MyFitnessPal Not counting calories correctly
briaschaefer
Posts: 2 Member
MyFitnessPal is great EXCEPT for the fact that I've actually been eating more calories than I'm supposed to BECAUSE they count calories wrong. For every gram of protein and carb, is 4 calories, and 9 calories for fat. They count calories by label, not by macros. They need to change this. To prove, at the end of you day, multiply 4 by your protein and carb, 9 by fat, then add those numbers up. That's how many calories you've actually eaten today. That's if you dont hit your macro numbers EXACTLY .
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What you’re missing is that very few things are comprised of only protein, or only fat or only carbohydrates.
Most foods, whether processed, packaged or in their natural state are a combination of two or more of the three basic macros plus varying amounts of water, minerals etc. Therefore, you can’t practically calculate the calories the way you’re suggesting.18 -
Can you post an example of what you ate and how the calories are off? I'm not sure this is an MFP problem or a bad database entry problem.
Since many of the database entries were user-created I try to stick with entries MFP pulled from the USDA database as much as possible.8 -
Also be aware there is often error in food labelling...legally (in USA) up to 20% !!! https://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/eat-run/2012/08/21/when-nutrition-labels-lie4
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Yeah, you've likely just used bad database entries. Vet them before using.9
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briaschaefer wrote: »MyFitnessPal is great EXCEPT for the fact that I've actually been eating more calories than I'm supposed to BECAUSE they count calories wrong. For every gram of protein and carb, is 4 calories, and 9 calories for fat. They count calories by label, not by macros. They need to change this. To prove, at the end of you day, multiply 4 by your protein and carb, 9 by fat, then add those numbers up. That's how many calories you've actually eaten today. That's if you dont hit your macro numbers EXACTLY .
Sounds like the blame game to me... MFP is not logging your calories, you are! Can't blame them that you're eating more calories than you thought. Logging accurately is up too you15 -
I will have had 698 calories after lunch, but when I do the macro math I get 713.
I checked my first entry, which was a user-entered entry, and it was off by 10 calories. I checked the package, and the values for this entry were correct. I imagine the issue was with the fat - it was probably only 0.6 g fat, but they rounded up to 1 (?). And I had two items, so it added up.
My next entry was an admin-created entry, and it was off by 1 calorie, which I consider to be an acceptable difference due to rounding.7 -
kshama2001 wrote: »I will have had 698 calories after lunch, but when I do the macro math I get 713.
I checked my first entry, which was a user-entered entry, and it was off by 10 calories. I checked the package, and the values for this entry were correct. I imagine the issue was with the fat - it was probably only 0.6 g fat, but they rounded up to 1 (?). And I had two items, so it added up.
My next entry was an admin-created entry, and it was off by 1 calorie, which I consider to be an acceptable difference due to rounding.
That's pretty good.
I find my macros to be in the acceptably close enough range, too.
But then I've been on this site for a while and I believe all my entries now are as correct as I can get them. It took a while to populate all my meals "Recents and Frequents" though. I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning by using any random database item. That took time to fix.4 -
Your math doesn't take into account fillers, or the fact that the "449" are approximations themselves.
Don't blame MFP.4 -
Operator error. 🤔4
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Calories in the MFP data base are user entered, most often from standard food labels on packages.
Labels can be up to 20 % off by law. They're not usually off by 20 % but they're in no way exact, either. I've often found them to be 10-15 % off and, when I've bothered to really dig deep a few times to investigate the label by weighing things and going through the ingredients list, I've rarely found one that was precisely correct.
That's on top of the fact that the MFP food database is user entered and notoriously rife with errors and inaccuracies. That is the price to be paid for having the world's largest crowd-sourced database on Earth of calorie data.
Embrace it and learn to check the entries in the data base before you use them. No one's ever gotten fat or thin by being off a few percent while counting calories. If you're strictly counting and logging your calories, you're already winning the battle.3 -
Embrace it and learn to check the entries in the data base before you use them. No one's ever gotten fat or thin by being off a few percent while counting calories.
Yeah, this is really the key point.
Close enough is good enough. It has to be.
I lost my 80ish pounds in 2007. The first 50 pounds I was logging but by no means was I accurate. I used whatever food popped up when I searched, I estimated on the portions, sometimes used a measuring cup, had no idea how many calories I needed or how many I used in exercise. I still lost at a good rate, close to the rate I'd set in my Goal.
Those last 30 pounds were a different story.
I used my past data to set my calorie goal. I bought a food scale when I had about 20 to go. I started really focusing on the Rubiks Cube that was my food diary and I started eating 13 out of 14 meals per week prepared by me. Still, I am under no illusion that I did it perfectly.
Close enough is good enough.10 -
briaschaefer wrote: »MyFitnessPal is great EXCEPT for the fact that I've actually been eating more calories than I'm supposed to BECAUSE they count calories wrong. For every gram of protein and carb, is 4 calories, and 9 calories for fat. They count calories by label, not by macros. They need to change this. To prove, at the end of you day, multiply 4 by your protein and carb, 9 by fat, then add those numbers up. That's how many calories you've actually eaten today. That's if you dont hit your macro numbers EXACTLY .
