Do you ever comment on unrealistic logging by friends?

124

Replies

  • SabAteNine
    SabAteNine Posts: 1,867 Member
    My MFP is synced for step count and it offers in return a ridiculous cal reading (which is counted as a cal adjustment, hence does not appear in the feed). For example, 500 cals for 12k steps... which actually include both the active, as well as „at rest” calories - sync glitch with my wearable. I am aware of the issue, but as I have a fixed cal allotment per day regardless of activity, I honestly don't care much about it... or at all, for that matter.

    While I do agree that it nags me a bit to see someone log 1,200 cals for a bit of treadmill when they're probably in their 130s, it is up to them... their weight management, their energy management. Maybe they do the same as I, and don't factor in the burn at all.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    MikePTY wrote: »
    NorthCascades wrote: »
    MikePTY wrote: »
    Part of the issue is with the MFP calorie estimators for exercise, which seem to be in active conflict with their activity multipliers. For instance, lets take a 30 year old, 5'4, 160 pound woman. BMR would be 1431, which means that if someone defined themselves as Sedentary, they would have a normal burn of 1717. Now lets say that person does house cleaning for a living. They have 2 options. They could choose their activity level as either "active" or "highly active", which would give them another 500-700 calories per day of budgeting. Or they could log 480 minutes of "Cleaning, light, moderate effort", which would likely say that they burned about 3x the calories than if they included that as part of their activity level.

    So I think a big issue with calorie logging is that logging basic household activities greatly overestimates the number of calories burned. Exercise is not meant to be done for hours. If a person finds themselves doing hours of a life related exercise on the regular, they should raise their activity level, rather than logging it as exercise. Exercise should be for specific acts of exercise outside of normal daily activity.

    Huh? Why not? And who didn't mean for us to exercise for hours?

    Yesterday I spent about 3.5 hours riding my bike up and down Sherman Pass. The day before I rode Loup Loup Pass, which coincidentally also took me about 3.5 hours. I work as a software engineer so sedentary is the correct activity level. Today it's stormy and the weekday riding is over.

    This is taking one sentence of a long post out of the context that was in the rest of the post. I was referring to basic daily activity that is recorded as exercise on the site, greatly overexaggerating the number of calories burned. Of course you can do real exercise for hours. But the exercise logging tool isn't effective for that for most people. Sure if you are marathon training or a distance cycler or an elite athlete, then the burn amounts may be more accurate. But a very small percentage of people ever burn thousands of calories from exercise a day. Which is a number that MFP will tell people if they log their basic activity as exercise.

    Thanks for clearing that up. I had the initial reaction when other posters pulled just that part out, but when I went back and read your entire post, I thought it meant what you just clarified it to mean.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    Lillymoo01 wrote: »
    Unless a person is asking for help I get a giggle and move on as it is really none of my business. That being said, some might scratch their heads with my diary at times because I do what works for me.

    I sync Map My Walk here so my walks are automatically synced. I also have Pacer synced. I know that Pacer gives me a much more accurate calorie count but like Map My Walk logged so I have a record on here of how much I have walked in a day. When I go for a walk I just do a quick add of the calories burned in my food diary and at the end of the day edit my walks to 1 calorie and delete the quick adds. It works for me but could leave some people perplexed if they look at my diary during the day.

    I do use MapMyHike, for the entertainment factor, and it is also useful to prevent me from getting lost in the woods, although I can't help but feel that it's cheating. Although when the woods are deep enough there's no GPS. It's like the tech on Star Trek that is always failing at inopportune times.

    But anyway, I don't sync MapMyHike with MFP - I log from the MFP database, which interestingly gives me far less calories for the same activity, despite them both being owned by Under Armour.
  • sytchequeen
    sytchequeen Posts: 526 Member
    not on here - I don't really follow what my (very few) MFP friends log to be honest. However, in real life... I have a friend who has lost a load of weight in the last year, a great job. But he doesn't half talk toot about how many calories he burns. He goes on about all the time he spends on Suffer Fest (exercise bike) and the thousands of calories it burns - I suspect a serious over estimation. I got some level of proof when we were on holiday earlier in the year and he logged a two and a half hour hike on his fitness band. It was a two and a half hour stroll. I know. I was there...
  • CarvedTones
    CarvedTones Posts: 2,340 Member
    mountainmare wrote: »
    I wonder how many posters here have had friends chime in on their things that show up in the newsfeed. For example--if you were losing too fast did someone out of the blue mention it--or did you get the "good job"? If you closed out your diary and you were over a ton because of pizza and beer did someone say "better watch out for those party nights". And--how would you feel if they did.
    For those of us who are newly successful--there is a honeymoon period where we think we have figured it all out--we feel great, look pretty darn good and want to share to secret to success. I think the boards are for that--and your newsfeeds should not be.

