Question about the exercise adjustment

4legs is right - if you keep a watch over your daily's for a week or so you're going to see trends in you intake calories and your exercise credits. Once you get a good idea of your normal activities, you'll be able to better forecast whether that late snack is ok.

LadyLilion wrote: »

Turning off negatives will still give me a zero if appropriate, right? I don't want to lose calories, but I don't want to have them fluctuate so much. Really, I'd almost rather disconnect the fitbit entirely if it's going to keep doing that.

Absolutely; my exercise calories stay at zero until I've done a couple of thousand steps.

You would need to be set as sedentary though

fitmom4lifemfp wrote: »

LadyLilion wrote: »

Turning off negatives will still give me a zero if appropriate, right? I don't want to lose calories, but I don't want to have them fluctuate so much. Really, I'd almost rather disconnect the fitbit entirely if it's going to keep doing that.

I never even see the exercise adjustment on mine. No idea why, I've had a Fitbit synced to MFP for quite a while. I can log weight on Fitbit and it syncs over, so it's weird that my exercise doesn't. That said, it doesn't matter to me since I don't manage my calories that way. I mean, if MFP said I could eat 350 more because of an activity, I would ignore that information. I have my own hunger cues that work better for me.

You might need to change the 'Steps' setting, as it sounds like you have 'Don't track steps' selected.

When i synced my fitbit to mfp, the apps told me to only log food on mfp and to only log excercises and activities through fitbit. Then fitbit updates mfp with steps and excercises, and mfp updates fitbit with your food/water intake.

If you enter excercises on mfp and allow your fitbit to also sync to mfp, then yes it doubles up the activities and calories, so you wont be getting the true picture.

The adjustment is not so much due to exercise but the different between what MFP thinks you will burn in calories (based on your chosen activity level) and what Fitbit says you have burned. So each time you sync, it will change.

I'll use my approximate #s as an example. Based on my weight, etc. and lightly active: MFP expects me to burn roughly 1800 calories per day. The important detail to keep in mind is that in reality, each hour is different for you/me/etc. Even if it averages out to 1800, some hours are more active and some are less active. Fitbit can pick that up but MFP can't.

So MFP expects me to burn 1800 in 24 hours, which works out to about 75 per hour. My BMR is actually 52 per hour. When I'm sleeping for example, I'm burning 52-53 and NOT 75. So if I wake up at 6am and sync, Fitbit tells MFP that I've actually burned 312. MFP says, but you should have burned 450 so that is a -138 adjustment. Thru the course of the day, lets say its now 9pm and I'm pretty much done for the day. Fitbit says I have burned 1700. MFP assumes I will burn 75 x 3 for the remaining time in the day, so thinks I will end at 1925. I have a +125 adjustment. BUT I'm going to burn more like 55 x 3 for some very basic movement around the house before I go to bed, so I end at 1865 total burned and tomorrow when I sync, the +125 has changed to +65.

So what can you do? You have a couple of options. One is to figure out your BMR and what MFP expects you to burn per hour. Google for a BMR calculator and put in your stats. Take that # and divide by 24 to get an hourly value. Temporarily set MFP to maintain, and take your calorie goal and divide by 24. What's the difference? If its 30 per hour, then you know that after your last sync of the day, you're going to lose about 30 cals per hour from your Fitbit adjustment.

Or you can look to your Fitbit app. Prelog your food for the day in MFP and then see what Fitbit says for your calories left. Unlike MFP it does not assume you are going to burn a 'lightly active' # of calories for the rest of the day. Fitbit gives you credit for what you've done and assumes bmr for the rest of the day. So far today I've logged 1300 calories and Fitbit is saying that I have 14 calories left in my budget. I know I'll end the day around 1600 for calories in. So that tells me I need to move more, to burn more calories. If I'd logged 1600 it would say I'm over by 286. Rely on this # as it will only change by a) changing your food log or by improving as you burn more.

LadyLilion wrote: »

It's kind of driving me nuts. I have my Fitbit linked, and as you may know the adjustment varies throughout the day. For instance, tonight I had 700+ exercise calories. Lots, right? So I have a snack, go in to log it, and I have 320 instead! Good darn thing I had a fairly low calorie snack!

How are you supposed to plan when it changes SO much over the course of an hour of two? I could have completely exceeded my calorie count for the day when I'm trying SO hard to keep on track!

If MFP and Fitbit are set to different goals, then they are going to have different values for the calories you have remaining. Because MFP uses Fitbit's # for calories burned. If you've set MFP to a manual goal of 1900 calories to consume then you can ignore the 'calories left' part because you know you don't intend to take in more than 1900.

Fitbit does have a calories burned goal you can set, but since you're burning calories all day mine tends to go green after I go to bed. I have a friend who recently started using a Fitbit, tracking calories and at one point she was worried because her steps, etc. were all goals met by 6pm but her calorie burn was not. So I reminded her that there were 6 more hours in the day.

AS for the husband... They are annoying. In the sense that men naturally have a higher bmr and higher burn rate than women. I think its due to a higher muscle mass %. Plus they tend to be taller, heavier than women. (Not always true, but in general.) My husband often teases me. On my most active day I might burn 2750. (I am at a healthy weight, and a healthy weight average height female does not have big burns lol.) That is running a 10k and doing 6 hours of yard work all in the same day. On the same day he burned something like 4500.

To get a better handle on it, look up your BMR & your husband's BMR. Now, your husband can probably afford to have a bigger deficit than you - but if he is on his feet for a double shift and is walking 20k steps in a day then he probably could eat 3000+ calories and still have a deficit. Also worth noting, is that MFP caps at scheduling a 2 pound per week or 1000 calorie deficit. The standard I have heard for healthy weight loss is 1% of body weight OR 2 pounds, whichever is more. So if he's 250 pounds now, for example, he could aim for 1250 deficit.