Help. Bmr and mfp calories

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  • aimeerosy95
    aimeerosy95 Posts: 14 Member
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    Btw I do do more steps through the day. I just don’t tend to bring my phone haha
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,960 Member
    edited June 2019
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    Okay. :lol: So you're not really using a food scale. Lots of your entries with bread and sausages are "1 slice" or "2 sausages" - so they aren't weighed. One medium strawberry is about 40g, and you have strawberries on there quite a bit.

    0.1 grams of butter would be less than the size of a pea...like I said, not important as you don't have it on there more than a couple times, but if you're guessing like that on a bunch of things then you're eating more than you think. You know those little pats of butter you get at a restaurant? They are anywhere from 9-15 grams. At 100 calories for 14 grams, it adds up.

    You can manually enter exercise if you don't know how to synch your fitbit. There is also a fitbit group with FAQs.

    You need to hit that 1560- especially if you're not going to account for your exercise.
  • aimeerosy95
    aimeerosy95 Posts: 14 Member
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    Ok I’m confused now.

    So In regards to the bread and sausages I don’t weight them. I scan the barcodes on the packaging and that matches up with the calories on mfp and the packaging. Should I be weighing them instead ??

    I don’t get why I would need to weigh the bread when it says on the packaging 1 slice is x calories and I’m having 1 slice so obv I input that. As for the butter I do weigh that on the scales.
    I weight all my fruit. 40g is a handful of strawberries. But I pick up a handful and weigh them. I weigh all my fruit veg rice and sweet potato.

    For everything else I just scan the barcodes and then adjust the serving size or weight to what I’ve got.

    Am I doing this wrong ???

    I don’t have a fit bit this is why I can’t add my exercise as I don’t know how many calories I’ve burnt
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,960 Member
    edited June 2019
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    If you can make a handful of strawberries be 40g, and if you think you're using 0.1 grams of butter on toast, then keep on doing that. It wouldn't even be worth it for me to go to all that trouble to log Zero Point One grams of butter. That's one tenth of a gram. My scale wouldn't even measure that low. You may mean 1 gram, which would be 7 calories, not the negative amount you logged. Again do what you want...just pointing it out. 7 calories is a math error but it is insignificant and is why I said 73 calories one way or the other in your Goals is meaningless.

    A handful of strawberries for me is more like 150g, but that's only 50 calories, so not a huge deal. I don't weigh bread either, but I have in the past and it is often off by 10-30 calories from the listed amount (when I do weigh it.) Same with sausages and bacon, I don't weigh them...but these are examples of where you may be eating more than you think and that's why you feel full on what you think is 1300. Or you're not logging everything.

    It adds up over the course of the day and over multiple items.
  • Lenala13
    Lenala13 Posts: 152 Member
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    aimeerosy95 wrote: »
    Ok I’m confused now.

    So In regards to the bread and sausages I don’t weight them. I scan the barcodes on the packaging and that matches up with the calories on mfp and the packaging. Should I be weighing them instead ??

    I don’t get why I would need to weigh the bread when it says on the packaging 1 slice is x calories and I’m having 1 slice so obv I input that. As for the butter I do weigh that on the scales.
    I weight all my fruit. 40g is a handful of strawberries. But I pick up a handful and weigh them. I weigh all my fruit veg rice and sweet potato.

    For everything else I just scan the barcodes and then adjust the serving size or weight to what I’ve got.

    Am I doing this wrong ???

    I don’t have a fit bit this is why I can’t add my exercise as I don’t know how many calories I’ve burnt

    I'm not sure about the UK (if that's where you're at), but in the U.S., the calories on the packaging can be off by as much as 25%, so you can be up to 25% over or under based on the actual weight of the product. For example, one slice of bread may be 40g, the other may be 38g in the same package, etc. I personally don't usually weigh the things I scan, because I'm currently losing weight at a pace I'm happy with, even with my somewhat sloppy logging. However, I fully expect, once I get closer to my goal weight, that I may indeed have to tighten up my logging if I stop seeing weight loss. It's really up to you and how precise with your logging you want to be. If you're losing with your current method, then I wouldn't worry about it. If you find yourself stalling for a significant amount of time (3-4 weeks or longer), then maybe tighten up the logging then.
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
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    Accurate logging requires two parts: knowing what kind of food you're eating and knowing how much of it you're eating. Barcode scanning only tells you one half (and is not always accurate at even that). A food scale only tells you one half. You have to know both halves in order to log accurately. The 1 slice, 1 link, etc notation on food labels is for convenience but the calories are based on the weight listed. You use the food scale to make sure the slice you have or the link or whatever matches the average slice. It won't always.

    As an example, I bought a pack of Italiansausage once that gave the calorie estimates based on links that weighed 82 grams. Every link in that package was over 100 grams when I weighed them. It was a huge calorie difference.
  • aimeerosy95
    aimeerosy95 Posts: 14 Member
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    Lenala13 wrote: »
    aimeerosy95 wrote: »
    Ok I’m confused now.

    So In regards to the bread and sausages I don’t weight them. I scan the barcodes on the packaging and that matches up with the calories on mfp and the packaging. Should I be weighing them instead ??

    I don’t get why I would need to weigh the bread when it says on the packaging 1 slice is x calories and I’m having 1 slice so obv I input that. As for the butter I do weigh that on the scales.
    I weight all my fruit. 40g is a handful of strawberries. But I pick up a handful and weigh them. I weigh all my fruit veg rice and sweet potato.

    For everything else I just scan the barcodes and then adjust the serving size or weight to what I’ve got.

    Am I doing this wrong ???

    I don’t have a fit bit this is why I can’t add my exercise as I don’t know how many calories I’ve burnt

    I'm not sure about the UK (if that's where you're at), but in the U.S., the calories on the packaging can be off by as much as 25%, so you can be up to 25% over or under based on the actual weight of the product. For example, one slice of bread may be 40g, the other may be 38g in the same package, etc. I personally don't usually weigh the things I scan, because I'm currently losing weight at a pace I'm happy with, even with my somewhat sloppy logging. However, I fully expect, once I get closer to my goal weight, that I may indeed have to tighten up my logging if I stop seeing weight loss. It's really up to you and how precise with your logging you want to be. If you're losing with your current method, then I wouldn't worry about it. If you find yourself stalling for a significant amount of time (3-4 weeks or longer), then maybe tighten up the logging then.

    Thank you for this advice. Really helps !
  • aimeerosy95
    aimeerosy95 Posts: 14 Member
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    diannethegeek wrote: »
    Accurate logging requires two parts: knowing what kind of food you're eating and knowing how much of it you're eating. Barcode scanning only tells you one half (and is not always accurate at even that). A food scale only tells you one half. You have to know both halves in order to log accurately. The 1 slice, 1 link, etc notation on food labels is for convenience but the calories are based on the weight listed. You use the food scale to make sure the slice you have or the link or whatever matches the average slice. It won't always.

    As an example, I bought a pack of Italiansausage once that gave the calorie estimates based on links that weighed 82 grams. Every link in that package was over 100 grams when I weighed them. It was a huge calorie difference.

    Thank you ! Stupidly I haven’t been weighing my meat or egg as I just assumed that the weight would be the same as the package !! Thank you for this advice as I will defo be weighing them today to see. Maybe they actually weigh more and that’s why I’m feeling full on what I thought was 1300 calories!!

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