Fitbit sync with MYFITNESSPAL

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AmberGebell
AmberGebell Posts: 113 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hello everyone! I am confused about this, I have a Fitbit charge HR. Should I eat back my exercise calories? Also if I am should I have my activity goal at Sedentary or lightly active? I am at a Plateau right now. I have 20 more lbs to lose. I right now do weight training 4 times a week ( I don't manually add it ) and I do cardio 20 minutes 4 times a week. I am a hairstylist so on my feet a lot. I have read somewhere that I should have my fitness pal activity set to Sedentary if I eat back my exercise calories. Sedentary gives me 1350 calories a day and lightly active gives me 1550. Also I am hearing about " enabling negative calories " in my diary settings for days I don't work out and I have an iPhone 6 and don't have that option, Is that important? Also I am hearing that with less than 25 lbs to lose you should have goal set to .5 lbs a week and I have mine set to 1 lb a week. Maybe someone can shed some light

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  • AmberGebell
    AmberGebell Posts: 113 Member
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    Bump
  • mdnorthside
    mdnorthside Posts: 48 Member
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    That is a complicated question! I can tell you that I personally have a Charge 2 synced with mfp and I usually eat back all of my calories unless I'm not hungry. I set mfp to sedentary. It is important to do this regardless of whether you eat back some or all of the adjustment because otherwise you'll be double counting your calorie burn. As for your weekly deficit, I'm set to lose 1lb a week and I've got about 30-40 to lose. If you feel happy and sated at that level then stay there :) if you're really hungry or found you're losing weight very quickly (several pounds in a week) then you should lower the goal to .5lbs.
    Hope this helps!
  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
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    I suggest reading through the FAQs on the MFP Fitbit Users Group. That should answer most of your questions.

    I am pretty sure you have to use the web version to enable negative adjustments.

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/1290-fitbit-users

    I am set at MFP Sedentary and have negative adjustments enabled. I ate back 95% of earned Cals (Fitbit Charge HR) when I was losing at .5 pounds per week, and I eat back all Cals now that I am in maintenance. I do weigh all solids and measure all liquids that have Cals, I log everything such as condiments, cooking fats, little bites, etc., and I verify all of my food items logged using nutrition facts labels or other websites.
  • AmberGebell
    AmberGebell Posts: 113 Member
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    Thank you
  • Jules_farmgirl
    Jules_farmgirl Posts: 225 Member
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    I have a Fitbit Blaze. I have myself set to sedentary as I work in an office. If you enable negative calorie adjustments, you can set yourself to active if you want, as the day goes on, if you aren't as active as you thought, when Fitbit syncs with MFP, you will get a negative number where your exercise calories show, which then lowers your daily calorie allotment. For me this is helpful. If I am sick or have a lazy Sunday, I am able to move around and do enough to hold off the negatives. Or I know to simply eat less that day.

    As for eating them back, the exercise adjustment you see on MFP from your Fitbit is already taking into account the deficit you want to eat at based on your weight loss goal. So you can eat them back. Most people start with 50% (in case of a margin of error) and adjust accordingly
  • veganbaum
    veganbaum Posts: 1,865 Member
    edited February 2017
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    mdnorthside wrote: »
    That is a complicated question! I can tell you that I personally have a Charge 2 synced with mfp and I usually eat back all of my calories unless I'm not hungry. I set mfp to sedentary. It is important to do this regardless of whether you eat back some or all of the adjustment because otherwise you'll be double counting your calorie burn. As for your weekly deficit, I'm set to lose 1lb a week and I've got about 30-40 to lose. If you feel happy and sated at that level then stay there :) if you're really hungry or found you're losing weight very quickly (several pounds in a week) then you should lower the goal to .5lbs.
    Hope this helps!

    This is incorrect. You choose your activity level based on your daily life without exercise. If you do exercise, you are meant to add that in to raise your calorie goal and are NOT double counting. Then, as is said a thousand times a day, a person should eat those calories, perhaps only 50-75% to begin with (for 4-6 weeks) in case the estimates are off for that individual.

