Myfitnesspal calories adjustment

I am trying to gain weight and I manually increase the daily intake value in Myfitnesspal app. But the calories adjustment keep giving me negative adjustments which tells me to eat less, I follow the adjusted value to eat and start to loose weight, should I turn negative adjustment off?

Replies

  • tiptoethruthetulips
    tiptoethruthetulips Posts: 3,360 Member
    edited August 2019
    Are you adding exercise? Is the negative adjustment in fact the exercise calories you need to eat back from the exercise? That is, the negative value is the amount you are undereating for your normal calories plus exercise calories
  • bearpta
    bearpta Posts: 2 Member
    I workout 4 times/week and already sync my garmin to Myfitnesspal, so it will auto add exercise to myfitnesspal. To gain weight I need to eat more than normal TDEE, but Myfitnesspal steps counter just keep giving negative calories adjustment saying I have to eat less...
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    edited August 2019
    That effect of Adjustment being negative occurs when your total daily burn from device (which includes workouts) is less than the estimated daily burn MFP had and exercise it knows about.

    So say for instance Garmin 2500 - MFP 2000 - 500 exercise = 0 adjustment.

    Base eating goal 2000 + Adj 0 + 500 exercise = 2500.

    That's what should be happening.

    Now you are getting say Garmin reporting 2300, which gives neg 200 adjustment.

    That would imply that you burned less for the whole day with the workout than what MFP estimated you'd burn without it.

    So either the MFP activity level is set too high (which would still end the day with the same eating goal) - or the Garmin side is messed up on what it sends for total daily burned.

    On that Adjustment line - tap and hold to see more details.

    Is time stamp recent (trackers only send calorie updates when it's 100 higher than last sync) or close?
    Is it correct calorie count for when it was sent?

    I've seen Garmin sync in a recent device workout - send it off to MFP, but fail to update it's own daily burned with that extra calorie burn.

    So MFP is told of the workout, but not the increased daily burn that includes it.

    So when it does the math above - extra negative adjustment.

    I've also seen where it fails to sync later in the day after that first workout and daily burn come over - so as day progresses, it appears you are sedentary.

    So take a pic of that details screen that shows phone time, and comment on what your Garmin is saying the daily burn is at that moment.

    Maybe a prior day too.