Should i eat my exercised calories?fitbit synced

James_1954 · September 2018

I eat back part, but not all. Usually about half. My reason is that I don't think most methods of quantifying caloric expenditure in exercise are really all that accurate and reliable.

You could probably use feelings of legitimate hunger as a guide. If you find that you're actually hungry (as opposed to bored, or having a snack habit, or whatever), eat 'em back! You must've burned them.

Talan79 · September 2018

The calories earned back will also depend on what your activity level is set to. If set to not very active you will earn more calories back than lightly active or very active. There was a thread on here somewhere that mentioned what to set to based on steps without exercise.

workinonit1956 · September 2018

I have a Fitbit Charge 2 synced with MyFitnessPal and I eat all of my exercise calories. I’ve lost 41 pounds since January / 173-132.
I know some only eat a portion of theirs, I started out eating around 50% or so but I guess I’m lucky in that I can still lose eating all of mine. Best to observe and see how you do.
*edited due to autocorrect

YOLO145 · September 2018

This thread was really helpful. Two months ago I switched jobs and would now consider myself more "lightly active" than "sedentary." I had started to get way more exercise calories than before (Fitbit synced) and couldn't figure out why...but now I know!

WinoGelato · September 2018

When people doubt the accuracy of the FitBit adjustments and think that the calories are inflated - it usually comes down to them not understanding how FitBit works, or more likely, how FitBit and MFP work together.

First - FitBit is an activity tracker and measures a calorie burn for your total daily activity, inclusive of your BMR, NEAT and exercise which is an estimate of your TDEE or total calorie burn for a day.

The calorie adjustments you see in MFP when you have that two synced, reflect the difference between what MFP thought you would burn based on your stats and activity level, and what FitBit estimates you actually burn. If you’ve chosen a lower activity setting than your actual activity reflects - ie choosing Sedentary because you have a desk job but you actually average 7,500 or more calories per day - you will see bigger adjustments because, you really aren’t Sedentary.

Starting with eating back about half the calorie adjustments (combined with logging accurately) can help you determine how accurate the FitBit projections are for you.

What I can tell you is that for me, it’s accurate, and I’m a petite female over forty with a desk job maintaining my weight at 118 lbs, but FitBit (and actual results) says I burn 2100-2200 cals/day. That’s because I average 12k or more steps and therefore if I was set at Sedentary still (I was at first), I would see those big adjustments. Not trusting them and eating back the calories would have lead me to under eat and under fuel my activity.

endermako · September 2018

if its the fit bit with the 24 hour hrm then yes i would eat all of them back, that's as accurate as you can get with those types of devices.

JadeGxo · September 2018

Wow thanks for all the replies its my first time posting didnt think i would even get a answer 😂 i think i will up my activity level i was only doing like 12000 steps a day but I've up that a lot in the last few weeks today I've done 23000 .. Im going to eat half the added calories for a week or 2 and see how that goes im 5'5 and 194 lbs was just scared incase id gain if i ate them sound for all the advice 😊😊

MHarper522 · September 2018

I use MFP to log food, but I base my deficit on the total burn Fitbit shows for the day so I don't really look at how much MFP recommends. Basically, if Fitbit says I burned 2700, I eat 1700. That leaves me at a deficit of about 1000 a day, or 2 lbs a week. My weight trend app shows an average loss of 2.5 lbs/week for a deficit of 1200/day, so in my case it is actually underestimating my burn.

It can take some time to really know how accurate your Fitbit is (that's based on an average across 3 months for me) weightloss is a marathon, not a sprint imo. It's worth finding out if what you're doing is right for you.

Francl27 · September 2018

Depends how accurate you are in your logging.

VUA21 · September 2018

Every extra calorie earned is worth eating! If I worked out enough to earn that Snickers bar worth of calories, I'm going to eat it.

Should i eat my exercised calories?fitbit synced

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