Don't feel bad. You are obviously new to this and new people make mistakes. I made plenty. MFP takes some time to learn. It is great in its way but only when you have a handle on logging accurately and efficiently.
Stick with it. Read the sticky-ed threads at the top of this forum. Keep posting threads as you see something you don't understand or that does not add up the way you think it should. Next time you might want to put it in the form of a question instead of a statement of fact but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that you make progress towards your goal.7 -
briaschaefer wrote: »MyFitnessPal is great EXCEPT for the fact that I've actually been eating more calories than I'm supposed to BECAUSE they count calories wrong. For every gram of protein and carb, is 4 calories, and 9 calories for fat. They count calories by label, not by macros. They need to change this. To prove, at the end of you day, multiply 4 by your protein and carb, 9 by fat, then add those numbers up. That's how many calories you've actually eaten today. That's if you dont hit your macro numbers EXACTLY .
This is not correct. The calorie label is the appropriate one to go by. Everything is rounded, including both calorie labels and macros. Calories on labels are rounded the nearest 10 (or 5 in some cases) and macros are rounded to the nearest gram. So they will never match up exactly by that. For example, I like to use spicy brown mustard on a lot of things. Spicy brown mustard has 5 calories, but it has 0 listed on all of it's macros, because they are all less than 1. So no matter how many servings I use, I will still not show any macros. But I can get 30 to 40 calories a day in spicy mustard sometimes, and if I only counted macros, I wouldn't be counting that.
A second bigger thing is that there is something besides carbs, fat, and protein which contain calories, and that is alcohol. Alcohol is not counted as a macro, but it has 6.7 calories per gram of alcohol. So if you drink any alcoholic beverages, you will be getting calories that wouldn't be reflected in your macros. But they are still calories.
There is no 100% surefire way to get the exact number of calories you eat in a day. Calories and macros will be slightly off from each other due to rounding in most cases, and more than slightly off if you drink alcohol. But the calorie number is the correct one, and the one you should be using, especially since not every item has their macros set correctly.9 -
Yeah, there's rounding and approximation involved (even if you use accurate database entries). And, as others have said, counting macros instead won't materially change that.
Shockingly, daily calorie goal is also an approximation, our daily calorie burn actually varies day by day (even fidgetiness makes a difference). Exercise calorie burns (whether estimated in via a TDEE-based starting point or estimated separately and logged) are also approximate, even for the very easiest exercises to estimate accurately. Even magical-technology fitness trackers are just producing an estimate (which a near synonym for "approximation'), and it's not necessarily an accurate one. Approximate is indeed a kind word for "incorrect at the most detailed level'.
Y'know what? In a practical sense, it doesn't matter. The error rates for most of us, once we are careful in our methodology, are manageably small. A few calories here or there are irrelevant, in the big picture. The process works.
Stressing about such minor inaccuracies is majoring in the minors, and completely unnecessary. Let it go. Monitor your results over 4-6 weeks of reasonable compliance, and adjust your calorie goal as needed to stay on a reasonable track. Re-evaluate every 10 pounds or so.
There is no perfect process. MFP offers a perfectly workable one, if you choose to use it.12 -
I've found food to be accurate. But exercise to be *way* off at least for my common exercises. (Sometimes 50-100% too generous....).
But there are standard formulas for cycling, running and walking which aren't complicated so I use those to estimate cals burned.
But I've found the food to be fairly accurate. At least accurate enough that if I hit my #s (and *don't* use MFP exercise estimates...which are embarrassingly bad...)...I lose the target weight in a very non linear way.
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kshama2001 wrote: »Can you post an example of what you ate and how the calories are off? I'm not sure this is an MFP problem or a bad database entry problem.
Since many of the database entries were user-created I try to stick with entries MFP pulled from the USDA database as much as possible.
This is probably a stupid question but is there an easy way to tell which ones are USDA sourced? I spend so much time trying to vet the correct data base entry....when I don't have the scanned bar code. I do weigh in grams but would like to find accurate data base entries. I have added the USDA link to my desktop. Thanks in advance.3 -
The first few months I made tons of mistakes, by blindly just clicking on the first item in food database that appeared to match what I was looking for. Then after reading so much here in discussions, I was like oops. And now have lots of good data. And when I add something new, you can bet I search out and actually look at the nutrition data to see if reasonable.
And I totally agree with many the exercise is way overstated. So for me I do eat some of it back, less than 50%. And I have found that 33% for me to be my happy medium for exercise calories to eat back.
So I take both as guides, but not as being 100% accurate, because people make mistakes.0 -
briaschaefer wrote: »MyFitnessPal is great EXCEPT for the fact that I've actually been eating more calories than I'm supposed to BECAUSE they count calories wrong. For every gram of protein and carb, is 4 calories, and 9 calories for fat. They count calories by label, not by macros. They need to change this. To prove, at the end of you day, multiply 4 by your protein and carb, 9 by fat, then add those numbers up. That's how many calories you've actually eaten today. That's if you dont hit your macro numbers EXACTLY .
As far as calories go, MFP is an addition/subtraction calculator. What you’re complaining about is a problem with the food company’s calculations or your failure to log accurately.
