Activity level and negative calorie adjustment

radosuaf
radosuaf Posts: 10 Member
edited November 2023 in MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions
OK, so I set my data & goals using the creator and after selecting "Sedentary" and 50 minutes workout 3 times a week I got a target of 1 500 kcal. Fine.
I am using Withings Healthmate app that is tracking my steps and set negative calorie adjustments. The results from last days are:
10,167 steps: -673 kcal
11,479 steps: -508 kcal
6,386 steps: -811 kcal
13,746 steps: +241 kcal
9,077 steps: -720 kcal
10,094 steps: -784 kcal

Is there any logic in this and do I have to be over 12,000 steps to not get "penalised" for "low activity"?

Best Answer

  • Jean
    Jean Posts: 873 MFP Staff
    Answer ✓
    We understand the calorie adjustment may be a bit confusing. Hopefully the following will help clear things up a bit!

    Please note your Withings device is not tracking individual exercise calories, it is tracking a complete day burn. Because of this, reaching your steps goal for the day may or may not guarantee a calories adjustment.

    Your Withings must estimate a higher number of calories burned compared to the set daily burn from MyFitnessPal, in order for an adjustment to be earned. If the number from your device is lower than the number from MyFitnessPal, then the adjustment will show as 0, or if you have enabled the negative adjustment option, then it will show as a negative amount earned and then deduct calories from your goal. When you do see a positive number adjustment, that number represents the amount of calories burned above your MFP goal and not the amount of calories burned for you workouts. This update appears in your diary as a Calorie Adjustment. The details of the adjustment's calculation can be viewed online by clicking the "i" on the adjustment line, or within the app by tapping on the adjustment.
    When adding in manual exercises, or syncing single workouts from other app partners, those calories are automatically added to your set daily burn total on your MFP account and nutritional adjustments are immediately given. This can cause confusion when looking at your device adjustment because that number will lower or possibly zero out. This is normal because the number that your device compares its calories to (set daily burn from MFP) has now increased with the addition of new workout data and the distance between the two calories counts will be further apart.

    Only when the Device number is greater than the MyFitnessPal number will you then earn the extra difference between the two as a positive adjustment.

    For the most accurate data sync, we also recommend directly linking partner apps to your account. For example, data syncing from Withings > Strava > MyFitnessPal is not expected to properly sync. You will want to directly link both Withings and Strava to MyFitnessPal if you'd like information from both sources to sync over.

    If you have additional questions on this, we ask that you write into our Support team directly by visiting: https://myfitnesspal.zendesk.com/hc/en-us or sending us an email to support@myfitnesspal.com.

Answers

  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,881 Member
    A few clarifications:
    - at goal set-up, the frequency/duration of your intended exercise is asked, but it doesn't actually influence your calorie goal
    - exercise should be logged in your diary when you do it - when it is logged it will give you extra calories

    It's not clear to me what Withings is sending over: is it purely a step counter, or a fitness tracker that also tracks your exercise?
    Your calorie adjustment a really, really low - with your activity level set at sedentary you really shouldn't be seeing negative adjustments like that with those numbers of steps (sedentary is usually the equivalent of 2000-3000 steps a day, above that people will usually see a positive adjustment). So I'm wondering if Withings is sending over the wrong number (active calories instead of total calories burned for example) to MFP, because it doesn't look right to me.
    Have you checked the source of the calorie adjustment? When you tap on it in the app, you should be taken to a screen that says "Extra calories earned" (might be named differently if the adjustment is negative?) and when you tap on that you'll see a detailed page with 'how we calculate your calorie adjustment'. On that page you'll see which number MFP received from Withings as your total number of calories burned for the day - perhaps that will give an indication of what's wrong.
  • radosuaf
    radosuaf Posts: 10 Member
    OK, so the detailed info for the first line shows:
    Halth Mate info on kcal burned: 2,036
    MFP kcal burned: 2,709
    adjustment kcal: -673

    Front page says:
    Target: 1,500 kcal
    food: -2,131 kcal
    exercise: -218 (I also did weights training that came from Strava for 455 kcal, so -673 + 455 = -218)

    So, according to MFP I ate 849 kcal too many!

    Health Mate says:
    Calories burned: 2,372
    Consumed: 2,129
    According to HM I ate 60 kcal too many... (their system is to eat 1,500 kcal + whatever is burned)

    Target is set more or less the same in both apps.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,881 Member
    Is this a complete day? It's easier to compare numbers for complete days, since incomplete days requires MFP to do extrapolations for the rest of the day.

    And I'm not clear on how your sync is set up: do Strava and Health Mate both sync to MFP? Or does Strava send over data to Health Mate? Multiple sources of data could be causing the issue, I'm not sure (I'm used to syncing only one app, Garmin Connect, which is connected to my fitness tracker).
    The fast that Health Mate gives a different calorie burn in the app, than MFP shows for Health Mate: that shouldn't happen, certainly not for a complete day, with the latest sync just before midnight (for an incomplete day it could be normal if the sync is delayed (most recent number in Health Mate, but MFP's latest sync is from a few hours prior).
  • radosuaf
    radosuaf Posts: 10 Member
    edited June 2022
    Sync was done at 11:59 P.M. for the full day.

    I just disconnected Strava and we'll see what happens (normally the flow used to be HM -> Strava -> MFP).
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