Fitbit question

FitBit assumes you are alive even when not exercising. If you have MFP linked it will show you an adjustment when you've earned above what MFP already assumed you'd earned. If you eat back every single calorie your body burns in a day on top of your MFP calorie goal you'll be gaining weight rapidly.

I think one thing that took me a little while to catch on to was that everytime I linked my fitbit to myfitness pal during the day it would give me kind of an inflated number of what it thought I was going to burn for that day, and it didn't give the me actual numeber until closer to the end of the day, so it would say that I had 3,800 calories I could eat that day, but in reality one all was said and done I had 3,400. So I would keep an eye out for that, and understand that fitbit also isn't 100% accurate so maybe only eat 50-75% of those extra calories.

fitbit takes into account your BMR as well. so anything you burn is from calories you burn by being alive as well as any exercise calories(or activity you do). just eat the calories MFP gives you and 25-50% of the exercise calories(not the total amount for all day,just the calories you know you burned which you can look at your fitbit app and look at your activity on there(looks like a little person running). you can add up those totals and it will tell you how much you burned during exercise. also the first week or 2 of having a fitbit it will estimate either high or low,it has yo get used to your body so to speak. so give it time to adjust yourself.

motormouth79 wrote: »

I started using this app yesterday and love it. I linked my fitbit to it and it shows up on the app but doesn't actually track my steps. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong but can't figure out what. Any ideas?

They're having issues with it right now. You're likely not doing anything wrong.

I also set fitbit and mfp to a time zone 3 hours ahead of me so that when I am ready to go to sleep at night they both think it is midnight. I find that seems to make my calorie accounting work better since it is not changing after I go to bed. Otherwise I would go to bed with maybe 50 calories left and when I woke up in the morning it had changed and now I was over my calorie count. I know really it is the same thing, but it messed with my head too much the other way.

gebeziseva wrote: »

My fitbit overestimetes my calories hugely. To work properly I've set my height to be 30cm shorter.

What type of fitbit do you have and do you use it just for steps or for actual exercise?

KWlosingit wrote: »

I also set fitbit and mfp to a time zone 3 hours ahead of me so that when I am ready to go to sleep at night they both think it is midnight. I find that seems to make my calorie accounting work better since it is not changing after I go to bed. Otherwise I would go to bed with maybe 50 calories left and when I woke up in the morning it had changed and now I was over my calorie count. I know really it is the same thing, but it messed with my head too much the other way.

That is definitely one way of doing things and I've often thought of implementing it... except i have a variable bed-time :-)

Another way is to realise that the accounting reconciliation happens at the end of day.

Fitbit assigns BMR x 1 to any minute where it does not detect exercise.
MFP assigns BMR x 1.25, x 1.4, x 1.6, x 1.8 depending on whether you're setup as sedentary, lightly active, active or very active.

So for every minute before midnight that you are inactive according to Fitbit you "lose" BMR x 0.25, x0.4, x0.6, or x0.8 calories from your adjustment.

In general:
BMR / 1440 * T * F = adjustment in calories due to inactivity when you go to bed (or lie on the couch watching TV) before midnight.
where: T = minutes to midnight; F = 0.25 or 0.4 or 0.6 or 0.8 as discussed above; BMR = MFP BMR http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator