Do you eat back calories earned from fit bit?

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Replies

  • whiplashy
    whiplashy Posts: 52 Member
    I ignore the extra calories most of the time. Then when I'm having a hungry day, usually about once a week, I can safely eat 100% of them earned that day, as I already have the ones I didn't eat as a sort of buffer. I figure they also offset any possible logging errors. Works well for me.
  • Molly_234
    Molly_234 Posts: 89 Member
    WinoGelato wrote: »
    OP - here is my story, and I'm similar stats to you.
    5'2, 42, Desk Job. SW - 153. CW - maintaining at 120 (range of 4 lbs).

    I started MFP about 4 years ago and chose sedentary for my activity level (at the time I certainly was). I chose 1 lb/week weight loss with a goal to get down to 125 lbs. I got a 1200 cal goal. I knew I was supposed to eat exercise cals back, but I still found 1200 NET too hard to adhere to, so I was almost always over. I raised my goal to 1400 net, still eating back exercise calories, still losing 1 lb/week. In 6 months I lost about 18 lbs - pretty much right at 1 lb/week and eating 1600 or so calories. I was walking, and starting to get more active.

    After 6 months I got a FitBit and realized that I was averaging about 8-10K steps/day regularly. My exercise adjustments were pretty high: 300-500 cals, certainly more than I was logging when I was manually entering exercise on MFP. I got good advice on these boards that step counts of that level are really not considered sedentary, and so I changed my activity level to lightly active, and it increased my baseline calorie target (plus at that point I switched to 0.5 lb/week). Once I did that, the exercise adjustments were smaller, and more representative of my actual exercise. Over the next 6 months I lost about another 10 lbs, and ultimately ended up losing a total of 30 or more lbs before considering myself officially in maintenance.

    Now I average 15K steps/day, do some light circuit training, and my TDEE according to my FitBit is ~2200. So yeah, I lost most of my weight eating between 1600-1900 calories, trusting the FitBit, and even though I'm petite and have a desk job, I definitely lose weight eating 1800 calories.

    You may be similar - how many steps do you regularly take and what does FitBit say your Total Calories Burned are?

    Today I am at 10,500 steps but only because I did some shopping and a lot of cleaning. It says I burned 1,785 calories today so far. During the week my steps are between 4,000 and 7,000. With total calories burned being around 1800.
  • WinoGelato
    WinoGelato Posts: 13,454 Member
    Molly_234 wrote: »
    WinoGelato wrote: »
    OP - here is my story, and I'm similar stats to you.
    5'2, 42, Desk Job. SW - 153. CW - maintaining at 120 (range of 4 lbs).

    I started MFP about 4 years ago and chose sedentary for my activity level (at the time I certainly was). I chose 1 lb/week weight loss with a goal to get down to 125 lbs. I got a 1200 cal goal. I knew I was supposed to eat exercise cals back, but I still found 1200 NET too hard to adhere to, so I was almost always over. I raised my goal to 1400 net, still eating back exercise calories, still losing 1 lb/week. In 6 months I lost about 18 lbs - pretty much right at 1 lb/week and eating 1600 or so calories. I was walking, and starting to get more active.

    After 6 months I got a FitBit and realized that I was averaging about 8-10K steps/day regularly. My exercise adjustments were pretty high: 300-500 cals, certainly more than I was logging when I was manually entering exercise on MFP. I got good advice on these boards that step counts of that level are really not considered sedentary, and so I changed my activity level to lightly active, and it increased my baseline calorie target (plus at that point I switched to 0.5 lb/week). Once I did that, the exercise adjustments were smaller, and more representative of my actual exercise. Over the next 6 months I lost about another 10 lbs, and ultimately ended up losing a total of 30 or more lbs before considering myself officially in maintenance.

    Now I average 15K steps/day, do some light circuit training, and my TDEE according to my FitBit is ~2200. So yeah, I lost most of my weight eating between 1600-1900 calories, trusting the FitBit, and even though I'm petite and have a desk job, I definitely lose weight eating 1800 calories.

    You may be similar - how many steps do you regularly take and what does FitBit say your Total Calories Burned are?

    Today I am at 10,500 steps but only because I did some shopping and a lot of cleaning. It says I burned 1,785 calories today so far. During the week my steps are between 4,000 and 7,000. With total calories burned being around 1800.

    That's your total calories burned from your FitBit? And it's synched with MFP? What calorie goal are you set at on MFP and what exercise adjustment did you get?
  • chelseymorris185
    chelseymorris185 Posts: 23 Member
    Molly_234 wrote: »
    I am 5'2 136 pounds with a goal weight of 115. My daily calorie goal is 1400 but today it is adding 450 calories just from walking and doing my normal routine and it's only noon!. How is it possible to be in a deficient and eat over 1800 calories? It just doesn't not sound right to me.

    I eat mine back!
    I'm 5' 4" and weigh 115-118. With excercise I do daily, I eat about 3000 calories per day. (This is including eating what I burn)
    To maintain weight you want input to be equal to output.
    To lose weight input needs to be less that output.
    To gain weight output needs to be less than input.
  • SusanMFindlay
    SusanMFindlay Posts: 1,804 Member
    edited February 2017
    Molly_234 wrote: »
    I am 5'2 136 pounds with a goal weight of 115. My daily calorie goal is 1400 but today it is adding 450 calories just from walking and doing my normal routine and it's only noon!. How is it possible to be in a deficient and eat over 1800 calories? It just doesn't not sound right to me.

    Are you set to sedentary? You mentioned in a later post that you've got 10,000 steps so far today. 10,000 steps is about the "active" activity level. So, giving you an extra 450 calories for the jump from sedentary to active sounds right.

    I lose weight averaging 2200-2300 calories/day because I average just under 20,000 steps/day. It's all about activity level. If you're active, you get to eat more. (So, yes, I am eating back the FitBit adjustment calories. If I didn't, I'd starve! Figuratively speaking, of course.)
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,312 Member
    edited February 2017
    Nomenclature: Fitbit exercise calories are not an exercise, they are an accounting transaction to adjust your MFP calories based on what Fitbit thinks you burned.

    How accurate this will be depends on the accuracy of your logging and on how accurately the burn calculated by the base formulas used by MFP and Fitbit applies to your personal reality.

    It will also not be constant over time.

    2 years ago Fitbit (based on the quality of my then logging) underestimated my burn for the day by 0.5%. as time went on this changed to an overestimate, increasing from 3% to 5.5% based on my last comparison to a dexa scan a year ago. I currently suspect it to be off by about 6-7%

    Of tdee. I.e the full Fitbit daily burn. So when it says I burned 3000 Cal, I've only burned ~2800.*

    Your mileage may vary.

    Eat most back and evaluate your progress after 4-6 weeks. Use a trending weight app/web site. Fitbit can automatically connect to trendweight...

    * Again note that this depends on your logging. Maybe I did burn 3000, but my logging was 200 Cal less than it should be on average. So it looks like Fitbit overestimated, or maybe I am now more efficient or put less effort in my activities....
  • Alpine0021
    Alpine0021 Posts: 12 Member
    edited February 2017
    Here's a great and simple article that addresses "eating back" calories :)

    http://www.aworkoutroutine.com/eating-back-calories-burned/
  • oat_bran
    oat_bran Posts: 370 Member
    edited February 2017
    Molly_234 wrote: »
    I am 5'2 136 pounds with a goal weight of 115. My daily calorie goal is 1400 but today it is adding 450 calories just from walking and doing my normal routine and it's only noon!. How is it possible to be in a deficient and eat over 1800 calories? It just doesn't not sound right to me.

    Syncing Fitbit and MFP is very tricky. What seems to have happened is that MFP is adding your Fitbit calories (BMR + activity) to MFP calorie estimations which ALREADY includes your BMR calories. So you end up thinking you burn almost twice of what you're actually burning. Most people on MFP would advise you not to sync FITBIT and instead either use your fitbit solely to determine your TDEE. Or if you see that MFP estimations of your TDEE are much lower than what Fitbit says up your activity on MFP (if you don't mostly sit all day that's not sedentary). What you can also do is go to your Fitbit app after each workout, go activity and find how many calories it says you burned during that workout and then add that manually to MFP.

    These numbers you can eat back if you want. That would just mean that you exercise for general fitness and strength not weight loss which is what MFP community recommends. And the weight loss will come from the caloric deficit associated with your non exercise activity and diet. Personally, I don't really understand the difference it makes for the body weather it's exercise or non exercise activity as far as calories burned are concerned. So I don't necessarily eat the exercise calories back. I count my target deficit myself using MFP just to track calories in and my Fitbit to track calories out. Then I use the 3500cals/1lb fat formula to estimate how much I can lose weekly with that deficit.

    There's a fitbit group on MFP which is specifically for these kind of questions. But even if you search "syncing fitbit and mfp" in the general section you'll get lots of info.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,312 Member
    edited February 2017
    longstocking wrote: »
    Syncing Fitbit and MFP is very tricky. What seems to have happened is that MFP is adding your Fitbit calories (BMR + activity) to MFP calorie estimations which ALREADY includes your BMR calories. So you end up thinking you burn almost twice of what you're actually burning. Most people on MFP would advise you not to sync FITBIT and instead either use your fitbit solely to determine your TDEE. Or if you see that MFP estimations of your TDEE are much lower than what Fitbit says up your activity on MFP (if you don't mostly sit all day that's not sedentary). What you can also do is go to your Fitbit app after each workout, go activity and find how many calories it says you burned during that workout and then add that manually to MFP.
    These numbers you can eat back if you want.
    The above information is totally wrong.
    longstocking wrote: »
    That would just mean that you exercise for general fitness and strength not weight loss which is what MFP community recommends. And the weight loss will come from the caloric deficit
    This is absolutely correct.
    longstocking wrote: »
    associated with your non exercise activity and diet. Personally, I don't really understand the difference it makes for the body weather it's exercise or non exercise activity as far as calories burned are concerned.
    You are correct: your body couldn't care less.
    longstocking wrote: »
    So I don't necessarily eat the exercise calories back. I count my target deficit myself using MFP just to track calories in and my Fitbit to track calories out. Then I use the 3500cals/1lb fat formula to estimate how much I can lose weekly with that deficit. There's a fitbit group on MFP which is specifically for these kind of questions. But even if you search "syncing fitbit and mfp" in the general section you'll get lots of info.
    All this is mostly correct. In fact what you describe is EXACTLY what integration does.
    Integration compares the burn totals estimated by MFP and by Fitbit at the end of the day and adjust them to be equal via the mechanism of an "exercise adjustment". This "exercise adjustment" is just an accounting entry that equalises the two burn estimates and has nothing to do with an actual exercise amount. Basically MFP calculates a TDEE based on your activity setting of say 2000 Cal. Fitbit calculates a burn of 2500 Cal. The end of day exercise adjustment is 500 Cal. If Fitbit had calculated a burn of 1800 Cal and negative adjustments were enabled, your exercise adjustment would have been -200 Cal.

    The only real potential for confusion is that an exercise activity sent from MFP to Fitbit will over-write what Fitbit has recorded for that time frame with the MFP exercise estimate. While this is a great tool for correcting Fitbit errors or more accurately recording activities that Fitbit has not recorded correctly, or even for just showing your exercise to your MFPeops, I generally find it more accurate to enter all my exercise directly on Fitbit. Essentially doing exactly what you said: using MFP for recording Food intake and using Fitbit for recording caloric expenditure. The integration then takes care of combining the numbers and letting us know how many calories we can still eat to meet the deficit goal we've told MFP we want to achieve.
  • allierat84
    allierat84 Posts: 73 Member
    I eat back exercise and fitbit calories, I still lose just fine. I have mfp set to sedentary and allow fitbit to subtract calories as well as add them.
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