Do you eat back your negative calorie adjustment (Fitbit etc) - super confusing?

Ducks47
Ducks47 Posts: 131 Member
edited December 21 in Health and Weight Loss
I have been walking some 13000 steps a day and jogging 1.75 miles or doing strength training every day. I am experiementing and have been ignoring the exercise calories but today I ate them back. I’m curious for those of you who track your steps (Fitbit etc) do you eat those calories back? It adds a good 500 cal to my allotment just from the steps from my Fitbit zip. I’m really confused because if I ate back the 500 for walking plus 200 frog exercise then I’d be at 1900 which seems too high. So I figured I’d see what other mfp people do.

Replies

  • meganreid163
    meganreid163 Posts: 72 Member
    Following
  • Ducks47
    Ducks47 Posts: 131 Member
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    What's to follow? :smiley:

    13,000 steps as an activity setting would probably translate in the very active category. If you're not setup as very active you will have an appreciable adjustment at the end of the day.

    Because of how MFP and Fitbit interact, an exercise that has been manually entered on MFP will OVER-RIDE whatever your Fitbit detected during the same time frame. This could lead to errors if used when Fitbit had detected your exercise correctly on its own.

    If you're entering an exercise that is step based and that your Fitbit would have detected on its own I would suggest that you don't do so.

    IF you're entering an exercise such as swimming that would not be captured by your Fitbit, I personally would prefer to enter it directly on Fitbit; but you can also enter it on MFP like you have been doing, as long as your time zones are correctly setup in both Fitbit and MFPs

    The adjustment you see (which is finalized at the end of the day at midnight) is an accounting adjustment that passes to MFP the value of your all day caloric burn that your Fitbit detected.

    Assuming that food logging is on point, there are many people around who eat most if not all of their adjustments

    Hi, thank you for your help! I weigh almost all my food except for veg. I have mfp set to “not very active” because I figured my steps would correct this and tell me how active I really am. I don’t wear my Fitbit while exercising and manually add cardio but get confused on logging strength training because there’s rests and so many different movements. I figure since I only burn like 200 calories on my jog then my strength is probably negligible as well and can serve as a buffer.

    Can I ask why you prefer to enter it on exercise on Fitbit ?
  • Ducks47
    Ducks47 Posts: 131 Member
    What PAV said. I have a fitbit and it usually adds at least a couple hundred calories a day. I don't manually enter my walking around or running calories. I will manually add things like yoga or weight lifting, though I usually under report the minutes (e.g. if it's a 90 min yoga class I tend to put 45 min because the warm/up/cool down probably doesn't burn much).

    My fitbit is actually pretty accurate--my maintenance calories are 2200-2500 calories and it usually states I burn around that, unless I have a few days where I just sit around, then it dips down to 1900ish. I tend to roughly eat half of my exercise calories if I'm trying to lose fat, as a buffer against logging errors. If I'm maintaining I eat more of them (but I still usually aim to eat around 2000-2100 as a buffer against logging errors (I do a lot of guesstimating as always weighing food gets annoying for me, and I also eat out a few times a week and that's often total guesswork). I make sure I'm within my 5 pound range for maintaining and adjust as needed.

    Basically, say you were super active and so your overall calories burned for the day was 2500. If you ate 1900, that's still a deficit of 600 calories.

    Thank you!! I think it’s a good idea to underestimate. I like that it changes depended on my activity level. Congrats on maintaining
  • Ducks47
    Ducks47 Posts: 131 Member
    WinoGelato wrote: »
    PAV covered the reasons why you need to eat back those calories and why you should trust them. I’ve had my FitBit synced with MFP for about 6 years now, and when I first got it I too was surprised to learn that my adjustments were high meaning I was more active than I realized, burned more calories than my stats suggest, and can lose weight eating more than some people think their maintenance calories are.

    The diet industry and social media has programmed us to think that dieting is miserable and that in order to be successful we have to cut calories to the lowest possible level. In fact, most people don’t need to go to minimum numbers to be successful, ESPECIALLY if you’re active and ESPECIALLY if you’re logging accurately.


    Thank you for the reply!! It’s been quite a shock ! In the winter I walk about 7500 steps and then in the summer much more. So the caloric jump being so big was a surprise. I’m definitely not trying to starve myself. I love food too much for that. Just looking for balance
  • CindyJNC1963
    CindyJNC1963 Posts: 895 Member
    edited May 2019
    I am trying to lose weight so I do not eat back my exercise calories. I generally eat about 1350 calories a day regardless of how many steps I walk a day. I do this under the advisement of my weight loss physician. So far I've lost 70 lbs in 7 months but that has slowed down considerably in the last 2 months, which is to be expected. I still need to lose about 65 more lbs.
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