Understanding "activity" calorie adjustment

I have negative calorie adjustment turned off and MFP still adds and subtracts calories over the course of the day. It is frustrating, but I don't eat the exercise calories it give me M-Th and only use a portion of them F-Su so I am not overly concerned.
I don't like that it anticipates my future calorie burn based on what I have done so far, and gives me a calorie increase for what it anticipates I will continue to do - I just want it to calculate based on what I have actually already done, but life is too short for me to keep stressing about it.

My understanding thus far in my journey is that there is a calorie threshold for each activity level beyond BMR.

I am set to sedentary and see a positive adjustment around 1.5k (a number lower than I see most people report) but I'm 260# so it takes more energy to move. By 4.5k steps I have ~250cal adjustment and by 7k ~500cal adjustment. If I were to adjust my activity level, these numbers would change, but the idea is once I use up the MFP allotted daily activity cals based on data from my fitbit I start seeing an adjustment.

Did you recently change you activity level? I played around with the idea of adjusting mine, but if I did it mid-day the cals from my fitbit were not seeming to adjust so I put my setting back for now.

summpear wrote: »

Trying to answer your thoughts/ suggestions:

1) My negative calories are set to default (on?) That's also what gives me my workout calories, right? I want to leave my workout calories on because that helps guide my eating.

2) i hate the predictive/ assumptive calories too.

3) i haven't recently changed activity levels. My workouts have been consistent since January ish, and I've been 12-20k steps since the weather warmed up in April or so.

4) i don't see how any underlying cadence/ tempo/ elevation gives me more than a 700 calorie swing between 15k and 16k steps. I'm not putting laundry away at a jog one day and a crawl the next

4) but you may be moving more or less continuously vs making periodic stops of 30-60 seconds. I agree that's a huge swing between 6-20 and 6-25.

Are the calorie adjustment amounts you’re listing here your total exercise calories for the day, or just the amount that shows on the Garmin Connect calorie adjustment line in your diary?

Garmin sends over your workout details and those should post in your diary as individual workouts.

The Garmin Connect calorie adjustment line reflects the difference between what your Garmin has recorded as your TDEE and what Mfp calculates as your TDEE.

Your total exercise calories will be the total of your workouts and the adjustment line.

While there’s definitely something a little funky between the 20th and the 25th, but are the numbers listed just your Garmin Connect calorie adjustment or total exercise calories?

And can you click the little i next to the adjustment line in your diary? That will give you the amounts that Garmin Connect sent as your TDEE and what Mfp calculated as your TDEE.

Are you on the app or the website? I should have been more clear. The i is on the website. On the app, you can click on the Garmin Connect adjustment entry in your diary, then click on the “extra calories burned” and that will show you the calculation.

Your “step adjustment” isn’t so much for steps per se, it’s the difference between what Garmin says you burned all day (your TDEE) and what Mfp thinks you burned all day (which is whatever your burn rate is for whatever activity level you set in Mfp, plus whatever workouts are entered-whether they come from over Garmin or are entered in Mfp). So you could very different adjustment amounts for days with nearly identical activity-but the total exercise calories should be about the same.

That doesn’t really explain the difference between the 20th and the 25th unless that was some extreme yoga though (which it doesn’t appear to be since it was 164 calories).

Your TDEE is your NEAT plus what you burn through exercise. Describing it that way is going to be a bit confusing with a linked activity tracker and mfp terminology.

TDEE is total daily energy expenditure. That’s how many calories you burn all day. Your calories consumed needs to be less than this number of you want to lose weight.

Mfp uses NEAT - non-exercise something or other to calculate your calorie goal. It’s how many calories you burn in a day doing your normal every day activities but NOT including exercise.

If you do no exercise, your NEAT is your TDEE. If you do exercise, you log that into mfp and the calories are added to your goal. This keeps your deficit at the same amount (since your deficit is really off your TDEE) by adjusting your goal based on how much exercise you do.

When you log exercise, it’s listed as “exercise calories” on Mfp-which makes sense.

When you have an activity tracker, it’s tracking all the activity you do-whether you were putzing around the house or taking the dog for a walk or doing a purposeful workout. When that activity tracker is linked to mfp, the basic adjustment line is going to be what that tracker says you burned (for your TDEE) minus whatever mfp says you burned (for your TDEE-which will be your NEAT plus whatever workouts show in Mfp). That adjustment amount (along with any workouts) all shows under exercise calories.

The 778 calories on the 20th is because the number of calories Garmin says you burned that day for your TDEE is 778 more than what mfp thinks you burned that day (which includes your NEAT of ???? plus your 390 for strength & 165 for your walk).

You can get your TDEE from Garmin Connect under “health stats” then calories (not calories in/out) then scroll to the date and look at the number in the “total” circle at the top. Then look at your mfp diary-click on the Garmin Connect adjustment line as I mentioned before and you’ll see how the calculation is done.

Sadly-the amounts you might burn after doing a workout (“afterburn”) is fairly negligible and nowhere near 778 calories. It might be 8 of those 778 though. It’s probably a little more but not significant.