Negative Adjustments

francissn01105 wrote: »

Hello all! I'm looking for opinions. I'm a sedentary female. My calories on MFP are 1290, with negative adjustments from Fitbit it is only 1200. Are those 90 calories without adding exercise really going to matter?

Thanks!!

Eating those 90 calories will slow your weight loss down a little which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Slow and steady wins the race. Also, have you chosen a 2 pound a week weight loss? If so this is most likely too quick, to begin with. Losing weight too quickly is unstainable, which often results in yo-yo dieting, and can have negative implications for your health.

What does concern me though is that you are getting negative adjustments from your Fitbit when you are sedentary. This would indicate that you are walking less than 3000 steps a day. You don't have to exercise to lose weight, but for your overall health and fitness, I'd recommend adding in some exercise gradually just to get you moving. I have no idea whether you have limitations but incorporating movement that you are capable of with have many positive benefits.

90 calories doesn't sound like a lot in one day but if you look at it like this

90 cals extra a day for a week - extra 630 calories which could be the difference of being in a caloric deficit for the week and staying the same/putting on

90 cals extra a day for an avg 30 day month - 2,700 extra calories. That means in a month you are eating over 2 days worth of your daily calories extra per month.

In the grand scheme, yes you might still lose some weight slowly and you definitely definitely don't want to over restrict yourself either because that's just as bad as eating too much.

NO DISRESPECT AT ALL but I guess my point is if a calorie tracker gives you a specific calorie amount to get based on your answers, and you're using that as a tool in your weight loss, wouldn't you want to follow it exact to know if it works for you? Otherwise whats the point? Because you're not doing what it says so you're not getting a true showing of it's a tool you want to keep using or not, you know what I'm saying?

I follow the saying of Matt Vincent "either *kitten* yes or no" meaning you are either 100% in *kitten* yes or you're not at all. If you're gunna try something dive in 100% and give your all and after you give it some time THEN reassess if you want to tweak or change the program to better fit what you think you want.

what activity level did you select?
Do you regularly get negative adjustments?
When time of day did you update the fitbit to get the negative adjustment?

Example: if i update my fitbit right now (it's lunch) i will get a negative adjustment cuz i've not done my steps for the day. I half half a day of steps to do!

francissn01105 wrote: »

I chose sedentary. I always start the day with the negative adjustments, and it rarely (unless I take a walk) comes into a positive adjustment. I keep my fitbit on all day sync.

How many steps are you getting typically?

I wonder if your Fitbit is actually capturing all your day to day activity. Sometimes the tweaks that guard against accidentally registering steps makes it so that soft indoor steps, or small movements don't register on Fitbits. If this is a case then your Fitbit may be under-estimating your caloric expenditure.

If the number of steps, however, are an accurate reflection of your activity level, TOTALLY INDEPENDENTLY OF WEIGHT MANAGEMENT I would urge you to consider the minimum WHO activity and exercise recommendations. https://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/factsheet_recommendations/en/

You don't have to exercise like an Olympic champion in order to increase your activity level above sedentary. Even ensuring that you get Fitbit's 250 steps an hour for the maximum configurable 14 hours in a day would ensure that you would exceed the sedentary setting on MFP if you do that in addition to your current activities!