Reassurance re calorie adjustments

cldb77
cldb77 Posts: 33 Member
edited November 17 in Health and Weight Loss
Hello I'm still getting used to tracking my calories with my Fitbit adjustments and was wondering if someone can help me out. I've set my activity as lightly acitive on here with the calorie adjustments checked. Ive set MFP and Fitbit to lose 1lb per week. Today so far I've done about 8000 steps so far today and it has added about 400 exercise calories, does this sound about right, it seems quite a lot?

Replies

  • tinkerbellang83
    tinkerbellang83 Posts: 9,140 Member
    What are your stats? Weight, Height & Age and does your fitbit have an inbuilt HRM?
  • cldb77
    cldb77 Posts: 33 Member
    edited April 2017
    Hi, I have the charge 2 with HR, I'm 5"2 soon to be 40
  • cldb77
    cldb77 Posts: 33 Member
    The calorie adjustment was 400 calories for walking 8000 steps but just 226 for a 45 min hiit session (in workout mode)
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,300 Member
    edited April 2017
    You are confusing specific exercise burns with whole day estimates of calories spent.

    There exist multiple threads asking about Fitbit adjustments. Generally your Fitbit is in the ballpark.**

    8000 steps corresponds to an activity level that could be thought off as "more than lightly active"

    What would be your adjustment of your MFP settings were not sedentary? Much smaller, right?

    **assuming your logging is adequate. assuming you're not an outlier. assuming you don't inadvertently overwrite what Fitbit detects...
  • tinkerbellang83
    tinkerbellang83 Posts: 9,140 Member
    To put this into perspective I'm 5'8" and 230lb and I burn around 500 calories doing 8000 steps and my tracker is pretty spot on. However in lightly active I would only get a calorie adjustment that high if I'd already done about 6000 steps (14000 total) might be worth checking your settings. Do do you have negative adjustments enabled? Or do you just mean you have i synced?
  • lilawolf
    lilawolf Posts: 1,690 Member
    It is also assuming that the rest of your day will be similarly active. If you sat down right now and didn't get any more steps, it would readjust lower.

    Other than that, can't tell you wo your weight.
  • cldb77
    cldb77 Posts: 33 Member
    Sorry I tried to post with my weight but for some reason it kept disappearing. I weigh 142 pounds 5"2 height and 40 in a months time. I changed my activity to lightly active the other day (at least I thought I did) and I have negative calorie adjustments set. I have both Fitbit and MYF set to loosing 1lb per week. I'm using MFP to monitor the calories but when it synced with the Fitbit, MFP shows 400 calories burnt for 8000 steps and 226 calories burnt following the 45 min hiit.
  • cldb77
    cldb77 Posts: 33 Member
    I'm not overwriting anything in terms of exercise, I only log my food on MFP and allow the Fitbit to sync so the calories are adjusted to MFP. I'm not sure what outlier is?
  • cldb77
    cldb77 Posts: 33 Member
    xino79lm3opq.png

    It thought it would be easier to post a pic incase I'm not explaining myself well. There has been an adjustment increase since my original post due to additional steps. . Initially it showed 400 calorie adjustment for 8000 steps then added another 226 for the hiit. Ps this amount isn't an average day and is usually lower
  • Premed100
    Premed100 Posts: 14 Member
    Just a thought, if your setting is as active & you are also recording every step you take as a calorie loss are you in fact kind of double counting. "Active" setting is for a person when has an active job who may be standing (but still taking steps moving around) and is factored in but if you are also recording all that activity via your fit bit then that is a double inc put of the same physical efforts. If you are going to log every activity, including total daily steps you may be better off setting activity level to sedentary.
  • cldb77
    cldb77 Posts: 33 Member
    So if I changed back to sedentary will the calorie adjustment be higher or lower? I feel so stupid with this thing. I've had it a fortnight and for some reason my brain just isn't getting it. I can be a technophobe at times but it usually clicks after a day or so but not this time
  • tinkerbellang83
    tinkerbellang83 Posts: 9,140 Member
    Premed100 wrote: »
    Just a thought, if your setting is as active & you are also recording every step you take as a calorie loss are you in fact kind of double counting. "Active" setting is for a person when has an active job who may be standing (but still taking steps moving around) and is factored in but if you are also recording all that activity via your fit bit then that is a double inc put of the same physical efforts. If you are going to log every activity, including total daily steps you may be better off setting activity level to sedentary.

    It shouldn't be double counting if it's synced properly, it should adjust accordingly for the activity level in MFP. Admittedly it doesn't seem to be doing that, but she isn't logging the activity seperately in MFP.

    OP I'd suggest going to the Technical Support page and asking some of the tech whizz's who can talk you through connecting the fitbit properly to your MFP account. https://myfitnesspal.desk.com/

  • Silentpadna
    Silentpadna Posts: 1,306 Member
    Premed100 wrote: »
    Just a thought, if your setting is as active & you are also recording every step you take as a calorie loss are you in fact kind of double counting. "Active" setting is for a person when has an active job who may be standing (but still taking steps moving around) and is factored in but if you are also recording all that activity via your fit bit then that is a double inc put of the same physical efforts. If you are going to log every activity, including total daily steps you may be better off setting activity level to sedentary.