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kshama2001 wrote: »Can you post an example of what you ate and how the calories are off? I'm not sure this is an MFP problem or a bad database entry problem.
Since many of the database entries were user-created I try to stick with entries MFP pulled from the USDA database as much as possible.
This is probably a stupid question but is there an easy way to tell which ones are USDA sourced? I spend so much time trying to vet the correct data base entry....when I don't have the scanned bar code. I do weigh in grams but would like to find accurate data base entries. I have added the USDA link to my desktop. Thanks in advance.
I found the easiest way for whole foods was to start on the USDA site, find the food I wanted to log, copy the text string that USDA uses to describe the entry I want (e.g., "strawberries, raw"), then paste that into the MFP search box. Usually the top return will be the right one. If there are multiple returns that match the text string (with no extra words in the name of the food), then checking the drop-down box for serving size is usually a quick way to locate the most likely "right" entry. Entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database should have multiple serving sizes that encompass both weight and volume measurements, and possible "per piece" as well (e.g., 1 medium apple). If you click on the nutrition and see a bunch of zeros where there shouldn't be zeros, it's probably not right.
But once something passes all those gates, you still should check it against the USDA site that you started with before logging it the first time, because some of the entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database have become corrupted. (Also, the corruption often is only for one of the serving sizes -- so it's OK to use the garlic, raw entry if you remember that if you want to just enter the number of cloves, you have to log .33 of the 3 clove serving size to log one clove, rather than 1 serving of the 1 clove serving size, which now says hundreds or thousands of calories.)
Once you find a good entry and log it, you can log it in the future from your recent or frequent foods without having to check the entry for accuracy again.1 -
I have a similar issue -- I'm entering a couple of recipes I've made from an old WW cookbook. The book is old enough that it provides a calorie count and macros for each recipe as well as a points count (it's from 2004, so it has a very old points system -- the one from before Points Plus). The recipe obviously stipulates the weight and measures of each ingredient, and I followed it, of course. But when I enter the recipe into the recipe builder, it delivers a much higher calorie count -- off by a good 100 to 200 calories per serving. I don't know which is correct.
I find that lots of the calorie counts are pretty hit or miss at times -- which is annoying, since being 100 calories off for a day is the difference between losing or not, for me.0 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »kshama2001 wrote: »Can you post an example of what you ate and how the calories are off? I'm not sure this is an MFP problem or a bad database entry problem.
Since many of the database entries were user-created I try to stick with entries MFP pulled from the USDA database as much as possible.
This is probably a stupid question but is there an easy way to tell which ones are USDA sourced? I spend so much time trying to vet the correct data base entry....when I don't have the scanned bar code. I do weigh in grams but would like to find accurate data base entries. I have added the USDA link to my desktop. Thanks in advance.
I found the easiest way for whole foods was to start on the USDA site, find the food I wanted to log, copy the text string that USDA uses to describe the entry I want (e.g., "strawberries, raw"), then paste that into the MFP search box. Usually the top return will be the right one. If there are multiple returns that match the text string (with no extra words in the name of the food), then checking the drop-down box for serving size is usually a quick way to locate the most likely "right" entry. Entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database should have multiple serving sizes that encompass both weight and volume measurements, and possible "per piece" as well (e.g., 1 medium apple). If you click on the nutrition and see a bunch of zeros where there shouldn't be zeros, it's probably not right.
But once something passes all those gates, you still should check it against the USDA site that you started with before logging it the first time, because some of the entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database have become corrupted. (Also, the corruption often is only for one of the serving sizes -- so it's OK to use the garlic, raw entry if you remember that if you want to just enter the number of cloves, you have to log .33 of the 3 clove serving size to log one clove, rather than 1 serving of the 1 clove serving size, which now says hundreds or thousands of calories.)
Once you find a good entry and log it, you can log it in the future from your recent or frequent foods without having to check the entry for accuracy again.
Yes, that's how I find USDA entries in the MFP database as well - start on https://fdc.nal.usda.gov and paste the syntax into MFP.
After a while you will get to recognize how USDA entries look. For produce I often just type something like "strawberries, raw" into MFP and will find the entry I want because users generally don't add the "raw' to produce or do this for chicken "Chicken, broilers or fryers, breast, meat only, cooked, roasted."
Another glitch to be aware of is decimal errors - there are a number of admin entries that have an option for 1 gram when it is actually the value for 100 grams. These are easy to spot if you are looking because the food being 100 times more caloric than it should be is readily apparent. I'm suspicious of all 1 g entries for admin-entered foods. If 100 is available I go with that. If 1 g is the only option for grams it is often actually the value for 100 g.
I used to flag Support about those errors but the process was so annoying and unproductive that I stopped.2 -
Yeah, this. It is annoying.Another glitch to be aware of is decimal errors - there are a number of admin entries that have an option for 1 gram when it is actually the value for 100 grams. These are easy to spot if you are looking because the food being 100 times more caloric than it should be is readily apparent. I'm suspicious of all 1 g entries for admin-entered foods. If 100 is available I go with that. If 1 g is the only option for grams it is often actually the value for 100 g.0
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