Adjusted calories or no??

Options
2»

Replies

  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
    Options
    SharpWellbeing wrote: »
    sijomial wrote: »
    SharpWellbeing wrote: »
    sijomial wrote: »
    It would appear that a certain person thinks I should ignore the roughly 170,000 very accurately estimated calories I've burned in the last 12 months of cycling as per my power meter and Garmin and "play around" instead starting from zero.

    Facepalm!

    OP - if you want a same every day goal then use a TDEE calculator (which includes a rough average estimate of your exercise) set that as your goal and turn off exercise adjustments. Or use MyFitnessPal as designed to give a daily goal that varies in line with your exercise. For most it's personal preference.
    Both methods work, both methods will give you a reasonable start point, both methods are sustainable both during weight loss and at maintenance.
    If your exercise regime is very varied or has long duration exercise that needs fuelling on the day then the MFP varied goal may be more suitable.

    Bold part is exactly the point I made.

    Could easily go round in circles on this so I'll end it here. But the evidence is solid to support the inaccuracy of garmin, fitbit, jawbone and others.

    And the accuracy of a power meter for cycling calorie expenditure is about +/- 2%.

    Should I start adjusting from 98 to 102% of reality or from zero?
    Which end of the scale is a more than reasonable start point and which would be frankly dim-witted?

    Maybe also think about whether it's best for the average dieter to maybe lose a little slower than anticipated or faster than anticipated.

    "+/-2%" - Wow, really? The research has had to have changed dramatically for that to be the case, any link to a paper on pubmed or the like? I'd genuinely be interested to read this.

    The average dieter just needs to work out what calories they need with the lifestyle they need and then crack on and take it from there. So many people fail because they allow MFP to track exercise calories such as walking.
    The skill of estimating is to start from reasonable.

    The point I'm making is that adjusting from zero would only make even any sense if someone's estimate was more than double reality.
    Today's ride burned an accurate 860 net cals. MFP's extremely vague (and a very poor choice of all the alternatives freely available) estimate would be 1,295 - still a lot closer than zero.
    When I used either Strava or Garmin without a PM their estimates were entirely reasonable, from experience within 10 - 20%, mostly over, some clearly under but over time perfectly good enough for purpose. Again far easier to make small adjustments than big adjustments.

    I would agree that using MFP for walking estimates is not a good choice but there's no compulsion to use MFP's exercise database which is mostly sourced from the Compendium of Physical Activity, more for convenience than accuracy. The issues with the database do not invalidate the method.
  • Betty
    Betty Posts: 8,817 MFP Staff
    Options
    Hi Posters,

    Please keep our guidelines in mind when posting. If you can't contribute politely please move on. If you want to debate please do so in the Debate category and keep the current thread on topic.

    Best,
    Betty
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,195 Member
    edited November 2020
    Options
    oct232010 wrote: »
    Ann, may I ask how ypu read sailrabbit... lol do I take the final average of the bmr or the tdee??

    If you're following your tracker synched with MFP (negative adjustments enabled as that nice knowledgeable heybales suggests), just do that for a month or two. (If you're a premenopausal woman, compare bodyweights at the same relative point in two or more different menstrual cycles, to figure your average weekly loss rate.)

    Then adjust if necessary based on experience.

    If a person uses Sailrabbit to estimate, rather than a tracker, then what numbers to use would differ depending on what you're trying to do.

    Personally, I'd only use a TDEE calculator to estimate a TDEE (not to estimate pre-exercise NEAT), because the multipliers can differ with the different assumptions (pre- vs. post-exercise assumption).

    BMR estimates, IMO, are kind of pointless for the average person. It's the *estimate* of how much we'd burn in a coma, and we're not in a coma if we're posting here. 🤷‍♀️

    There are sports lab tests you can get (for $$$) to get a closer measurement/estimate of BMR. If someone's experiential results are far off the calculators' estimates, it might be fun to know a more accurate BMR and experiment with the standard activity multipliers, I suppose.

    Other than that, in a practical sense, I'm not sure why a BMR estimate is useful. Some people say you shouldn't eat below BMR consistently ever, but I haven't really seen convincing evidence that's true. (Not saying it isn't true, not saying there is no such evidence. Just I haven't seen it.)
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    Options
    @AnnPT77 - if you had not commented on the calc's I'd have forgotten to look, most are just so wrong I've stopped usually.

    I do like DR went for separation of daily and exercise - good attempt, and including Katch BMR if you have BF%.
    Not sure about recommending that max deficit based on a non-study though.

    But they seem to have taken the Harris TDEE study level descriptions and just applied them to daily life.
    And with strange descriptions there too.
    So if I did stairs all day as job that is only Lightly-Active? I'd dare say it would be more than that.
    They just knocked 10 and then 15% off the normal TDEE calc levels - 1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8. Which I've seen another site do.

    And workouts while strange descriptions - still have no aspect of time.
    So my Difficult workouts of 3 x weekly @ 15 min is given the same weight as 6 x weekly @ 1.5 hrs?
    Workouts just add back the 10 & then 15% to those TDEE levels - but strangely it makes the Sedentary life level become all the other levels you'd normally get.

    Still a lot lacking.

    At least their pre-amble description has some true points in it. And unlike some I didn't catch using the terms BMR and TDEE incorrectly.
  • Spammyamfa
    Spammyamfa Posts: 14 Member
    Options
    oct232010 wrote: »
    I use a Garmin watch to track my training. Started this past week training for a half marathon. Also walking and biking. Using watch to track.

    Hi, I have just this week bought my first Garmin. I am trying to stop the adjusted calories appearing in connect. On MFP I have tried both tick in the box and also no tick. In MFP it doesn't add my exercise calories in which is what I want but Garmin is still adding them. Do you know how to turn this off?
    Thanks in advance
  • I_AM_ISRAEL
    I_AM_ISRAEL Posts: 160 Member
    Options
    Damn people, stop complicating things with your mini essays.
    The answer is NO!
    Don’t eat what you “burned from exercise”. That’s just an excuse to eat more than you should.
    Set a caloric goal, and eat only that amount of calories for the week. *kitten* where you are, losing weight, good, keep it that way.
    Maintaining weight but getting stronger? Good maintain for a few more weeks.
    It is a JOURNEY, not a sprint
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    Options
    Spammyamfa wrote: »
    oct232010 wrote: »
    I use a Garmin watch to track my training. Started this past week training for a half marathon. Also walking and biking. Using watch to track.

    Hi, I have just this week bought my first Garmin. I am trying to stop the adjusted calories appearing in connect. On MFP I have tried both tick in the box and also no tick. In MFP it doesn't add my exercise calories in which is what I want but Garmin is still adding them. Do you know how to turn this off?
    Thanks in advance

    You'll need to explain a tad better.

    Adjusted calories in Connect?
    Do you mean the line in your status that says "Adjusted Goal" (online view, device may use different term)?

    With several trackers - when you link them to MFP - the Adjustment in MFP is merely the difference between what you told MFP you thought you'd burn merely from daily life no exercise - and then what the tracker tells MFP you burned with daily life and exercise.

    All estimates of course.
    MFP estimate is based on your best guess of 4 levels of daily life with no exercise.
    Garmin estimate is based on being on you with 100's to 1000 levels, and may include good or bad estimates of exercise calorie burn.

    Do you not see something similar here, perhaps a positive adjustment though?
    23vs4fywa0ww.png

Categories