    You may be on to something there that I am guilty of. I lost ~65 and have been below goal 8 months. There was no immediate "honeymoon"; for months I was scared sheetless that every little bounce was me blowing it again. The last couple of months I have started getting confident and maybe a little cocky. I am a bit freer with my opinion now that I finally believe that it might actually be of some value. That's especially true when I see things that make it look like someone is making the same sort of mistakes I did during one of my many failures. I need to keep in mind that that I might be wrong about that conclusion and that I am still just one binge away from starting to slide down the hill again. Right now I am pretty convinced I won't let that happen and I hope I am right.
  • mountainmare
    mountainmare Posts: 294 Member
    CarvedTones--I get it and I also get pushing the big six-oh. While I didn't have a major weight problem when I was close to 60 I started running, weight lifting, tai chi along with other stuff. (I had always been active with horses and barn work--but lost my horse so substituted other activities). At 65 I was running 5Ks and feeling great--then a series of injuries...and some health issues found me obese approaching 69, now approaching the big seven--oh I have changed my tune. My cockiness and advice of ten years ago would never apply to me now...so I now know that what is true for me is true for me only. I don't do many friends because when it comes right down to it everyone is on their own journey. If I logged my daily walks it would only be to log that we got our walk in, I don't care about the calorie count, my food logging is accurate enough for me, so if you looked at my diary there could be plenty of helpful suggestions to be made, suggestions that I don't want unless I ask for them.
    So please do keep putting your observations out there...I have read your posts and they are helpful, but understand that to some people the friend list is different. (and it is nice to see someone so young having such a good time getting fit)
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    MikePTY wrote: »
    NorthCascades wrote: »
    MikePTY wrote: »
    Part of the issue is with the MFP calorie estimators for exercise, which seem to be in active conflict with their activity multipliers. For instance, lets take a 30 year old, 5'4, 160 pound woman. BMR would be 1431, which means that if someone defined themselves as Sedentary, they would have a normal burn of 1717. Now lets say that person does house cleaning for a living. They have 2 options. They could choose their activity level as either "active" or "highly active", which would give them another 500-700 calories per day of budgeting. Or they could log 480 minutes of "Cleaning, light, moderate effort", which would likely say that they burned about 3x the calories than if they included that as part of their activity level.

    So I think a big issue with calorie logging is that logging basic household activities greatly overestimates the number of calories burned. Exercise is not meant to be done for hours. If a person finds themselves doing hours of a life related exercise on the regular, they should raise their activity level, rather than logging it as exercise. Exercise should be for specific acts of exercise outside of normal daily activity.

    Huh? Why not? And who didn't mean for us to exercise for hours?

    Yesterday I spent about 3.5 hours riding my bike up and down Sherman Pass. The day before I rode Loup Loup Pass, which coincidentally also took me about 3.5 hours. I work as a software engineer so sedentary is the correct activity level. Today it's stormy and the weekday riding is over.

    This is taking one sentence of a long post out of the context that was in the rest of the post. I was referring to basic daily activity that is recorded as exercise on the site, greatly overexaggerating the number of calories burned. Of course you can do real exercise for hours. But the exercise logging tool isn't effective for that for most people. Sure if you are marathon training or a distance cycler or an elite athlete, then the burn amounts may be more accurate. But a very small percentage of people ever burn thousands of calories from exercise a day. Which is a number that MFP will tell people if they log their basic activity as exercise.

    Ok, cool. That all makes sense. Sometimes people have strange ideas, I wasn't sure if you were talking about how to use the logging tools or if you thought it was bad to exercise for hours. Thanks for clarifying! :smile:
  • jennifer_417
    jennifer_417 Posts: 12,344 Member
    Not unless people are asking for advice, usually.
  • Lizakabibbis
    Lizakabibbis Posts: 370 Member
    Ehhh, I log my gym time. Do I eat my calories back? No because I know it's not correct. My typical elliptical work out is 35-40 minutes starting at level 12 and ending at level 25. Am I burning more calories than the person who does the elliptical at level 1 for 40 minutes? Yup....but I just don't put that much into what MFP says I've earned back. I log it for the minutes. But at the end of the day....unless people ask it's not my business. My biggest issue is WTF is mine always logged in Dutch?!
  • 100_PROOF_
    100_PROOF_ Posts: 1,168 Member
    When I first joined here I noticed a lot of people logging cleaning, breastfeeding, walking the mailbox, pushing a grocery buggy as exercise. I even asked if that was what we were supposed to be doing here because I couldn't understand why that stuff wasn't already included in daily activities. ( It was, I just didn't know yet)
    These people said that the activities needed to be logged and that is why they are in the database.
    I did some poking around and saw what formula mfp was using and then realized that those things are indeed accounted for in our activity level.
    I thought it was ironic that those same people cried about not losing weight all the time.
  • Lillymoo01
    Lillymoo01 Posts: 2,865 Member
    Got a real giggle with this entry that came up on my feed ....

