Daily Calorie goal decreases after 15k steps?

mmmmountainbike
mmmmountainbike Posts: 1 Member
edited February 2020 in Getting Started
So my calorie goal is 2,600 cal per day. Supposedly this is what my body needs just to keep it running (from what I understand how MFP works). I took 15,391 steps today while walking in the woods with my dog; About (2) 1 hour long walks. These steps were for the whole day not just on the dog walks. I didn’t record these dog walks separately with my Garmin so they weren’t synced as “exercises” in MFP. As a result it has subtracted 278 calories from my total goal. How is that possible. Even if they aren’t entered as exercise, surely taking 15k steps would increase your calorie goal for the day? Can someone help explain this to me? Should I be recording my daily walks on my garmin so they sync as exercises?

Replies

  • Nony_Mouse
    Nony_Mouse Posts: 5,646 Member
    What do you have your activity level set at?

    Basically what's happened is that the amount that Garmin has sent over to MFP as your total calorie burn for the day is less than what you have MFP set at.
  • rainbowblu
    rainbowblu Posts: 119 Member
    Check your Negative calorie setting,from a computer..Mine does not work from my cell phone...
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,300 Member
    Sounds like a misconfiguration or malfunction given that the level of steps you detail should bring your total calories above MFP's very active setting under normal circumstances.

    I would manually compare the total calories at the end of the day (at maintenance) as detailed by Garmin to the calories given by MFP for the same day for you (at maintenance) and see if they are equalized after the adjustment. If they are not, then things are not working as they should.
  • slbbw
    slbbw Posts: 329 Member
    BMR would be how much your body needs to keep itself running with no activity at all(lying in bed all day etc) Depending on how you set up your MFP account, lets say it is set to maintenance, 2600 would be what you need to take in based on the activity level you set, sedentary, lightly active, very active. If your Garmin is employing negative adjustments, it means that your actual activity level as recorded by your Garmin is less than the activity level you set.
  • Beanie25cat
    Beanie25cat Posts: 1 Member
    Hey I was wondering too, I use Fitbit and it carries over my steps which sometimes are low but I burn a lot of calories doing strength and spin etc so how come it doesn’t pick up on that ? I’m lost as my calorie intake is way too low for the amount of exercise i do x
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,300 Member
    Beanie25cat wrote: »
    Hey I was wondering too, I use Fitbit and it carries over my steps which sometimes are low but I burn a lot of calories doing strength and spin etc so how come it doesn’t pick up on that ? I’m lost as my calorie intake is way too low for the amount of exercise i do x

    You can check what your exercise tracker records for a particular time period using the app/dashboard/web pages provided by your tracker.

    If an activity doesn't get recorded properly I would consider whether it is worthwhile to correct using a manual exercise input using the tracker's software, or contacting the tracker's technical support people/forums for advice on how to best correct it. What I would NOT do is enter an exercise using MFP to effect the correction.

    Your caloric intake on MFP is defined as a combination of your selected activity level AND GOAL CHOSEN. While 0.5 to 2lbs a week is considered a "safe" range for weight loss and gain, this does not mean that any point of that range is either safe or optimal for EVERYONE. And, of course, MFPs goals assume that you will eat your accurately determined exercise calories that have been expended over and above the activity level you self selected.

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