Fitbit and Calories-Can this be right???
jringold1
Posts: 45 Member
I've really started logging everything into MFP. Currently I am trying to drop 60 pounds and MFP gives me a budget of 1663 calories per day (to average 2 pounds a week). My Fitbit Blaze syncs with MFP. Today so far I have had 12,500 steps (as of 3PM). I just checked my MFP Home page and this is my daily summary:
goal: 1,663 Calories
food: 629
exercise: 858
Net: - 229
So first, I am wondering if I really burned that many calories with 12,500 steps. (Note: I am not entering any exercise calories in MFP, they are all coming from Fitbit).
Second, it looks like I need to eat somewhere around 1800 calories more today? Of course there is no way I could eat that much - but for the sake of argument, does this even sound right?
goal: 1,663 Calories
food: 629
exercise: 858
Net: - 229
So first, I am wondering if I really burned that many calories with 12,500 steps. (Note: I am not entering any exercise calories in MFP, they are all coming from Fitbit).
Second, it looks like I need to eat somewhere around 1800 calories more today? Of course there is no way I could eat that much - but for the sake of argument, does this even sound right?
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Have you set up your Fitbit app and mfp with your correct height and weight?
I've done 8k steps today and it's added around 250 cals (female, weight 158 lbs). If you are a heavy male your calories could be correct.1 -
I am a HEAVY male - 5'11, 254... Although I was at 275 beginning of the year. Just sayin. - Kriss, what is TDEE and NEAT?0
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My settings should be dialed in perfectly - I use Fitbit Aria to measure my weight and body mass - it automatically sends that to Fitbit. Then Fitbit syncs my weight to MFP along with my exercise. The only thing I actually enter is my food._runnerbean_ wrote: »Have you set up your Fitbit app and mfp with your correct height and weight?
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Yes.
Your 2lbs a week are baked into your 1663 goal. The rest of the adjustments are there to make sure you don't create a larger deficit than what you have selected.
Not only is rapid weight loss a risk factor for gallstones but it can also lead to excess lean mass lost. When you enter the overweight range consider reducing you rate of loss to 1.5lbs or even 1lb.
In the meanwhile connect Fitbit.com to trendweight.com.
Use your trending weight changes to evaluate what your scale tells you and the two together with your logging to evaluate whether Fitbit and your logging are working together with enough accuracy to serve your purpose.
As a male you can make adjustments in a shorter 2-3 week timeframe if you need to as you don't have hormonal water retention cycles.
@Look_Its_Kriss regardless of what we call it, as soon as you enable integration between Fitbit and MFP (together with negative adjustments) you ARE using the "TDEE" method.
Another way to view this is that at approximately 15500 steps a day you "top out" of MFPs "highly active" setting.
The news to you (and it took me a long time to realise this when it came to myself) is that even though you're "only walking", when you are walking 10000 steps a day you ARE what these days is classified as an active person. And when you walk more than ~15500 steps you EXCEED what these days is classified as a highly active person.
(**The Aria's body fat calculations appear to be even more inaccurate than the normally very inaccurate bio-impedence scale measurements. Take them with a huge grain of salt. My personal take after comparing my personal Aria body composition results to my corresponding DEXA scans is that I can NOT derive meaningful information from the Aria)1 -
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Thanks @pav8888 . Well I guess I just exceeded the 'Highly Active' category - which is totally opposite of how I was a month ago. I have been slowly working up to 10K steps a day - yesterday I hit it and today I am at a little over 16K. While I am majorly tired and my hips are pretty sore - I mentally feel great. I'm hopeful I can keep this up. During the week I am parked behind a desk so it's harder to get steps. Friday, an employee group brought in BBQ and wings. To deal with this, I ate my Nutrisystem cheeseburger and then went out and walked the parking lot for 30 minutes. @Look_Its_Kriss , looking at what you have done is really an inspiration. The fact that you have negative adjustments turned off and I know you are pretty active - I am wondering now what your true calorie deficit is. Anyway, I was just shocked at my deficit and wanted confirmation that it was somewhat accurate.0
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Look_Its_Kriss wrote: »@PAV8888 -- i don't have negative calorie adjustments turned on.
