Fitbit Calorie Adjustments

karirenae wrote: »

around 5k to 6k daily on steps.. and on negative adjustments.. I have NO IDEA lol how do I do that and what are the benefits of that?

Enabling negative adjustments will not give you any extra calories until you’ve matched your activity level.
I’m also set at sedentary but I don’t get any extra calories for steps until I’ve hit about 3000 (depends on how far I to the day that is).

Continued - go to the bottom of your page for the day where the Fitbit steps show. Click on that and it will take you to a page with a link on how to set it.

karirenae wrote: »

Ok, I have it set to enable calorie adjustment on MFP.. anyone want to dumb down an explanation for this? Will it now give me less eatback calories or what is the point? Sorry! Im kind of "dumb" when it comes to this stuff.

This was actually one of the last things I figured out!
What you’ll see is that for the first part of the day, your exercise calories will be negative. Once your activity that day catches up with your sedentary activity level, you’ll start getting calories added.
It’s really great for low activity days to get you moving and at least break even for the day. It might take a few days to adjust to your daily routine.

Your age would have been helpful too.

I see that you've sussed out that MFP hard floors at 1200 Cal a day. 1400 (to eat) + (750 deficit for 1.5lbs a week) = 2150 MFP's guess at your sedentary activity (i.e. your BMR x an activity factor of 1.25).

Assuming a random age of 35 you are considered to be at the low end of obese tending towards high overweight.

If fitbit, on average, gives you an extra 500 Cal, it is assuming your TDEE (todal daily energy expenditure) for the day is around 2150+500 = 2650 <-- that would be your maintenance as far as Fitbit can calculate based on what it sensed from your activities.

Assuming that your fitbit seems to be calculating your steps correctly and not adding too high a percentage from random keyboard typing, congratulations, you've discovered that you're actually lightly active as opposed to sedentary and that you've been gaining weight because you've been eating more than 2650 calories a day on average (don't worry, you're in good company on that!).

My personal advice to an obese person would be to limit deficits to 25% of TDEE (20% when no longer obese), which would put a limit of about 662 Cal a day for your deficit. So I would maybe start with a goal of 1.5lbs a week and depending on success switch it down to 1lb a week as I would start losing weight.

The goal is to create a consistent deficit which over time will take care of your excess fat and at the same time will allow you to change behaviours and develop strategies so that you can maintain that loss long term.

Eating the minimum amount of diet food to get to goal as fast as possible will not leave you with the best tools to succeed in maintaining your loss.

Negative adjustments: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings (Calorie Adjustments: enable negative adjustments with check mark).

This means that when your Fitbit detects a lower level of activity than MFP expects you to have it will take away calories. It is recommended mainly for people who don't fully reach sedentary levels of activity (about 3500 steps), or people who set a higher activity level (myself for example who is set at very active), but may occasionally not get off their behind and perform according to those levels...

Assuming your food intake logging is accurate-ish and uses correct food entries, preferably in grams, as opposed to "small avocado", or "one plate buffet" entries, then, set at 1.5lbs a week, I would eat my complete fitbit adjustment.

I would then use Trendweight.com connected to Fitbit to evaluate my weight trend change over time and compare it to the expected weight loss over a 4-6 week period that includes at least one full menstrual cycle for those so affected.

At that point you would be able to make an evaluation of how accurate your fitbit is for you.

A 10% error on your Fitbit would represent 265 cal assuming a TDEE of 2650, and I would consider a 10% error to be large.

karirenae wrote: »

around 5k to 6k daily on steps.. and on negative adjustments.. I have NO IDEA lol how do I do that and what are the benefits of that?

karirenae wrote: »

Ok, so if I am set at 1200 and sedentry, should I just ignore the negative calorie setting all together and shut it off? If I get extra calories throughout the day, Im probably ok eating those or some back and still lose? I assume according to your post above me, if I step more than 3500 a day, I should just shut it off and use the MFP numbers?

500 extra seems like a pretty high adjustment for only 5k-6k steps per day. I could be wrong though. I'm smaller and a bit taller, but to get that many extra calories from Fitbit I'd have to have more steps in a day than I've ever had since I got my Fitbit like 3 years ago lol.

The best approach for me personally has been to eat about half of the extra calories I get from Fitbit. This accounts for the possibility that Fitbit is giving me too many calories back and to "bank" a few extra calories for days when I tend to eat more, such as weekends.

Ultimately how many calories you eat back is sort of trial and error. Try eating half the extra calories and track your progress. If you are losing faster than expected, try eating 75% of the extra calories. Or if you aren't losing as expected, try eating 25% of the extra calories. As you have already indicated 1,200 is low - you may want to change your goal to 1.5 lbs/week and get those extra calories. It will be worth it to lose at a slower rate if it helps you sustain this as a lifestyle instead of just a diet.