What the heck is negative calorie adjustment?

alankirmit1704 · November 2019

It looks like it’s best if I turn it on but what the hell is it and why do I now have way less calories available to eat?

tcunbeliever · November 2019

I keep mine off...but to my understanding, if you have your activity level set to a certain thing, then it reduces your calories until your fitbit (or whatever) says that you have achieved that activity level, then it will start giving you more calories if you go above your stated activity level.

I believe it's designed to keep you from overeating if you are less active than usual for any given day.

gemiller87 · November 2019

The negative calorie adjustment is where MFP accounts for exercise calories from a tracking device an adjusts based on estimates vs. your watch or phone step counts/exercise data. IE it might be that your Apple Watch says you burned 1000 calories but MFP would expect you to burn 1500 so it takes 500 away from your available calories left. (just throwing numbers for an example).

This feature should be adjusted on how often you use your watch/tracking device, when it syncs, etc. https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032272152-Should-I-turn-on-Negative-Calorie-Adjustments-

I have to watch this sometimes on this because sometimes I take my watch off for work outs and whatnot.

tinkerbellang83 · November 2019

If you have an activity tracker, you receive a calorie adjustment which is the difference between what you have set MFP to in terms of expected activity level and your predicted activity level from your tracker.

A negative calorie adjustment is when you don't meet/are not predicted to meet your intended activity level.

For example - my MFP account is set to Lightly Active, Garmin only credits me with calories once I have exceeded around 5000 steps. If I were to only do 3000 steps, then I would receive a negative calorie adjustment. It's worth noting that you may also get a negative calorie adjustment if you sync through the day and you have been less active earlier on, just as you might receive a higher calorie adjustment if you are more active early in the day than you would normally be, but this should sort itself out if you sync again later in the day.

This helps ensure that I don't overeat on days when I am not as active as I would normally be.

cwolfman13 · November 2019

alankirmit1704 wrote: »

It looks like it’s best if I turn it on but what the hell is it and why do I now have way less calories available to eat?

It reconciles your actual activity per your device to the activity level you selected in MFP. So if your actual per device is less than what you selected you will get a negative calorie adjustment (down adjustment) just as if your actual activity exceeded what you selected in MFP you would get an increase.

PAV8888 · November 2019

It is the tortuous interference of reality be-spoiling our fantasy... and/or what the others said above!

celeryjuicer · November 2019

You can also just add an activity into your daily diary and it subtracts the calories burned from your daily total

poisonesse · November 2019

What everyone else said, but when it's set you might be often surprised to find that your actual calorie burn goes up, and not down. When my FitBit was working, I had it set to negative calories, and most of the time I got an extra 200-500 calories, as while I wore my Fitbit all day, I didn't log activities like walking around to shop, clean house, etc. So my "negative calorie adjustments" were actually positive adjustments.

Unknown · November 2019

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What the heck is negative calorie adjustment?

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