    ....burned 545 calories doing 90 minutes of Spare time exercise

    That is some really strenuous spare time!
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    ContraryMaryMary wrote: »
    I find it interesting that I log a hours’ walk for about 100 calories and a bunch of my friends say “nice burn”, I log 1000+ calories for a two hour run and no one says anything...

    so much this... i get that a lot!!!!
  • mitch16
    mitch16 Posts: 2,113 Member
    annaskiski wrote: »
    rheddmobile wrote: »
    100_PROOF_ wrote: »
    When I first joined here I noticed a lot of people logging cleaning, breastfeeding, walking the mailbox, pushing a grocery buggy as exercise. I even asked if that was what we were supposed to be doing here because I couldn't understand why that stuff wasn't already included in daily activities. ( It was, I just didn't know yet)
    These people said that the activities needed to be logged and that is why they are in the database.
    I did some poking around and saw what formula mfp was using and then realized that those things are indeed accounted for in our activity level.
    I thought it was ironic that those same people cried about not losing weight all the time.

    The breastfeeding entry is valid, isn't it? Thought it was like 500 extra calories a day or something? How else would you log it? I guess you could change your activity level but that seems six of one a half dozen of the other.

    Yes, you need to eat more breastfeeding since you are 'giving away' a bunch of your calories.
    I suppose when non-moms see it as 'activity', it might be surprising. But consuming about 500 calories extra per day is recommended by all breastfeeding organizations...

    AFAIK adding breastfeeding in as exercise is the only way to bump up your calorie goal temporarily on mfp without completely resetting your goals.
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
    100_PROOF_ wrote: »
    When I first joined here I noticed a lot of people logging cleaning, breastfeeding, walking the mailbox, pushing a grocery buggy as exercise. I even asked if that was what we were supposed to be doing here because I couldn't understand why that stuff wasn't already included in daily activities. ( It was, I just didn't know yet)
    These people said that the activities needed to be logged and that is why they are in the database.
    I did some poking around and saw what formula mfp was using and then realized that those things are indeed accounted for in our activity level.
    I thought it was ironic that those same people cried about not losing weight all the time.

    If your activity is set to sedentary, then some of this makes sense. It's not much different than my tracker giving me calories for steps taken in the day over a certain amount (and taking calories away if I'm under a certain amount). So if it's unusual activity and the person picked an activity level that wouldn't include them, then yeah it's good to add them. If they are using the software properly. I know if I spend a couple hours cleaning up my garage, I get extra calories for it. But I also do it rarely (needs to be done again).

  • kgeyser
    kgeyser Posts: 22,505 Member
    100_PROOF_ wrote: »
    When I first joined here I noticed a lot of people logging cleaning, breastfeeding, walking the mailbox, pushing a grocery buggy as exercise. I even asked if that was what we were supposed to be doing here because I couldn't understand why that stuff wasn't already included in daily activities. ( It was, I just didn't know yet)
    These people said that the activities needed to be logged and that is why they are in the database.
    I did some poking around and saw what formula mfp was using and then realized that those things are indeed accounted for in our activity level.
    I thought it was ironic that those same people cried about not losing weight all the time.

    Breastfeeding is not accounted for in the regular activities. There is no breastfeeding setting people can choose. You either account for the extra calorie burn through activity or choose the negative calorie adjustment to increase your calories in the food diary.

    Some people also put their activity level as sedentary and then will log daily activities. This is more about confusion about how the site defines sedentary, since a lot of people interpret that as basically doing nothing at all in terms of activity, and think they are supposed to log the other stuff. Most people are not familiar with NEAT or TDEE, unless they have taken a class, work in a field that involves those calculations, or have a personal interest in the subject, so they wouldn't think to go digging into which formula MFP is using, they just pop their numbers in and go.
  • kgeyser
    kgeyser Posts: 22,505 Member
    mitch16 wrote: »
    annaskiski wrote: »
    rheddmobile wrote: »
    100_PROOF_ wrote: »
    When I first joined here I noticed a lot of people logging cleaning, breastfeeding, walking the mailbox, pushing a grocery buggy as exercise. I even asked if that was what we were supposed to be doing here because I couldn't understand why that stuff wasn't already included in daily activities. ( It was, I just didn't know yet)
    These people said that the activities needed to be logged and that is why they are in the database.
    I did some poking around and saw what formula mfp was using and then realized that those things are indeed accounted for in our activity level.
    I thought it was ironic that those same people cried about not losing weight all the time.

