Calorie Burn

Duck_Puddle wrote: »

thisisitnic wrote: »

Duck_Puddle wrote: »

I weigh ~160 and my total TDEE on days I take 20-22k steps is ~3100-3300. I think that part is reasonable.

Where I think you may be less reasonable is in selecting a sedentary activity level and being surprised by a significant calorie adjustment when your activity level is considerably higher than sedentary. If I don’t purposefully walk/run/exercise/move, I take less than 5k steps a day. Often less than 3k. I work at home. I don’t even walk from my car to the office. I am sedentary. If you’re averaging 20-22k, that’s WAY above sedentary. Your calorie adjustments will reflect that.

My Fitbit calorie adjustments range from 0-2000 based on how active I am beyond my truly sedentary life. Obviously, on days when I far exceed sedentary (like when I get 20k+ steps), I have a much larger adjustment. That’s exactly how it should work. On days when I don’t move much, my adjustment is much lower. Sometimes nothing. If I were much more active all the time, my adjustments would be much higher on a consistent basis (as yours are).

If the high adjustment is bothering you, set your activity level higher on MFP. The adjustment will be a lower amount but the calorie totals should be about the same. Meaning all the settings and what not won’t really matter. You’ll either get more calories up front from your Mfp (with a higher activity level) and lower Fitbit adjustments, or you’ll stay with the lower MFP calories to start and get higher fitbit adjustments. You’ll end up at the same number either way.

Also - and I’m making some assumptions from your other threads-you’re very early on in this process. You’ve weighed twice (?) so you don’t know if this second one was an off day and you’re trending down or what is going on. You just don’t have enough time or data to work with yet.

Your calorie goal (if you’re eating your exercise calories and weighing your food) is reasonable (although you may want to make sure your MFP is set to 1 lb/week), your TDEE (and Fitbit adjustment) is reasonable for your level of activity.

Hey. I only started last week and my first weigh in resulted in a 3lb gain which is what has prompted me to ask all of these questions.

If I change it to lightly active my cals go up to 1600 but again I see your point that MFP/FitBit will just adjust anyone based on my activity that day so it’s by the by.

Am I right in saying then that if you have a FitBit feeding into MFP it makes no difference when all is said and done what activity level you set as it will adjust accordingly anyway? x

That’s what I thought was prompting the questions. Understandable. I know it’s really a kick in the pants when you feel like you’re doing everything right and you don’t see the results you are hoping for.

And yes-if you up your activity level on Mfp, you’ll end up with a smaller adjustment amount-but still the same overall total. I leave mine on sedentary because I really am and I don’t always have an adjustment at all. But it won’t hurt anything for you to leave yours as sedentary- just know that you’ll tend to have higher adjustments.

The numbers you’re getting seem reasonable based on my Fitbit experience (and mine has been accurate in that I eat based on my adjustment and lose/gain accordingly).

And give it time. Generally 4-6 weeks or a bit more to go through at least one full cycle (you’ll likely have crazy weight fluctuations at various points) and see where you land. If you’re not losing as expected, make some adjustments then.