MFP calorie adjustment way over estimated.

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Boot1973
Boot1973 Posts: 9 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
My Fitbit Alta HR and MFP are synced. Recently, the projected calorie burn that mfp gives me is wildly inaccurate and it doesn’t correct at the end of the day. Every day I seem to have at least 900 exercise calories despite not do any purposeful exercise. Obviously I’m not eating those calories back but it’s annoying because my net calories are ridiculously low.

Today I haven’t left the house and I already have 500 extra exercise calories. I’m set to lightly active.

There are things going on that I assume have thrown the Fitbit off a bit. I am jet lagged, in a different time zone (+8 hours), have a heavy cold and have suffered a bereavement causing all sorts of stress and anxiety. I presume that because I’ve been up in the night, missed lots of sleep, had elevated heart rate, etc, that mfp is presuming that’s my ‘new normal’. Fitbit is giving me accurate adjustments however. The two don’t agree at midnight.

Has anyone experienced this and can I expect it to self correct in time?

Here are Fitbit and MFP adjustments for the same day.
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Replies

  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,643 Member
    edited February 2018
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    It is your fitbit that is reporting the higher burn. Whether the burn is legitimate or not will depend in part on your level of activity and number of steps and also on you having set up your **CURRENT TIME ZONE** and other statistics the same on both MFP and Fitbit.

    Usually on travel days with time changes I expect to get some weird looking results. And on a couple of occasions I have ignored what clearly were spurious results based on long term similar activity trends.

    Elevated heart rate, unless and until it becomes a long term normal, WILL also throw off the fitbit's caloric calculation in the short term.

    Un-related to all this, you do have my sympathy for your loss.
  • Wolfger
    Wolfger Posts: 350 Member
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    I experimented for a while with changing my settings to "sedentary" (from lightly active) and syncing Fitbit steps, and it was an absolute failure. My calories for the day would exceed the calories from "lightly active" without steps just by basically getting out of bed in the morning.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,372 Member
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    That is really weird. I'm set on sedentary and just got out of bed and I'm actually at -90 calories right now (7am).

    You could try resetting your fitbit (not sure how it works for the alta) and see if it helps, or contact fitbit about it.
  • festerw
    festerw Posts: 233 Member
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    Double check all of your settings. It happened to me once and somehow my birth date got changed to 1900, screwed things up for awhile.
  • Foodfavor
    Foodfavor Posts: 94 Member
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    I was having this issue with my Polar watch. After a few weeks to a month it started getting used to my daily activity so the calorie adjustment is much lower now. It used to be 800 calories and now is down by half (if not more). Also it will estimate high during the morning as you are having a burst of activity getting ready for your day and depending on your activity level through-out the day will adjust down.

    At least in my experience.

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