    I don't think this is true. What happens when you set your MFP to certain level is that it will adjust based on the Fitbit info. If you set it to sedentary when you are actually "Active", your adjustments will be larger. If you set it to active and your are close to active, there will be smaller adjustments.

    I've changed settings and found this to be true. The link in tinkerbellang83's post above should help if this is not clear. There's also a Fitbit group where it's explained in detail. I'll go find the link.
  • Silentpadna
    Silentpadna Posts: 1,306 Member
    Here is the link - it's part of the Fitbit group on a sticky post with FAQ:

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10098937/faq-syncing-logging-food-exercise-calorie-adjustments-activity-levels-accuracy#latest
  • cldb77
    cldb77 Posts: 33 Member
    Thank you to everyone I'll have a look and hopefully get my head round this one way or the other
  • SusanMFindlay
    SusanMFindlay Posts: 1,804 Member
    edited April 2017
    Okay, so 5'2 142 and almost 40. I'm 5'4 150 and 41. So, my numbers ought to comparable to yours - though slightly higher since I'm slightly taller and slightly heavier. I went through my spreadsheet to find a couple of 12,000-13,000 step days. On those days, I burned 2346 calories, 2335 calories, 2472 calories, 2335 calories and 2385 calories. So, basically, 12,000-13,000 steps = about 2350 calories burned for me.

    Now we look at your data. 12,932 steps. Because you're given 1200 calories/day, we can't know what MFP thinks your actual sedentary burn is (since it bottoms out at recommending 1200) but we know it's at or below 1700 calories/day. Then we add your adjustment of 727 calories. That brings your daily burn to at or below 2427 calories/day. That doesn't sound too far off to me given that it includes the 45 minutes of HIIT. (None of the days I listed for me had high intensity in them; I get higher step counts than that if I work out.)

    I think part of what makes this hard to see is the 1200 calorie "floor" obscuring your real sedentary calorie burn. But I have faith that that has been incorporated into the FitBit-MFP sync, and I'd expect that you wouldn't start to see a positive adjustment until your true "500 calorie deficit number" increases over 1200 calories for the day.

    I think you're fine. To address the point another poster made, the activity level you have chosen makes no difference whatsoever to the end-of-the-day result of a FitBit sync. There is no double counting.

    I will warn you that you'll probably find your end-of-the-day number to be slightly lower than what's showing right now unless you continue to be active until midnight. Don't be surprised if, when you look back at the numbers on the following day, the FitBit adjustment has shrunk slightly due to being inactive for the last hour or two of the day. That's normal.
  • Silentpadna
    Silentpadna Posts: 1,306 Member
    SusanMFindlay wrote: »

    I will warn you that you'll probably find your end-of-the-day number to be slightly lower than what's showing right now unless you continue to be active until midnight. Don't be surprised if, when you look back at the numbers on the following day, the FitBit adjustment has shrunk slightly due to being inactive for the last hour or two of the day. That's normal.

    You can look at your FitBit app and eyeball it too if you want. When I'm doing nothing (like when I'm sleeping), it shows about 80cal/hr - actually 19.6 every 15 minutes. So if I wanted to be precise, I could look at what I had burned up until 9 pm (yeah I get up at 330 so I go to bed early) and project that I will burn about 240 more calories the rest of the day. At -1000 deficit, by that time of the day the small adjustment is not significant enough to worry about.

  • cldb77
    cldb77 Posts: 33 Member
    Thank you. It's starting to make a bit more sense now. Yes my adjustment did go down overnight from 727 to 698 with 226 calories left over although the Fitbit shown I had 336 calories left over. It's starting to click slowly but surely and I'm going to have another good read again to see if if finally sinks in
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,300 Member
    Premed100 wrote: »
    Just a thought, if your setting is as active & you are also recording every step you take as a calorie loss are you in fact kind of double counting. "Active" setting is for a person when has an active job who may be standing (but still taking steps moving around) and is factored in but if you are also recording all that activity via your fit bit then that is a double inc put of the same physical efforts. If you are going to log every activity, including total daily steps you may be better off setting activity level to sedentary.

    This is incorrect. *IF* integration is working you get positive adjustments when your total Fitbit burn exceeds MFP's total burn, and you get negative adjustments when it doesn't.
    clairecahill77 wrote: »
    So if I changed back to sedentary will the calorie adjustment be higher or lower? I feel so stupid with this thing. I've had it a fortnight and for some reason my brain just isn't getting it. I can be a technophobe at times but it usually clicks after a day or so but not this time

    If you changed to sedentary your negative adjustment when you start your day after being asleep for several hours would be smaller and your total adjustment for the day after being active for several hours would be larger. This is because you are adjusting your calories per what Fitbit detects and that adjustment starts from the level you've set yourself up on MFP.

    As a couple of people mentioned already, you should expect to get a negative adjustment between 21:00 and 24:00 if you're less active than you told MFP you would be.

    You can account for it as follows: Adjustment = A * B * M / 1440
    A = 0.25 if MFP sedentary, 0.4 if MFP lightly active, 0.6 if MFP active, 0.8 if MFP very active
    B = Calories per day as per http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator
    M = Minutes of inactivity (to end of day at midnight)

    in my case it comes out to about 51.1 Cal an hour... The same calculation applies to the negative adjustment I wake up to every morning...
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