Honestly.. there is just too much.. do this and don't do that and set your MFP to this and log this here and don't log this here for me.. i pretty much loathe the intergration lol.. i am probably gonna disconnect the two of them.
I think you're making it too complicated by not trusting it.
It is not like you NEED to lose at this point.
And it is not like you're likely to gain crazily by being a bit off.
So set it to full integration negative calories enabled base activity to active or highly active.
Expect to get the negative adjustment when you wake up and to catch up on your way to about ~2300 by the end of the day.
Expect to eat a little bit less and to be negative calories all the way on the days you don't move... targeting eating a bit less.
Leave it connected with trendweight and re-evaluate things after a month or so.
The thing is that Fitbit is giving you an external evaluation of whether you're moving or not. MFP of what you're eating. If you get the two dialled in... coasting on auto-pilot.
All these things are innacurate enough that a feedback correction loop is still necessary.but accurate enough to be helpful and useful.
(But other feedback loops also exist and are valid, obviously!!!)0 -
@Look_Its_Kriss , looking at what you have done is really an inspiration. The fact that you have negative adjustments turned off and I know you are pretty active - I am wondering now what your true calorie deficit is. Anyway, I was just shocked at my deficit and wanted confirmation that it was somewhat accurate.
Your deficit sounds about right FOR THE ACTIVITY.
Negative adjustments only come into play if your total TDEE (for the day) is LESS than MFP expects it to be. Then Fitbit takes away calories. So this comes into play on inactive days.
For example I am setup as highly active because 80+% of the time I exceed the MFP highly active level.
But there do exist days where I do not get anywhere near 15k steps.
If I ignored them and didn't reduce my calories on those days I would eat more than I spend! Negative adjustments lets me know how much I can eat on those days while remaining on target.
Of course negative adjustments would be much smaller if you're setup as sedentary (they would still be there and would affect you if you had less than ~3500 steps in a day).
Ultimately the smallest overall mix of positive and negative adjustments occurs when MFP is set as close as possible to your actual activity level as measured by Fitbit.1 -
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Look_Its_Kriss wrote: »as a 5 foot 3, 135 pound female, i get about a 1200 calorie burn from putting in 18000-19000 steps per day.
personally i find using the TDEE method a lot easier then the NEAT method when using MFP when you have a fitbit
Jeepers! I got 20,305 steps yesterday, and i got 784 calories shuttled over to MFP. I'm 5'8, 149lbs, but I'm older than you, 45.
ETA:
And, i also just remembered that i told fitbit I'm 50, because i was getting crazy inflated burns that did not mesh at all with my weight loss! I have the Alta, no HR monitor.0 -
I've really started logging everything into MFP. Currently I am trying to drop 60 pounds and MFP gives me a budget of 1663 calories per day (to average 2 pounds a week). My Fitbit Blaze syncs with MFP. Today so far I have had 12,500 steps (as of 3PM). I just checked my MFP Home page and this is my daily summary:
goal: 1,663 Calories
food: 629
exercise: 858
Net: - 229
So first, I am wondering if I really burned that many calories with 12,500 steps. (Note: I am not entering any exercise calories in MFP, they are all coming from Fitbit).
Second, it looks like I need to eat somewhere around 1800 calories more today? Of course there is no way I could eat that much - but for the sake of argument, does this even sound right?
It does not sound unrealistic at all, especially if you set up your account as sedentary.0 -
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Thanks @pav8888 . Well I guess I just exceeded the 'Highly Active' category - which is totally opposite of how I was a month ago. I have been slowly working up to 10K steps a day - yesterday I hit it and today I am at a little over 16K. While I am majorly tired and my hips are pretty sore - I mentally feel great. I'm hopeful I can keep this up. During the week I am parked behind a desk so it's harder to get steps. Friday, an employee group brought in BBQ and wings. To deal with this, I ate my Nutrisystem cheeseburger and then went out and walked the parking lot for 30 minutes. @Look_Its_Kriss , looking at what you have done is really an inspiration. The fact that you have negative adjustments turned off and I know you are pretty active - I am wondering now what your true calorie deficit is. Anyway, I was just shocked at my deficit and wanted confirmation that it was somewhat accurate.
