Myfitnesspal & Fitbit Calories?

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Bearded_Slakoth
Bearded_Slakoth Posts: 121 Member
edited April 2023 in Health and Weight Loss
So I already know to do everything on MFP and it will sync to fitbit. But my question is, on Fitbit where you are entering your weight and the calories, what am I supposed to choose with the food plan? (500 Deficit, 750 Deficit etc) am I just choosing what's close to calories to MFP or what?
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  • Rockmama1111
    Rockmama1111 Posts: 262 Member
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    My recommendation (I’ve tried it a couple of ways) is to ignore what Fitbit asks about losing weight. Keep it all in MFP. Do your goals in MFP, log your food in MFP.

    Since it’s synced, the magic between Fitbit and MFP will grant you an appropriate number of extra calories.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,793 Member
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    I agree with the above.

    Off the top: Fitbit Food Plans do not affect the information transmitted through integration magic.

    To your specific question, picking a "food plan" similar to your target MFP deficit should not hurt anything and COULD provide you with some marginal additional information during the day under a certain set of conditions! :wink:

    --The integration magic acts as an adjustment to MFP's pre-selected activity level such as to adjust the total calories spent (TDEE) to be equal between Fitbit and MFP at the end of the day.

    --The two count daily expenditures in a different way during the day. That's where the "different viewpoint"/"marginal additional information" comes in, in terms of seeing how much room for eating you've got left--assuming that's of interest or benefit to you.

    --Fitbit has a food plan setting (I'm going on from memory here) where you can choose to use your "averages" to predict how much you have left to eat.

    --MFP sends to fitbit your logged food during the day at unknown random intervals.

    --If you make changes to MFP after the food sending has taken place, the log of foods sent DOES screw up. And you end up with two or three meals logged and the numbers not making any sense. Or at least that used to be the case while I was still logging on MFP in early 2020.

    --so assuming none of the bad stuff has taken place, your fitbit food plan will be showing you a slightly different view on how much food you have left to eat. Depending on how you're setup on MFP (sedentary vs very active, negative adjustments enabled or not enabled) and depending on whether your days are similar to each other or wildly divergent, this second viewpoint may give you a more updated/accurate view in terms of how many more calories you would be able to eat to end of day.

    --I seldom, if ever, looked at it, as I was generally able to judge my remaining intake based on what MFP was saying and knowing my plans for the day.
  • Bearded_Slakoth
    Bearded_Slakoth Posts: 121 Member
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    Rockmama1111 wrote: »
    My recommendation (I’ve tried it a couple of ways) is to ignore what Fitbit asks about losing weight. Keep it all in MFP. Do your goals in MFP, log your food in MFP.

    Since it’s synced, the magic between Fitbit and MFP will grant you an appropriate number of extra calories.

    Yup, I just do everything in MFP. I just wanted to make sure the calories on the Fitbit food plan was needing to be changed. So what I do was just changed the 500 (1lb a week) to 750 Deficit (1.5 pound a week) so at least the 1.5 matches what I have MFP setting too.
  • Bearded_Slakoth
    Bearded_Slakoth Posts: 121 Member
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    PAV8888 wrote: »
    I agree with the above.

    Off the top: Fitbit Food Plans do not affect the information transmitted through integration magic.

    To your specific question, picking a "food plan" similar to your target MFP deficit should not hurt anything and COULD provide you with some marginal additional information during the day under a certain set of conditions! :wink:

    --The integration magic acts as an adjustment to MFP's pre-selected activity level such as to adjust the total calories spent (TDEE) to be equal between Fitbit and MFP at the end of the day.

    --The two count daily expenditures in a different way during the day. That's where the "different viewpoint"/"marginal additional information" comes in, in terms of seeing how much room for eating you've got left--assuming that's of interest or benefit to you.

    --Fitbit has a food plan setting (I'm going on from memory here) where you can choose to use your "averages" to predict how much you have left to eat.

    --MFP sends to fitbit your logged food during the day at unknown random intervals.

    --If you make changes to MFP after the food sending has taken place, the log of foods sent DOES screw up. And you end up with two or three meals logged and the numbers not making any sense. Or at least that used to be the case while I was still logging on MFP in early 2020.

    --so assuming none of the bad stuff has taken place, your fitbit food plan will be showing you a slightly different view on how much food you have left to eat. Depending on how you're setup on MFP (sedentary vs very active, negative adjustments enabled or not enabled) and depending on whether your days are similar to each other or wildly divergent, this second viewpoint may give you a more updated/accurate view in terms of how many more calories you would be able to eat to end of day.

    --I seldom, if ever, looked at it, as I was generally able to judge my remaining intake based on what MFP was saying and knowing my plans for the day.

    Very helpful. I appreciate it. Yeah, all I did on the Fitbit side was match the "Lose 1.5 lb a week" so both apps say 1.5 lb a week to lose. But I definitely won't log anything in fitbit. I just let it do it's thing like workouts and tracking all my other stuff it does.

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