negative calories from fitbit

loganmckinley
loganmckinley Posts: 3
in Fitness and Exercise
I sync my fitbit with myfitnesspal, and most days it seems to give me some negative exercise calories as I would expect. The problem comes in when i manually log exercise then the fitbit entry is negative. You can see an example at http://imgur.com/a0O6Qpb

I would expect a positive entry from fitbit, a positive manual entry and then a negative fitbit entry to prevent double counting the exercise. The problem is that it appears that when i manually enter exercise it makes the entire fitbit entry negative, which negates or even makes my daily exercise negative.

Can someone explain what is going on and if possible how i can fix it?

Thank!

Replies

  • Ready2Rock206
    Ready2Rock206 Posts: 9,487 Member
    Well FitBit is only going to give you one entry. It looks right to me - but you might want to ask in the FitBit group if you don't get more answers here. They have some very techy FitBit knowledgeable people there.
  • brianpperkins
    brianpperkins Posts: 6,124 Member
    Fitbit reports negative calories when you are behind its projected caloric burn at whatever specific point in time the sharing between apps occurs. If you don't want to see negative adjustments you can disable them in MFP --> settings ---> diary settings.
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
    I'm not sure I understand but you know that Fitbit has no idea about any exercise you log at MFP, right? I believe the Fitbit adjustment is simply the total calories burned per Fitbit at the time of the last synch minus your MFP 'Calories Burned from Normal Daily Activity' on your Goals page.
  • JulieAnn72
    JulieAnn72 Posts: 795 Member
    I'm not sure I understand but you know that Fitbit has no idea about any exercise you log at MFP, right? I believe the Fitbit adjustment is simply the total calories burned per Fitbit at the time of the last synch minus your MFP 'Calories Burned from Normal Daily Activity' on your Goals page.
    I'm new to Fitbit, but I enter my exercise in MFP and it registers in Fitbit. It changes my calories to what I tell MFP I burned during the specific time period I entered. I have the two synced and it seems to work well.

    As far as the negative calories goes, I don't pay much attention to them since it's usually earlier in the day. For me, they tend to adjust to positive as the day goes on.
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
    I'm not sure I understand but you know that Fitbit has no idea about any exercise you log at MFP, right? I believe the Fitbit adjustment is simply the total calories burned per Fitbit at the time of the last synch minus your MFP 'Calories Burned from Normal Daily Activity' on your Goals page.
    I'm new to Fitbit, but I enter my exercise in MFP and it registers in Fitbit. It changes my calories to what I tell MFP I burned during the specific time period I entered. I have the two synced and it seems to work well.

    As far as the negative calories goes, I don't pay much attention to them since it's usually earlier in the day. For me, they tend to adjust to positive as the day goes on.
    I stand corrected!
  • tjmahoney
    tjmahoney Posts: 47 Member
    @loganmckinley- it looks right to me as well. I have the negative calories enabled also. MFP has me eating 1550 cal a day and in the morning, MFP has often subtracted some calories. The only time this hasn't happened is if I forget to engage sleep mode and have to enter it manually. After I run and enter the exercise in MFP as cardiovascular, it lists the calorie burn as positive from the run and often a negative fitbit adjustment on the next line. The net under exercise at the top of the screen is correct.
  • loganmckinley
    loganmckinley Posts: 3
    Thanks i think i understand what it is doing better,
    My understanding is that:
    1) fitbit (or possibly MFP) expects a baseline number of calories
    2) you get a positive or negative adjustment based on if you are over or under that expected amount
    3) this gets adjusted throughout the day based on time and data synched from the fitbit

    My problem was that it was 3/4 of the way through the day so MFP expected should have burned that number of calories to get to 0 excercise calories, but my fitbit hadn't synced since the morning, so MFP thought i had only burned the number of calories since the last sync. This means i had a significant exercise deficit until the fitbit synced and MFP got the latest fitbit data.

    As mentioned on this thread, the exercise deficit ( negative calories) is a setting called Enabled Negative Adjustments on the Diary settings page.

    Thanks again for helping me figure this out everyone.
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
    1- I think it's MFP and I think it's on your Goals page, called 'Calories Burned from Normal Daily Activity'.

    I never used MFP to guide my eating, just to log it, so I'm not real sure how they work together (obviously). If the Fitbit is allocating your calories across the day, I would think everyone would have a large negative adjustment in the morning and it'd just grow (less negative) all day, right up to midnight? Is that what happens? Doesn't sound very useful.
  • JulieAnn72
    JulieAnn72 Posts: 795 Member
    I think you have to make sure your calories goals are set to the same number on FitBit and MFP. That might have something to do with it. My negative is never huge. I'm really not sure how it all works, though! You might want to just turn off the negative calories setting if it bothers you.
  • tjmahoney
    tjmahoney Posts: 47 Member
    @WalkingAlong- I do the same thing, really just using MFP to log my calories and macros. The negative adjustment, I think, is useful if you're trying to gain weight. It seems related to the activity level you choose. if you choose sedentary, then you don't need a lot of calories so the negative number in the AM is low but if you choose very active, then it's a larger number, of course. I wonder how the software determines your need, though. It's certainly not linear throughout the day. Less when you sleep, greater when you're active, less in the evening. For example, your adrenals start putting out epinephrine around 6am (most folks) to get the body up and going; you need more calories so does the software take that into account when determining a "deficit"? 4am and 4pm are the 'low' output times and you get a smaller surge around 6pm with a faster drop after. Is that taken into account? Maybe it doesn't matter and I'm more than likely just over-thinking this, but it would seem to have a relationship. Does anyone know?
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
    Do you mean the Fitbit site or MFP? I think the Fitbit site is pretty 'dumb' in that regard. For instance, when I get to my desk at 6am, my Fitbit dashboard tells me I'm WAY OVER in calories eaten. Of course, I've eaten nothing. But all it's doing is subtracting what I've eaten so far (0) from what I've burned (maybe 400 calories in RMR) and comparing that to the 1000/day deficit goal I have. Since 400-0<1000, it tells me I ate way too much. Clearly, it's going to be garbage data until at the very least I've BURNED 1000 calories!