Just a word of caution, OP. When I was heavier and started walking too much all at once, I ended up with bursitis in my hip that sidelined me for quite a while. Slow & steady really does win the race
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Look_Its_Kriss wrote: »@PAV8888 -- i don't have negative calorie adjustments turned on.
Honestly.. there is just too much.. do this and don't do that and set your MFP to this and log this here and don't log this here for me.. i pretty much loathe the intergration lol.. i am probably gonna disconnect the two of them.
That's what I did. Un-integrated the two. It made fitness A LOT easier. 0 -
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Look_Its_Kriss wrote: »I will give @PAV8888 suggestion a try and see what happens.. at the moment the math seems a bit out of place so im going to have to wait and see if im the same in 30 days or if i have a drop in weight suddenly.. i had a 5 week stall before at 213 pounds for that long.
Two things.
CHANGING settings during a particular day.
I would look at that day with an asterisk as there are delays in integration information exchange, and potentially bugs when the goals and settings change halfway through the day.
The same applies to time changes that are do not take place simultaneously on both Fitbit and MFP. Or sometimes when changing to a new Fitbit device during the day.
Second (and I am sure that there will be some disagreement from the gallery), our bodies do adjust our CO, to a degree, with both reduced and increased availability of calories.
This adaptive thermogenesis tends to cover a wider range of adjustment going down than going up; but there exist examples in both directions.
A common example going down is a reduction in core temperature (often described as feeling cold) when losing weight. Reduction in core temperature = less calories burned = reduced calories out = a small adaptation that reduces CO and slows down weight loss. Similarly other changes to NEAT such as reduced twitching also take place. Reduced activity after a workout compared to activity that would have otherwise occured is another one.
An extreme example going up is hypermetabolism during recovery from anorexia where people have to sometimes eat in excess of 3k calories for months at a time in order to gain any weight at all even if they are not exercising and are relatively light.
But usually when going up the breadth of adjustment is smaller, and as people who have recently lost weight we are mostly primed for regain, and in particular primed to regain fat.
Where is all this going?
That just because you are not gaining at 2100 does not mean 2100 is your maximum. Maybe it is, or maybe 22, or 2300 is your actual maximum.
Unfortunately the only way to find your true maximum is to probe **with carefully measured CICO** until weight regain occurs.
I will anegdotically tell you that in the past few weeks i've increased my goal by about 150 Cal, and it has yet to make a difference to my weight that I can quantify.
But my hair and nails are now growing more rapidly and I HAVE been sauntering around with a bit more energy during my walks.
But, I admit that my level of logging probably verges on obsessive, so making such small changes may be quite challenging for people who log more loosely.0 -
Thanks @pav8888 . Well I guess I just exceeded the 'Highly Active' category - which is totally opposite of how I was a month ago. I have been slowly working up to 10K steps a day - yesterday I hit it and today I am at a little over 16K. While I am majorly tired and my hips are pretty sore - I mentally feel great. I'm hopeful I can keep this up. During the week I am parked behind a desk so it's harder to get steps. Friday, an employee group brought in BBQ and wings. To deal with this, I ate my Nutrisystem cheeseburger and then went out and walked the parking lot for 30 minutes. @Look_Its_Kriss , looking at what you have done is really an inspiration. The fact that you have negative adjustments turned off and I know you are pretty active - I am wondering now what your true calorie deficit is. Anyway, I was just shocked at my deficit and wanted confirmation that it was somewhat accurate.
Just a word of caution, OP. When I was heavier and started walking too much all at once, I ended up with bursitis in my hip that sidelined me for quite a while. Slow & steady really does win the race
Used to get blister upon blister. And complaining knees. So yeah, ramp up with care.1 -
OP, @PAV8888 gave you great info about how the systems work and why it's important to set reasonable goals, enable the safety net of negative calories, and then trust the two systems to work out the numbers that you can rely on to meet your goals (it may take a few weeks if this is new activity, new FitBit, etc).
