Exercise adjustment

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so1066
so1066 Posts: 3 Member
edited November 2021 in Getting Started
Hi - I’m starting My Fitness Pal and I’m wondering if there is a way to cut back on the exercise adjustment. I like to be able to use some of my calories burned but I feel My Fitness Pal is giving too many allowable calories?

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  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    Is this coming from you manually selecting an exercise from the database?
    (If so you can over-write the calorie suggestion if you have a better estimate.)

    Or is this an adjustment coming from a linked device such as a fitness tracker?

  • swimmchick87
    swimmchick87 Posts: 458 Member
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    You can just eat back however many of the calories you want. You don't have to eat them all just because they're listed there. I know my fitbit overestimates so I don't eat all of the extra calories I'm given from that. In a typical day it will give me 200-350 extra and I use it more as a cushion if I go a little bit over; I try to keep any "extra" calories to 100 or less. The recommendation I often see here is to eat half of them at first and see how it's impacting your weight loss to see if that's accurate.
  • so1066
    so1066 Posts: 3 Member
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    Thanks - that’s what I’m thinking … I just prefer not seeing those “extra available calories” 😉 but I guess it’s just a matter of conditioning oneself.
  • so1066
    so1066 Posts: 3 Member
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    It’s coming from a linked device (Fitbit)
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,130 Member
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    so1066 wrote: »
    It’s coming from a linked device (Fitbit)
    so1066 wrote: »
    It’s coming from a linked device (Fitbit)

    The synched estimates from a good fitness tracker, that plays nicely with MFP (as Fitbit seems to do), can be pretty close for a fair number of people. Keep in mind that for most set-ups, the calorie adjustment isn't just for your exercise, it's the difference between what MFP expects based on your activity level setting, and what the tracker actually sees as your total calorie burn from activities that include daily life stuff (job, chores, etc.) as well as formal exercise.

    If you want to ignore some of those calories but have tidy totals - which I would *not* suggest you let give you an extremely aggressive loss rate! - you could consider creating a private custom food called something like "uneaten exercise calories" and recording that for however many calories you decided to not-eat. That will throw off some of the other totals you might like to have available for analysis later, though, like the difference between gross & net calorie intake.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    so1066 wrote: »
    It’s coming from a linked device (Fitbit)

    Ah, that changes everything - so it's not MFP giving you too many exercise calories.

    Firstly it's not MFP and secondly it's not just purposeful exercise that is coming across as an adjustment from your Fitbit. Maybe the number appears too high to you because it's all your daily movement compared to predictions and not just exercise?

    You are going to have to give your MFP/Fitbit combination a fair trial (that's weeks, not days) so see how accurately it works out for you in terms of results. Also bear in mind you will also be trialling your food logging accuracy at the same time. If your Fitbit number is "perfect" and your food logging is significantly off your results will diverge from expectations too.

    Whether you start that experiment from eating to the Fitbit goal or some point below that goal is your choice. I've no idea what your dieting situation and needs are but they will influence your start point. But I wouldn't start from an assumption your numbers are too high, I'd just regard it as an unknown at this point.
  • I2k4
    I2k4 Posts: 179 Member
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    May not apply, but I initially set the Activity Level in Goals to include anticipated exercise, then logged sessions - essentially super-adding them. Defining basic Activity Level as Not Very took down target calories - I also had to use the Create an Exercise module in Cardio to reflect routines from other sources.

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