Calories & Fitbit.

sparkle126
sparkle126 Posts: 132 Member
edited November 21 in Health and Weight Loss
So I burn 2400 calories a day on Average according to my Fitbit. MFP gives me 1200 to eat to lose. MFP then logs what I have burned on average a day and banks them as exercise from Fitbit. Do I eat these calories back. As it's not active exercise. Or do I just eat half back when I actually do physical/active exercise? Confused!

Replies

  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    Your body doesn't care if it is "active exercise" or not, a calorie burnt is a calorie burnt. Assuming that you are burning 2,400 calories a day, 1,200 is too little for you to eat. You should be eating back at least a portion of your exercise calories -- this is how MFP is designed.
  • jjpptt2
    jjpptt2 Posts: 5,650 Member
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    Your body doesn't care if it is "active exercise" or not, a calorie burnt is a calorie burnt. Assuming that you are burning 2,400 calories a day, 1,200 is too little for you to eat. You should be eating back at least a portion of your exercise calories -- this is how MFP is designed.

    Yep yep.
  • sparkle126
    sparkle126 Posts: 132 Member
    Cheers that clears that up.
  • WinoGelato
    WinoGelato Posts: 13,454 Member
    @janejellyroll explained it perfectly. Just curious OP, since 1200 is the lowest calorie target that MFP will provide, what did you enter for an activity level (sedentary?) and rate of loss (1 lb/week? 2 lb/week?)? How much are you trying to lose?

    What I found after getting my FitBit is that I was far more active than I had originally realized when setting up my MFP profile. Averaging >10K steps/day as I was at the time made me realize (after someone on these boards patiently explained it to me) that I wasn't sedentary. Also making sure that my weight loss goal was reasonable for the amount of weight I had to lose (less than 25 lbs should be aiming for 0.5 lb/week not 1-2 lb/week) gave me a bigger baseline of calories but then my adjustments were more smaller and more in line with my actual exercise, the day to day activity was built into the Lightly Active NEAT estimate that MFP calculated for me.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,254 Member
    I agree with the above posters but add that it is also predicated on the quality of your logging and the ability of Fitbit to correctly evaluate your burn.

    Usually with a reasonable deficit, good logging and exercise consisting of walking, running, cycling or similar steady state aerobic activities, Fitbit and MFP come pretty darn close and you can eat almost all of those calories while meeting your goals.

    However we already know that your deficit is over-aggressive. If your Fitbit TDEE is 2400, unless you are obese which would allow for a 25% deficit, a 20% deficit is the maximum safe deficit one would chose. And this comes to 480 Cal.

    So, in reality, an aggressive safe deficit in your case would be 500Cal a day; not 1000.

    Then, over a time period of 4 to 6 weeks you can evaluate your results against your weight trend (usually obtained from a trending weight application) and establish a correction factor based on your own physiology and logging efforts.
  • sparkle126
    sparkle126 Posts: 132 Member
    Thank you this all helps a lot. I will definitely be eating more then 1200, I have my profile set to sedentary as I do office work. When I get home I am on my feet a good part of the evening and afternoon. It can vary day to day.
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