I just wanted to share that I'm a 5'2 female over 40, maintaining my weight around 120 lbs, averaging 14k steps/day and my Total Cals Burned (or TDEE) per my FitBit and actual results is ~2200. I'm set at active and my adjustments are usually around 300-400 cals. I used FitBit to manage the last 15 lbs of my weight loss and have been maintaining for 2.5 years now. So the numbers you were concerned about in your initial post seem about right to me,given your current stats and your activity level. I lost most of my weight eating between 1600-1800 cals, and I'm much shorter and lighter than you. You should absolutely be eating more than 1600 calories for that activity level with your current stats.3 -
Look_Its_Kriss wrote: »@Christine_72
Today i have 28,005 steps
After doing what Pav said and changing my activity level to highly active (i am in maintenance) i got a calorie goal of 2340 calories per day.. LOL (Which is right on par with what i thought my TDEE was as an average)
When i enabled negative calorie adjustments i got another 760 calories on top of my 2340 calories today.
I don't understand why enabling negative calories would give you more cals today, when you've already had a high step count and more for accounted for what MFP thinks is your baseline NEAT calorie target? Negative calories should only come into play on days when you do less than MFP thinks you would normally burn, like if I'm ill, or on a long road trip, or stuck in meetings all day and don't get above 8-10k steps (I'm set at active). I probably would give it a few days for things to normalize.1 -
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Look_Its_Kriss wrote: »Look_Its_Kriss wrote: »I will give @PAV8888 suggestion a try and see what happens.. at the moment the math seems a bit out of place so im going to have to wait and see if im the same in 30 days or if i have a drop in weight suddenly.. i had a 5 week stall before at 213 pounds for that long.
Two things.
CHANGING settings during a particular day.
I would look at that day with an asterisk as there are delays in integration information exchange, and potentially bugs when the goals and settings change halfway through the day. The same applies to time changes that are do not take place simultaneously on both Fitbit and MFP. Or sometimes when changing Fitbit devices during a day.
Second (and I am sure that there will be some disagreement from the gallery), our bodies do adjust CO to a degree with both reduced and increased calories.
This adaptive thermogenesis tends to cover a wider range of adjustment going down than going up; but there definitely exist examples in both directions.
A common example going down is a reduction in core temperature (often described as feeling cold) when losing weight. Reduction in core temperature = less calories burned = reduced calories out = a small adaptation that reduces CO and slows down weight loss. Similarly other changes to NEAT such as reduced twitching also take place. Reduced activity after a workout compared to activity that would have otherwise occured is another one.
An extreme example going up is hypermetabolism during recovery from anorexia where people have to sometimes eat in excess of 3k calories for months at a time in order to gain any weight even if they are not exercising.
But usually going up the breadth of adjustment is smaller and as people who have recently lost weight we are mostly primed for regain, and in particular regain of fat.
Where is all this going?
That just because you are not gaining at 2100 does not mean 2100 is your maximum. Maybe it is, or maybe 22, or 2300 is your actual maximum.
Unfortunately the only way to find your true maximum is to probe with carefully measured CICO until weight regain occurs.
I will anegdotically tell you that in the past few weeks i've increased my goal by about 150 Cal, and it has yet to make a difference to my weight that I can quantitify.
But my hair and nails are now growing more rapidly and I HAVE been sauntering around with a bit more energy during my walks.
And I admit that my level of logging probably verges on obsessive, so making such small changes may be quite challenging for people who log more loosely.
sigh.. i am just so mentally tired of all this... stuff.
psychiatrist and others think i should eat more then 2000, i don't think i even want to eat more then 2000, but no one seems to give a crap about how *I* feel about it.. i don't want to increase calories until i gain cause the amount of sodium in my diet already masks my weight for days, dr wants me off caffeine, it's going to make me incredibly tired for weeks, its going to effect my workouts, so im not even going to be able to sweat out all the sodium i normally do to get my water weight off and yet im supposed to some how see weight gain.. no.. it will be too late and i am not really in the mood to spend another month trying to take the weight i just relost off again for the third time. Then all i have to listen to is fitbit does this, and i should probably trust it, but then adaptive thermogeneis this and this could effect calories out.. so don't really trust what fitbit or MFP says on days where you switch activity or a time change or if i workout and then decide to spend the rest of my day off sitting around.. why have a day off if i have to constantly be up and moving because fitbit doesn't like it when i sit.. i spent $230 on a gadget that probably isn't giving me accurate info because this morbidly obese fat girl was fat her whole life and this adaptive thermogeneis thing isn't taken into account on fitbits readings.
all i want is to not be fat.. i don't want to eat more til i gain, the last thing i want is to go back to being the worthless disgusting scum under peoples feet that i spent 29 years of my life being and all this stress over a stupid gadget is driving me crazy and at this point, i am going to bed and shoving the bloody thing in a drawer and thats the end of that.