    It's kind of stupid. I lost a lot of weight with Fitbit but I looked at the 30-day average charts of burn and intake, and kept them 500ish calories apart. That makes much more sense to me but I think they're trying to encourage people to move more TODAY to eat more TODAY.
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
    MFP has a "Fitbit Users" group: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/forums/show/1307-fitbit-users

    When you set up your MFP account, you specified an activity level: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/change_goals_guided MFP used your answer, plus your age, sex & height, to estimate how many calories you burn every day (your TDEE). Then you set your weight-loss goal, and MFP subtracted the appropriate deficit to calculate your daily calorie goal.

    Once you link an activity tracker to your MFP account (via the "Apps" tab at the top of every page), you start getting calorie adjustments. If your tracker says you burned more calories than MFP estimated, you get a positive adjustment (meaning more calories to eat). If you enable negative calorie adjustments and you burn less than the MFP estimate, you will lose calories. (But negative calorie adjustments will never drop your daily calories below 1,200.)

    Log food & drink in MFP. No need to log step based activity. Log non-step based exercise (like swimming or spinning) either in Fitbit or in MFP--never both. If you choose to log in MFP, you'll be asked for start & end times. Then MFP will override your step data during that time.

    It will take trial & error to find what settings work best for you.
  • jurbi
    jurbi Posts: 25 Member
    i enter my food into MPF and log all my extra workout on the fitbit site...the food from MFP links to fitbit and the fitbit exercise links to MFP so it all connects.....
  • loganmckinley
    loganmckinley Posts: 3
    So i think i figured out the last piece of the puzzle.
    It looks like MFP is taking the "Calorie Goal" from the estimated calories burned from fitbit instead of remaining constant.
    http://imgur.com/xQkPNIL,6kT2nU4#0

    Yesterday, I did a lot of exercise (for me at least) and you can see that my calorie goal is 3817, which is much higher than it normal.
    I didn't actually make that goal (because it is was an estimate from 4:30), so i fell 130 calories short of my new goal.

    I believe i can fix this by changing my fitbit settings to not estimate calories:
    http://imgur.com/xQkPNIL,6kT2nU4#1
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
    I don't know, I think that setting in Fitbit only applies to what calories it gives you when you don't wear it.

    http://www.fitbit.com/forums/post/4KTZ2J9SKX6MH/4KTZ2J9SKWN3R/"calorie estimation"

    How did you get that first screenshot? From MFP or Fitbit?
  • TommyWillWright
    TommyWillWright Posts: 6 Member
    Fitbit registers your exersize as a mius figure.

    Myfitness pal registers it as a positive figure.

    So the problem is MFP sync not translating the minus to a positive.

    MFP calculates calories in a simple way.

    X - + Y = X-Y

    1000 - + 100 = 900

    However the Y in this case from Fitbit is a minus

    X - - Y = X+Y
    1000 - - 100 = 1100

    You are Excersizing yourself Fat???

    Myfitness pal needs patching to resolve this.

    Simple as
  • coolcoolman1980
    coolcoolman1980 Posts: 101 Member
    Ready2Rock206 wrote: »
    Well FitBit is only going to give you one entry. It looks right to me - but you might want to ask in the FitBit group if you don't get more answers here. They have some very techy FitBit knowledgeable people there.
    Ready2Rock206 wrote: »
    Well FitBit is only going to give you one entry. It looks right to me - but you might want to ask in the FitBit group if you don't get more answers here. They have some very techy FitBit knowledgeable people there.

    Where is the Fitbit group ?
  • Irish_Walker
    Irish_Walker Posts: 6 Member
    coolcoolman1980 wrote: »
    Ready2Rock206 wrote: »
    Well FitBit is only going to give you one entry. It looks right to me - but you might want to ask in the FitBit group if you don't get more answers here. They have some very techy FitBit knowledgeable people there.
    Ready2Rock206 wrote: »
    Well FitBit is only going to give you one entry. It looks right to me - but you might want to ask in the FitBit group if you don't get more answers here. They have some very techy FitBit knowledgeable people there.

    Where is the Fitbit group ?

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/1290-fitbit-users
  • coolcoolman1980
    coolcoolman1980 Posts: 101 Member


    Thanks
    Irish_Walker wrote: »
    coolcoolman1980 wrote: »
    Ready2Rock206 wrote: »
    Well FitBit is only going to give you one entry. It looks right to me - but you might want to ask in the FitBit group if you don't get more answers here. They have some very techy FitBit knowledgeable people there.
    Ready2Rock206 wrote: »
    Well FitBit is only going to give you one entry. It looks right to me - but you might want to ask in the FitBit group if you don't get more answers here. They have some very techy FitBit knowledgeable people there.

    Where is the Fitbit group ?

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/1290-fitbit-users

    Thanks , I couldn’t see that group in the app. Do you have to log in on website to see other groups ?

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