    The breastfeeding entry is valid, isn't it? Thought it was like 500 extra calories a day or something? How else would you log it? I guess you could change your activity level but that seems six of one a half dozen of the other.

    Yes, you need to eat more breastfeeding since you are 'giving away' a bunch of your calories.
    I suppose when non-moms see it as 'activity', it might be surprising. But consuming about 500 calories extra per day is recommended by all breastfeeding organizations...

    AFAIK adding breastfeeding in as exercise is the only way to bump up your calorie goal temporarily on mfp without completely resetting your goals.

    There are some negative calorie adjustment choices in the food database that can be used. Depending on how long you have been nursing and how frequently the child nurses, it could be 500 calories per day or less. My daughter was over a year old when I joined and did not nurse as frequently, so I think I chose a 250 calorie entry or less.
  • lkpducky
    lkpducky Posts: 17,762 Member
    edited November 2018
    paperpudding wrote: »
    No I would not - even if I actually looked at my news feed which I do not.

    I'm sure somebody could look at my diary too - and are you sure every banana you ate was the exact same size and did you really eat all that for dinner and nothing else all day and why didnt you drink any water for years???

    Um, because I use the diary in a way that works for me and I lazily log on law of averages and log foods in whichever meal they are already recorded in regardless of when I actually ate them and I dont bother logging water, although I actually drink it about a liter every day.

    In short, my diary is a works for me model, not a showcase model - and No, I don't ask for advice so I don't want any.

    I do the same thing! Much easier than going around copying and pasting 8 different veggies, meat and condiments from the dinner section if I eat the leftovers for breakfast the next day.

  • LiLee2018
    LiLee2018 Posts: 1,389 Member
    Nope. I don't really pay that much attention to the auto stuff that comes up. Even if I did see that they were BSing.. meh. They're not hurting anyone but themselves.
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
    MikePTY wrote: »
    It's interesting how many people on here are commenting that they don't even bother looking at their news feeds. Then I'm honestly curious why you have friends on here? I don't mean it in a bad or negative way. It's totally cool to do your own thing and not really want to get involved in all of that. And if its people you talk to regularly through message or some other way, obviously that is different. But why be friends with a bunch of strangers on here if you don't have any interest in interacting with what they post?

    I don't offer unsolicited advice on calorie burns, but I certainly read the news feed and like and comment on people's stuff. I know that a lot of people get motivated to do more and post more when they are getting interaction. That is sometimes what can lead to logging daily activity with inappropriate burns, but it also inspires people to eat better and do more exercise.

    I'll take a swing. I have a small collection of friends that I regularly interact with on the boards. I might look at the news feed once a week or so, and comment even less than that. In fact this thread prompted me to comment on one persons calorie burn, right @quiksylver296 ? Pretty much got guilted into the first friend and it kinda ballooned from there, to maybe 10 or so. I have over 50 friend requests in my feed if I go and check. I'm sure most were scams of some sort. Only time I really see anything is if I use the app instead of the website and I have the little icon lit up.

    I also have maybe 10 FB friends and hit that maybe once a week. But I use FB more for keeping informed on local runs and events, so I liked a running club, running stores etc.

  • Zodikosis
    Zodikosis Posts: 149 Member
    Eh, nah, you don't necessarily know why they do what they do. I just had to add like 500 calories worth of "walking" to a few days last week. I forgot to wear my Fitbit those days and it bugs me that it says I was "over" for those days because it thought I was in some kind of coma and only burned ~1200 calories/day. I'm using those numbers for a little statistical experience and I hate to go back way later and figure out which days I was just super sedentary and which days I didn't wear my watch.

    I also have my MFP still set to "lose 1/2 lb a week" even though I'm in maintenance because I find that some days I eat over anyway, and aiming for that "1/2 lb loss" number makes it easier for me to actually break even over time.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    MikePTY wrote: »
    It's interesting how many people on here are commenting that they don't even bother looking at their news feeds. Then I'm honestly curious why you have friends on here? I don't mean it in a bad or negative way. It's totally cool to do your own thing and not really want to get involved in all of that. And if its people you talk to regularly through message or some other way, obviously that is different. But why be friends with a bunch of strangers on here if you don't have any interest in interacting with what they post?

    I don't offer unsolicited advice on calorie burns, but I certainly read the news feed and like and comment on people's stuff. I know that a lot of people get motivated to do more and post more when they are getting interaction. That is sometimes what can lead to logging daily activity with inappropriate burns, but it also inspires people to eat better and do more exercise.

    i would tend to agree with you, i often add people who start threads on here looking for friends, and then they never once comment on anything i post...

    but then i figure people use MFP in many different ways, and i just delete people who i haven't bonded with in any way!
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