/endrant
Methinks you're missing the spirit of adventure there my friend, OR that you're perhaps tackling too many issues, all at once!!
First get the basics down.
Then, and only then, play around.
Gadgets, estimates, feedback loops. And as I like to call them, happy brain hamsters!!!
We each have to find our own path to long term sustainability Kriss.
I **personally** don't expect that I will be able to maintain my weight loss if i stop tracking/being pre occupied with how I eat and move. Not in the near term.
So playing around and optimising is just part of me having fun while continuing to pay attention to what I must pay attention to.
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Look_Its_Kriss wrote: »Kind of hard to get the basics down when every single time I think I have an answer to what I'm supposed to be doing or expecting from either calories or gadgets or Fitbit or MyFitnessPal or whatever there's always oh but then there's this or oh but don't do that or oh change the setting to this or something else to do or think about or something Else going on so I'm obviously never going to figure it out because I'm retarded and dumb. So there we go I have admitted to everybody that I am retarded and I will no longer bother people with my advice because for the love of God I can't even figure out my own BS
I'm not familiar enough with your posts to know if you just need to vent sometimes or if you genuinely are in a bad place tonight, but I feel compelled to remind you that you are a valuable person and help *a lot* of people on here! I can't believe with all the success you've had, and the good health you seem to enjoy, that you'd let yourself get stressed out over minutiae! You'll work out these last little pieces of the puzzle, but keep enjoying the big picture in the meantime! 0 -
Look_Its_Kriss wrote: »Kind of hard to get the basics down when every single time I think I have an answer to what I'm supposed to be doing or expecting from either calories or gadgets or Fitbit or MyFitnessPal or whatever there's always oh but then there's this or oh but don't do that or oh change the setting to this or something else to do or think about or something Else going on so I'm obviously never going to figure it out because I'm retarded and dumb. So there we go I have admitted to everybody that I am retarded and I will no longer bother people with my advice because for the love of God I can't even figure out my own BS
It's virtually impossible to figure out the details of how MFP and FitBit work together - they use different algorithms and I nearly drove myself crazy trying to reconcile the math. It's just not worth it. Set the two up to sync, enable negative adjustments, don't double dip by logging step based activities in MFP, and trust the process. Don't overanalyze it.
That said, you seem like you're in a dark place tonight and I hope you realize that you aren't any of those adjectives you used to describe yourself. You are a funny, sarcastic, smart, brutally honest, caring, empathetic person who has already helped countless people on these boards in the short time you've been posting here. Go to bed, clear your head, and start fresh tomorrow.2 -
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Fear not Kriss, I'm right there with you. I had serious analysis by paralysis with my fitbit, and i still do to an extent. I drove myself nutso in the beginning, and i'm sure the good people here were sick of seeing all of my fitbit questions. You're still new to yours, I've had mine for over 2 years lol
So what i did was set myself to sedentary on here, and sometimes i eat some, half, none or all of my calories back and leave it at that ppffffttt I know the basics, and that's good enough!! I'm not going to give myself brain strain over trying to figure out the minutiae and algorithms and x=y equates to c blah blah blah
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I just bought a basic Flex used on Ebay and would never in a million years sync it to my MFP account! My activity varies a lot from day-to-day, and I bought it to be able to verify (or most days, correct) my generic MFP numbers. It's been a very useful tool for me and gotten things moving again, but I know I'd go insane trying to wrestle with negative adjustments and whatnot.
And BTW @Look_Its_Kriss , if you do decide yours isn't for you, you can definitely get some decent money back by reselling it.
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