. Either way, you'll get an accurate burn # unless you're doing an activity that doesn't have many steps. An example of that is MMA. When I am in an MMA class many of the drills and activities don't include a lot of foot work like sit ups, kettle bell swings, and actual hitting and kicking. While I do move around quite a bit when I am fighting, many of my partners like to be stationary so I'm not getting the steps. Hope this all makes sense.

So how does MFP factor in the data from your Fitbit? Do y'all count your calories from steps or just up your activity level? Im a brand new Fitbit user and haven't been able to connect MFP to the Fitbit app yet so I'm not sure how or if to factor in my Fitbit calories

Caroline, if you're using MFP alone then you enter your stats (height/weight/age/gender) and choose an activity level (sedentary, lightly active, etc.) and from that MFP estimates how many calories you burn in a day before exercise.

If you're using something like Fitbit, it measures your total actual activity and along with your stats uses the actual data to estimate how much you burn in a day.

When you sync MFP with Fitbit, MFP compares your Fitbit daily burned # to what MFP expected you to burn. If you are burning more (according to Fitbit) then you earn extra calories.

Caroline393 wrote: »

So how does MFP factor in the data from your Fitbit? Do y'all count your calories from steps or just up your activity level? Im a brand new Fitbit user and haven't been able to connect MFP to the Fitbit app yet so I'm not sure how or if to factor in my Fitbit calories

no, you can't log the same effort/steps twice.... Either take off the fitbit when you get on the elliptical and log those calories as a workout, or keep it on and don't log the elliptical calories.....

if you are wearing your fitbit while you are using the elliptical, there is no need to log it unless you don't think it is accurate. However, if you choose to log it, log it from the fitbit website and enter the times that you exercised and it will replace the recorded data so you won't log it twice. You just have to be sure to enter the right times.

In my experience, the fitbit is more accurate than the burn you would get off the machine. I have checked the machine and fitbit with an HRM and the HRM matched well with the fitbit whereas the machine overestimated. (assuming the HRM is most accurate!)