MFP calculated deficit wrong

Well, whatever works for each of us I'm set at sedentary, knowing that I will get a positive calorie adjustment from my Garmin on most days, and exercise gets added via Garmin too. Works perfectly for me so far (once I realised I had to update/confirm my weight and goals regularly on MFP after losing weight).
There can be a serious learning curve to calorie counting!

lynn_glenmont wrote: »

So I did some digging and figured out how to check how MFP does the adjustment, and figured out they have my TDEE set at 2048.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, but this ^^ from your OP sounds like you did some kind of calculation and reached a conclusion that MFP believes your TDEE or your NEAT is 2048, which you now say is wrong, but itn't it possible that your calculation and "digging" led to an incorrect conclusion on your part regarding what MFP thinks your NEAT (not your TDEE) is?

It's actually as simple as she described when you have a tracker synced to MFP.
Even easier with Fitbit since they don't send any workouts over.



Even if it's not end of day - MFP Calories Burned is your NEAT + any exercise logged on MFP.
In which case a line item under it states what the exercise calories was.



I think the misuse of the term TDEE in relation to MFP threw everyone - hence her followup.

KrissCanDoThis wrote: »

So was I kind of correct that the number... based on your example.. "2097" is not her maintenance calories, but just mfps projection of how many calories shes burning from normal day to day activity based on her 1lbs per week/lightly active settings?

So if you changed your settings to maintenance your maintenance calorie number would be higher then the number listed "2097"? Cause that would include the couple hundred calories difference to keep your current weight?

And that the calorie adjustment is adding on to the 1lbs per week loss deficit of 500?

No, the number indicates maintenance calories. So it will only vary if you change your activity setting, the weight loss rate doesn't change anything.

KrissCanDoThis wrote: »

So was I kind of correct that the number... based on your example.. "2097" is not her maintenance calories, but just mfps projection of how many calories shes burning from normal day to day activity based on her 1lbs per week/lightly active settings?

So if you changed your settings to maintenance your maintenance calorie number would be higher then the number listed "2097"? Cause that would include the couple hundred calories difference to keep your current weight?

And that the calorie adjustment is adding on to the 1lbs per week loss deficit of 500?

In my example BMR x 1.25 Sedentary = 2097 NEAT estimated.
That's all the figures involved to get to that.
That's a changing value as weight changes.

If my weight had not changed since my last Profile update, then 1 lb weekly with 500 deficit would make base eating goal 2097 - 500 = 1597.

That 1597 is held as it's own figure until the deficit is changed, or the weight changes the NEAT enough for MFP to recalc the base eating goal.

The exercise math whether using tracker or just logging exercise deals with current figures (database entry of current weight to get calories), and that total exercise figure is add/subtracted from a rather static base eating goal.

So as many have commented on the issue, if you have dropped more than 10 lbs of weight, and MFP didn't use the new figure to update base eating goal - your deficit will have shrunk because base goal is higher than it should be.

I've seen someone notice at 20 lbs lost it hadn't updated. Depending on your starting BMR that could be a big chunk of calories no longer in deficit.

The Fitbit is immaterial - except to cause MFP to make that new Adjustment line items with easy to get to figures.

As so many have already mentioned, the most likely explanation is that the OP's MFP goal is based on an older weight with the OP currently weighting less.

Should the number have updated? MFP used to prompt every 10lbs. Whether it still does so... "maybe" is the probable answer.

MFP has been very good at bulking their fair share of worldwide software bugs every late November/early December, successfully maintaining their fair share throughout the year... and forging ahead with the next November bulk!

cmriverside wrote: »

She's talking about 150ish calories, though. I don't think that's the issue, how much weight would she have had to lose to have a 150 calorie error? - I think it's that the two calculators use different methods of calculation (Fitbit vs MFP) and her terminology in the OP i.e. her lack of understanding the terms.

Assuming OP is setup as lightly active, as has been mentioned, you're looking for a BMR change of about 107 using: https://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator in order to account for about 150 Cal.

Seems entirely plausible given OP's age at account setup being 24 and her stating a 30lb loss as her goal at that time.

For myself, today, the numbers would work out to a 23.5lb loss (or rather "gain" since I increased my weight to 176 when I tried out the numbers)

While Fitbit uses TDEE and MFP is using NEAT, what integration does is render the final numbers equal to Fitbit's TDEE estimation.

Both start from the same BMR formula. They just split the day and apply their multipliers in different ways, which is why the calculation only becomes final at midnight.

There might be many, but usually if someone is finding that their calorie goals arent working as expected, the recommendation is to do what you did and make adjustments based on results.

swimmchick87 wrote: »

I have updated my weight and the calorie goal did go down, but only by 20 calories. When I started in January it was 1710 and now it's 1690. I don't weigh/update as often as I used to but I did update about 2 weeks ago and was given the 1690 goal. I also had updated when I started again in January, so no, it wasn't use an old weight. Either way, the weight doesn't matter. The entire point was that they have a number that they think I'm burning each day and they weren't subtracting 500 from it, even though I had my goal set to lose 1 pound per week. Like I said in the OP, one of the first things I did was check the goals and make sure I didn't somehow have something less than 1 pound per week set. Nope, definitely had a goal of 1 pound per week.

Now that I know what my goal should be, I have manually updated my calorie goal to be 1550 per day, but I shouldn't have had to figure that out myself, and I'm not sure it would have been even possible to figure that out had I not had my fitbit synced. And I wonder how many other people have an inaccurate calorie goal that they don't even know about.

The reason why they don't change the base eating goal with every single weight change is because people would be having these drops in calories in 1st week from large water weight drops, and then potentially large water weight increases leading to larger eating goals when that isn't appropriate either.

The original intent of 10 lbs difference before eating goal change really is better to gloss over the noise of water weight changes - and allow some planning of your meals without it changing constantly.

That was all prior to trackers causing your eating goal to change anyway. Now probably no big deal.

Daily eating goal is just not calculated daily from your current weight. Just was never done.

But guess what occurs even if that was to happen.

Your real activity level doesn't exactly nail one of the 4 levels of calculated activity to select from anyway, even with no exercise done.

So you have this static 1550 eating goal - but you are not literally day after day getting a 500 cal deficit anyway from some Lightly-Active level of burning 2050. Some days (no exercise considered) you could easily burn 2200, some days 1900.

So the fact it used to float maybe up to 80-100 calories of missed deficit before the eating goal was adjusted to calc off the current weight - was really not big whoop in the scheme of your average jane/joe is having a whole lot more variance than that from their actual activity level and their selected one.
Even with trackers.

Lietchi wrote: »

I have a potential explanation. You have lost weight since starting, right?
And your calorie goal has stayed the same from then till now?

MFP is supposed to update your calorie goal to fit your weight regularly, but for many it doesn't. So while your calorie expenditure has been going down, because your body is getting smaller, your calorie goal has stayed the same and your deficit has shrunk.

Solution, if this is the source of the problem: go back to your goal set-up and run through it again, updating (confirming) your weight, activity level and desired weight loss rate. That should give you a new, lower calorie goal.

I have this issue and I go through my setting after every few lbs lost to update my calorie goal downwards.

I am so glad I saw this! Just did what you suggested out of curiosity and it lowered by 110 calories per day! I have lost ~30lbs since Jan 1st and my calories have never gone down and I was wondering how much I needed to lose for it to adjust. This makes a lot more sense. Thank you!