Adjusting Calorie Intake for Activity Level.

goal06082021 wrote: »

If you have your MFP activity level set to "Very Active" (which you should), then your given calorie budget is already accounting for what you do at work, so adding in the calories from the Garmin after a normal day at work is counting them twice. You should only add calorie burn information from the Garmin for purposeful exercise on top of your normal activities. So, for a normal day at work, either ignore the Garmin (and unlink it from MFP, if you have it set up to sync automatically), or set your activity level to Sedentary and let the Garmin sync - that way your calories earned won't be counted twice.

3200 doesn't seem too wild, you're a big guy with an active job. I'd say give yourself a month of eating 3200 cal per day and see what your weight does. You can come in 500 cal under budget on days you don't work, but if you're currently spending all your days off on the couch, consider adding even a little bit of purposeful exercise, like walking or yoga/stretching. Physical jobs like yours are very hard on the body, so taking proactive steps now to protect your back, shoulders, knees, hips will help prevent injuries in the future. Look up "prehab" exercises for those areas.

I don't quite agree with the above.
- If you have your account linked, it doesn't matter what activity level you choose: it will change the inital calorie goal but the adjusted total calorie goal will end up the same in the end, no double counting. Choose sedentary and you'll get a lower base calorie goal but a large adjustement. Choose highly active and you'll get a higher base calorie goal and a lower adjustment. (BTW, it's a good idea to activate negative calorie adjustments, so that if you choose a high activity level and you have a lower activity day, you don't overeat). Exercise will also be logged and be added to the calorie adjustmentif Garmin and MFP are synced and it still won't cause double counting (don't add exercise manually then!).
- 27000-30000 steps and lifting as daily activity: I suspect that MFP's highest activity level won't be enough. For that reason, I think unsyncing Garmin and MFP is a bad idea. Those 1200 extra calories might well be necessary considering the extreme activity level.

Either way, you should choose a method and track your weight for at least 4 weeks. Then compare how much weight you were aiming to lose with how much you lost effectively. If you lost faster, eat more. If you lost slower, eat less.

I agree that your best bet is to synch the Garmin, enable negative adjustments, and run a one-month trial to see if it's accurate for you. (In case there are other readers, a premenopausal woman would want to go for a full cycle, compare body weight at the same relative point in two different cycles - but that doesn't apply in your case, of course.)

It's correct that synching Garmin is *not* double counting. What MFP is trying to do is reconcile your calorie expenditure as seen by your Garmin (a more personalized all-day estimate including exercise and all) with MFP's estimate based on the few settings in your MFP profile. Activity level, which is very important in that calculation, should be at the highest level for you. In your case, even that activity level setting is likely too low - will produce an estimate on the low side. Just your daily step numbers, IMU, are above the typical minimum to qualify for the highest activity level, let alone the lifting and carrying effort add-on.

If you enable negative adjustments - as I think you should - MFP will reconcile in both directions: Give you more calories when you're more active than its setting/estimate, take away calories if you're less active than that setting suggests. If you disable negative adjustments, it will only do upward adjustments, it won't take away calories if you're less active than expected.

FWIW, I *don't* synch my Garmin. Why? Its all-day calorie estimates are materially (dramatically) too *low* for me. This is not a flaw in the device (which works very well for others), I'm just statistically non-average for some unknown reason(s). Most people are close to the averages drawn from research, but it's possible to be a little high or low, or (in quite rare cases) quite a lot high or low. (FWIW, MFP also estimates about the same amount low for me, with accurate activity level settings. It's me that's weird, not MFP or Garmin.)

Trust me: Having done it by accident at first, I'm very sure you don't want to UNDERestimate your calorie needs, even though you do want to lose some weight (especially when it's not a huge amount of weight, i.e., you have less in the fat storage "bank account" to draw on). I felt great for a while, then bam, suddenly weak and fatigued. It took several weeks to recover. You don't need anything like that, with your busy, challenging life.

Losing weight too slowly can be frustrating. Losing weight too fast increases health risks (and at an extreme, consequences can be much worse than fatigue/weakness).

For some reason, a lot of people worry about trackers OVERestimating their calorie needs, so they cut more than the tracker would suggest is appropriate based on needs. (That's a way, at an extreme, to down-regulate spontaneous movement, and reduce calorie expenditure, BTW: Counter-productive.) Very few people worry about the tracker UNDERestimating needs, and potentially increasing health risks. In theory and practice, error in either direction is possible, but they tend to be tolerably close for a majority of people, and *far* off for only a relative minority.

So, repeating my advice: Synch the Garmin, enable negative adjustments, make sure you're logging food accurately (it's a skill that requires learning and development). In around a month, compare expected weight loss to results, and adjust intake as needed to dial in a sensibly moderate loss rate.

Best wishes!

Or another option - you know about where the daily calorie burn is on work days - probably enough to pre-plan your food if desired.

Set to sedentary - you will get massive adjustments, which will end up at the same calorie level as starting high and not adding many.

Here's why I suggest that, and this depends if that job is early in day, and you go to bed early.
If you work late and are up until midnight and finish off a snack around then, this doesn't matter.

But if you get home, have dinner according to a recent sync and calories left to eat, or have a dessert or snack to finish off to meet the goal - and this all happens a tad early, say by 7 pm or 8 pm, and then you hit the couch and then bed - there will be 4-5 more hours from that last sync, where MFP is going to estimate the rest of the day at that huge activity level of BMR x 1.75.

But the next morning, Fitbit on first sync will inform MFP your rate of burn was actually BMR since no steps for that prior time.

From your figures - that will be a significant difference.
If you hit what MFP said your eating goal should be by 7 or 8 pm - you'd discover the next morning you were actually over 630 to 790 calories.

That is wiping out a significant portion of a deficit.

Now - you could learn what that correction will be from experience, and make sure to leave that much in the green the night before. Upon looking the next morning, you'll find you met your goal pretty close.

Dittos on Neg cal adjustment working fine now, especially needed if you do the big activity level option. Still useful even if you select sedentary.