Question from a newbie about daily steps...

charleabray6872
charleabray6872 Posts: 4 Member
edited October 2022 in Getting Started

I have a fitbit esque watch that is pretty accurate, given to me as a gift by my grandparents who have had it collecting dust for 5 years.


The issue is that it's not a recognised app on MFP and so can not be linked.

How do daily steps work on MFP does it go towards your calories for that day? If they don't then I guess my following question doesnt matter. But if it does

Am I right in believing I'd have to use the distance walked today and manually input it as a 'workout' in order to have my steps be counted

Replies

  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,984 Member
    MFP wants you to log purposeful exercise. Thus the steps you walk during your day to day work is not part of that. Those steps go into your activity level: sedentary, moderately active, etc. Everything that is purposeful exercise should theoretically be logged separately. Thus if you have a device that links to MPF theoretically it should take your activity level into account and reserve the steps that are part of that for this. Say you've chosen sedentary and walk 10000 steps. I think sedentary is... 3000 steps or so? Thus you get extra calories to eat for 7000 steps. Mind you, the calories of walking are not mightily high, depending on terrain and weight. But if you walk a substantial distance every day outside your work then I'd log it.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,598 Member
    Yirara is right (as usual). If your steps are high from daily life, use your MFP activity level to reflect that.

    Yes, if your tracker doesn't synch to MFP, you'd have to manually enter any intentional-exercise walking as a workout.

    If you do walk as intentional exercise, this is a good source for calorie estimates for those kind of walks:

    https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs

    Set the "Energy" value to "Net" to get the estimate. Log that estimate in MFP's exercise diary.

    Pick your best guess at MFP activity level, and a standard way you'll log and eat back exercise calories. Follow that method for 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual cycle if that applies to you, to compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles). Then, use your average weight change per week over that whole period to adjust your calorie intake.

    Loosely speaking, even with trackers that synch to MFP, the steps don't in themselves represent a calorie adjustment. Rather, the calorie adjustment is a reconciliation between what MFP expects a person to burn in a day based on activity level, and what the tracker estimates the person burned in total that day from the aspects of activity that it can measure (which includes things besides steps, in most cases).
  • charleabray6872
    charleabray6872 Posts: 4 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Yirara is right (as usual). If your steps are high from daily life, use your MFP activity level to reflect that.

    Yes, if your tracker doesn't synch to MFP, you'd have to manually enter any intentional-exercise walking as a workout.

    If you do walk as intentional exercise, this is a good source for calorie estimates for those kind of walks:

    https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs

    Set the "Energy" value to "Net" to get the estimate. Log that estimate in MFP's exercise diary.

    Pick your best guess at MFP activity level, and a standard way you'll log and eat back exercise calories. Follow that method for 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual cycle if that applies to you, to compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles). Then, use your average weight change per week over that whole period to adjust your calorie intake.

    Loosely speaking, even with trackers that synch to MFP, the steps don't in themselves represent a calorie adjustment. Rather, the calorie adjustment is a reconciliation between what MFP expects a person to burn in a day based on activity level, and what the tracker estimates the person burned in total that day from the aspects of activity that it can measure (which includes things besides steps, in most cases).

    Thank you, I best go check what activity level I am and go from there in terms of step count and stuff

    Cause I use my step count to try reach 500 miles in 8 month, and I wont lie since starting that challenge I tend to choose to do stuff that involves more walking cause I know every little bit helps lol. Towards the challenge and loosing weight...

    But i digress, thanks again for the heads up
  • charleabray6872
    charleabray6872 Posts: 4 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Yirara is right (as usual). If your steps are high from daily life, use your MFP activity level to reflect that.

    Yes, if your tracker doesn't synch to MFP, you'd have to manually enter any intentional-exercise walking as a workout.

    If you do walk as intentional exercise, this is a good source for calorie estimates for those kind of walks:

    https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs

    Set the "Energy" value to "Net" to get the estimate. Log that estimate in MFP's exercise diary.

    Pick your best guess at MFP activity level, and a standard way you'll log and eat back exercise calories. Follow that method for 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual cycle if that applies to you, to compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles). Then, use your average weight change per week over that whole period to adjust your calorie intake.

    Loosely speaking, even with trackers that synch to MFP, the steps don't in themselves represent a calorie adjustment. Rather, the calorie adjustment is a reconciliation between what MFP expects a person to burn in a day based on activity level, and what the tracker estimates the person burned in total that day from the aspects of activity that it can measure (which includes things besides steps, in most cases).



    Ooh this is so enlightening. Thank you to you both for the advice and heads up etc. It's really useful esp the whole give it 4-6 weeks thing and readjust, i knew about giving it some time to see somewhat significant progress but not about then altering it.

    Thanks !
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,984 Member
    And if you only have a step counter and can't measure distances but you want to know what distance you walk:
    Try to find something that has a known distance. Can be as short as 50m. Hmm.. a 100m race track might also be an option! And walk this distance a few times at various speeds that you usually walk at and count the steps over that distance. If you walk 153 steps then your step size is 0.65m (100m/153 steps = 0.65). Ehm.. yeah, I'm metric. But anyway. If your step counter counts 10000 steps on a walk, then you've walked approximately 10000*0.65 = 6500m or 6.5km.

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