Fitbit calorie adjustment

For some people it is spot on, but not so for others. It is suggested that you eat back half and just see how things go for a few weeks. Losing too fast? Eat back more. Not losing what you want? You are either off on your logging or Fitbit is giving you too much credit.

Fitbit doesn’t estimate calorie burns for strength training

Fitbit will give you some credit for weight training due to general movement and heart rate.

There are two ways to go about it.

Try to enter each specific activity with correct times and be as accurate as possible.

Or

Let the chips fall where they may (automatic detection) and figure out over a four to six week period how closely your calories in and out tracking matches your weight TREND changes (f.e. I connect my Fitbit account to trendweight.com to get my weight trend over time)

Based on results you can sort of figure out how close your tracking matches and adjust.

etherealanwar wrote: »

Thanks everyone i was just thrown off by today's adjustment. I have accumulated over 10k steps and had my weight lifting session over fitbit and it's given me 1000 calories. That just seems way too high for me. I'm not going to eat back exercise calories for now and see how it goes. If I decide to I'll only eat back 30% or so to be on the safe side.

I've only had my fitbit for 3 days so I'm fairly new to it.

Heart rate Fitbits seem to be quite keyed to heart rate in conjunction with activity.

You can, in the Fitbit app or web page, create a weight training activity for the exact time and duration of your session and have a look to see how it adjusts your calories and steps.

Fitbits also tend to settle down a bit after a few weeks, so I assume they start taking your resting heart rate more into account. Whether they do so sufficiently as of right now is an open question.

Your adjustment is probably because you're setup as sedentary on mfp.

A person who has done 10k steps would be better defined as active.

So part of the adjustment reflects that. Furthermore, right now, the adjustment expects you to continue being active at this pace.

If you snooze on the couch the rest of the day to midnight you will slowly lose some of these bonus calories.

People with negative adjustments enabled could even end up with a negative overal daily exercise adjustment (unlikely when MFP is set to sedentary and steps > 5k)

The Fitbit adjustment is not specifically reflective of exercise. It just equalises MFP's guess of your TDEE (which is mostly based on your input) to what Fitbit has managed to detect based in information from your gadget. This number is finalised at midnight.

What is your activity level set at in MFP? The 1,000 calorie adjustment doesn’t mean that you burned that much in your workout, but that you exceeded your set activity level by that amount. In your case it would mean that you exceeded what MFP has for whatever your selected activity is.

The lower your activity level, the bigger your adjustments will be.

I’ve gained/maintained/lost as expected using my Fitbit for years. I set my level as sedentary since my job can be on non-workout days. However I logged 15k steps today and got an adjustment over 1,000 calories.

I saw lots of high readings from my fitbits (before they broke). I unlinked.

That’s what I thought.... if you had 10k steps today you were not sedentary hence the large adjustment. I’d start by eating at least half of the calories and see where you stand in 3-4 weeks.

I also set mine to sedentary so that on my office days that I don’t move much my allowance is lower, but on days I’m not sedentary I get a higher allowance. It encourages me to move more...

My total calories out as estimated by Fitbit and as compared to my logging and trending weight results have been accurate within a range of 0.5% under estimated to 5.5% over estimated over 3 years, 2 different Fitbit models, and 4 actual devices.

That said, I log more meticulously than most. And I am not an outlier when it comes to my BMR.

One thing's for sure: 0% eat back is guaranteed to be wrong.