    OP, please read the fitbit link the PP posted. The calories are not exercise calories - yes, a fitbit will add calories for more movement from exercise, but it also gives you more calories if you burn more simply going about your day than you told MFP you expected to by your activity level setting. If you chose sedentary and are getting a large adjustment, you are likely more than sedentary (and as a hairdresser, sedentary is likely not an appropriate choice, anyway).
  • AmberGebell
    AmberGebell Posts: 113 Member
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    Yes my excercise calories to eat back today were 700 at Sedentary and I walked 11,000 steps! Will it make a difference if I put Sedentary and get more excercise calories or go with lightly active and get less excercise calories? Or will it be about the same?
  • AmberGebell
    AmberGebell Posts: 113 Member
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    Bump
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,940 Member
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    With negative adjustments enabled your total allowance of calories at the end of the day will be the same no matter what you choose your initial goal to be because it will reflect the final number that your Fitbit spits out for your daily calories.

    Because there are differences in how the calories are calculated during the day it is generally recommended that you choose a setting that makes the final adjustment as small as possible
  • AmberGebell
    AmberGebell Posts: 113 Member
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    So you recommend me change my fitness level to Lightly active? Yes I just enabled my negative adjustments as well
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,940 Member
    edited February 2017
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    How many steps you get from your Fitbit?
    1-5000 set MFP to sedentary
    5000-8500 lightly active
    8500-12,500 active
    Over 12500 very active

    In these ranges you are likely to get some positive adjustments and unlikely to get large negative adjustments.

    After that adjust based on your own personal experience.

    If you're largely inactive after a particular time in the evening that is appreciably before midnight expect to receive a negative adjustment during that time period because of the way MFP and Fitbit calculate calories.

    For every minute of inactivity you will lose an amount that I will go find an old post of mine and post below :smiley:

    Your original question included a q about goals.

    in the low overweight to normal weight range I would not exceed a deficit of 20% of my tdee

    In the normal weight range I would even dial it down to 10-15% depending on whether my logging was accurate enough to support that

    On Fitbit's website click on your picture. This should take you to a screen where you can see calories eaten vs calories spent for the past 30days.

    Due to integration issues calories eaten are sometimes not right. But calories spent are coming directly from Fitbit and show your tdee the past 29-30 days. You can also see your average tdee. Set MFP to lose such that your deficit is close to 20% of that number.

    For most people the answer will be 500cal a day or 1lb a week. People with smaller tdee may be closer to 250cal a day or 0.5lb a week. A few people will be able to afford 1.5 or 2lb a week losses.

    Again accuracy depends on logging and how close your weight changes track to estimates for a multitude of reasons.

    You are using fitbit.Com. You can integrate it so that your weight data pushes automagically to www.trendweight.com and MFP. (Go to trendweight to setup)

    This will enable you to better judge the success of your efforts especially when weight loss starts slowing down!

    Exercise logged on MFP overwrites what Fitbit recorded during the same time period.

    Till you can manipulate this to your advantage (f.e. recording an activity so that it's visible on mfp to your friends and then going on to Fitbit.com to delete that manual activity once it imports so as to revert to what Fitbit had recorded on its own) you are better off recording all exercise on Fitbit and all food on MFP so as to avoid extra distortions.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,940 Member
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    For every minute of inactivity (watching tv/sleeping) before midnight you can expect your "adjustment" to become more negative because MFP assigns more calories to every inactive minute as compared to Fitbit.

    You will lose: T * F * BMR Calories /1440
    T = time in minutes to midnight
    F = 0.25 or 0.4 or 0.6 or 0.8 depending on whether you have chosen yourself to be sedentary, lightly active, active or highly active on MFP
    BMR calories as per: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator

    So, for example, if I were to go to bed at 23:05, I can expect my Fitbit adjustment to reduce as follows:
    55 * 0.8 * 1531 / 1440 = ~59 Cal (or about 1.1 Cal per minute).
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    edited February 2017
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    It won't matter what your MFP setting is, it will adjust with Fitbit.

    I like keeping it close to what I really do though so I can estimate better.

    Also, MFP always gives me too many calories from Fitbit and I lose 100-150 calories from activity overnight, so plan for that (I found that the 'calories left' shown on Fitbit are way more accurate).

    You need to go to MFP on a desktop to see the option to enable negative calories (or possibly from the website on your phone). But if you set yourself at sedentary, you don't have to worry about that.. the adjustments will just be bigger throughout the day.

    Personally, if you're losing fine right now and are not particularly hungry, I'd stick to 1 lb a week. If you get hungrier, switch to half a lb.

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