Calculating how many calories burned

kaylaiwahashi
kaylaiwahashi Posts: 3 Member
edited December 26 in Health and Weight Loss
Hello. I am trying to lose those last 10 pounds. I have gone from 190 pounds to 127 this year and want to get down to about 115. I am a 25 year old female. I have been using the “Stepz” app to track steps and calories burned. For example, today it shows I walked 7.4 miles, 18115 steps, and burned 725 calories. I downloaded the MyFitnessPal app to help me better track my food intake. It shows 18,102 steps but only 163 calories burned. Both apps have my gender, weight, and height information. Can anyone please provide any insight on the big discrepancy and estimate about how many calories I actually burned today? All of the steps were from walking an average pace at work. Thank you!

Replies

  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,098 Member
    What did you tell MFP your activity level was? If you sync an all-day tracker to MFP, it will only give you credit for calorie burns beyond what's built into your activity level.
  • kaylaiwahashi
    kaylaiwahashi Posts: 3 Member
    Hello. I put lightly active. Should I change it to not very active? On the five days that I work, I average about 17000 steps just from walking around. On the other two days I have off, I actually walk around the lake for a couple hours and get about 18000 steps in. I just want to make sure that I’m not underselling or overselling calories. I have been eating about 1800 calories a day, so with the 17000-18000 steps (and me being 5’4, 127 pounds), about how much weight would I lose in a week? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,098 Member
    Are you only using the Stepz app when you take these long walks, or all day? I don't understand why the Stepz app is saying you only burned 725 calories. Does it only track calories intentional exercise? I think MFP normally assumes if you link an app or device it's providing totally calories burned for the whole day?

  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    kaylaiwahashi wrote: »
    Hello. I put lightly active. Should I change it to not very active? On the five days that I work, I average about 17000 steps just from walking around. On the other two days I have off, I actually walk around the lake for a couple hours and get about 18000 steps in. I just want to make sure that I’m not underselling or overselling calories. I have been eating about 1800 calories a day, so with the 17000-18000 steps (and me being 5’4, 127 pounds), about how much weight would I lose in a week? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

    I am not familiar with this app, but surely it gives you some information on how it calculates your calories burnt?

    MFP works like this: you choose a base activity level. MFP's intention is that you choose this based on your regular daily activity, not including intentional exercise. MFP combines this information with your stated goal (lose, gain, or maintain) to generate a calorie goal that they estimate will help you achieve your goal.

    If you are syncing an activity tracker, MFP will begin generating adjustments when you have moved more than your activity level would have estimated. So if you choose "Active" you will begin seeing adjustments after much more activity than if you chose "Not very active." But the end result is to get you to the exact same place -- the only difference is how many calories you're getting up front as opposed to seeing in adjustments throughout the day.

    Is Stepz a synced activity tracker? I am guessing that is is. If so, your low adjustment could be due to the fact that you are getting more of your calories "up front" at the beginning of the day. If you want to see larger adjustments, you can change your activity level. But the end result should be to get you to the same place.

    At the end of the day, your best results are going to be achieved by monitoring your real life results and making adjustments from there. If logging calories is new to you and you aren't sure how much you were eating before, I would recommend choosing ONE method to calculate calories burnt, going with that, monitoring your results over a few weeks, and see if you are losing faster or slower than expected. That will be a good guide to how accurate your estimations are.
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