Fitbit Steps

I just checked yesterday’s log... it says I burned 504 calories for 12,237 steps. I’m 5’5 female, 145lb.

So yours seems reasonable, depending on your stats.

That’s broadly in line with what I get. Mind you, if I eat back more than about a 3rd of my Fitbit exercise calories, I gain.

If you’re set as sedentary in mfp, then that’s probably about right (since 8,000 steps isn’t sedentary).

helenback07 wrote: »

Awesome thanks everyone for your replies! I do have it set it to sedantary and negative calorie adjustments enabled. Should I change it to lightly active?

I don’t think that your mfp setting of sedentary or lightly active has any bearing on the amount of calories you get from Fitbit steps. If you walk X amount of steps, they will be translated to Y amount of calories regardless of your activity level.

helenback07 wrote: »

Hi everyone!

Long long long time user but first time poster! I have a question about my Fitbit steps. I seem to be burning a considerable amount and I’m worried it isn’t correct. It’s saying I burn about 400 - 500 cals from 8000ish steps. To be fair a lot of it does include many flights of stairs and I do walk at a fast pace but does this seem way off? TIA!

Your Fitbit adjustment actually has nothing to do with your step count. It's a comparison of what MFP thought you would burn and what Fitbit detected your burn to be based on your activity.

I got 400 calories for 8000 steps yesterday and I am set to Lightly active. However, I do workouts that don't necessarily add tons of steps, but will still increase my calorie burn for the day. I also eat 100% of the calories I get from my Fitbit adjustments and will lose, maintain, or gain as expected. I am very careful with my food log though weighing 90% of what I eat and trying to get the accurate entries from the database (there is a lot of inaccurate stuff hiding in there and some of it even has the green verified check mark).


Now not everyone can eat 100% of the adjustment, because Fitbit isn't 100% accurate on the calorie burn for everyone. Things like the accuracy of your food log can affect your percieved accuracy of the calorie burn. Then if you have a model with the HRM and it's detecting an elevated HR all the time that could inflate your reported calorie burn above what you are actually burning.


The improtant thing is to evaluate your results over time. Say you eat 50% of them for 4-6 weeks and then evaluate. Did you lose faster than you were aiming too? Than you can eat more than 50% of them. Did you lose less, maintain, or gain? Than you should eat less than 50% and I would also advise evalutating the accuracy of what you are logging.

helenback07 wrote: »

Awesome thanks everyone for your replies! I do have it set it to sedantary and negative calorie adjustments enabled. Should I change it to lightly active?

All that will do is increase your base goal a bit and decrease the adjustment (might take a few minutes to take effect). It will still be telling you to eat the same amount.

For example:

At Sedentary MFP estimates I burn about 1700.
At Lightly Active MFP estimates I burn about 1900.

Yesterday Fitbit reported my calorie burn to be 2300.

2300 - 1700 = 600 adjustment at Sedentary
2300 - 1900 = 400 adjustment at Lightly Active

So if I selected 1 lb per week loss it would look like:

Sedentary: 1200 + 600 exercise = 1800 (1200 NET)
Lightly Active: 1400 + 400 exercise = 1800 (1400 NET)

Fwiw - while seated in my chair at home, my Fitbit (Alta HR) counts wide arm swings as steps.

This discovery has caused me to mentally adjust down any Fitbit step counts; i am sure not taking them to the bank as gold!

That said, hitting 10,000 steps in a day (real or including arm swings) is undeniably good for my personal overall fitness program.

I find *more meaningful* to my personal tracking the the fitbit graphs on: hours of the day with 250 steps or more; the minutes of activity and the sleep patterns.

I use MFP for food logging to watch calories and macros and weight loss progress.