Question re extra calories from step count

Are you a new Apple Watch user? AW and MFP don’t play too well together. If you are primarily walking for exercise, you don’t need to use the workout feature on the watch, just let it log the steps and Port it over to MFP. Do eat back some or all of the extra calories it gives you. If you do workouts outside of walking, use the workout feature.

MelanieCN77 wrote: »

Adding the Apple Watch workout calories is fine, adding the Move calories will make your numbers wrong. The Move cals outside of exercise are accounted for in your MFP activity level that you gave it and have already been added as calories to eat in your daily goal.

All the Apple watch move calories count!.
If you have neg calories adjusted MFP will work out the difference.
But don't add any other exercise manually.

@MelanieCN77 the above is conceptually true re MFP including some steps in their daily value.

However, for Fitbit at least, the adjustment value comes from comparing the final tdee values for the day which include all steps and activities detected.

So the apps compare the MFP
TDEE vs the Fitbit TDEE and adjust off of that.

So it doesn't matter (for Fitbit) where each of the apps pigeon-holed each energy expenditure--what matters are the totals they came up with for the day. The
final "exercise" adjustment just makes the MFP value equal to the Fitbit TDEE value.

You then also see your number of steps since it transfers over, but the number has no role and does not participate a second time in the adjustment calculations.

Is the adjustment value worked out differently for Apple watch?

I.e. is the apple watch sending out exercises or are they too comparing tdee to tdee when it comes to the final adjustment?

When you click the little i for the exercise adjustment... what does it say?

The Apple resting calories are your sedentary calories -- it's what the Watch presumes you burn if you do no walking above 3 MPH, no extraneous movement, etc. It's not BMR -- if it were, it would not change from day to day. It's roughly your BMR x 1.25.

collectingblues wrote: »

The Apple resting calories are your sedentary calories -- it's what the Watch presumes you burn if you do no walking above 3 MPH, no extraneous movement, etc. It's not BMR -- if it were, it would not change from day to day. It's roughly your BMR x 1.25.

BMR x 1.25 = MFP sedentary.

MelanieCN77 wrote: »

All I know is it’s buggy - you’ll get step adjustments until you push an exercise through at which point you only retain that, so my advice was based on how it does work now how it really should.

Then avoiding that exercise button sounds like the best idea for now!

Zondeare wrote: »

These answers are great but still over my head a little to be honest.

I’ll stop hitting the workout option for now as it seems like the simplest solution.

Thanks guys.

Yes and no - if you are really doing deliberate exercise you won't get a very accurate number outside of exercise mode, when the Watch monitors your HR and other metrics more frequently. If you think most of your cals come from deliberate exercise I would prioritize that and let MFP's activity setting fill in the gaps for casual step cals. I lost my weight and maintained for 18 months using MFP and the AW data this way. If you're not really exercising to rack up the cals, then yes by all means avoid logging workouts BUT if you are using MFP's suggested calories PLUS ALL your Move ring calories, you ARE going to be double counting some.