Negative Calorie Adjustment

mbhall412
mbhall412 Posts: 1 Member
in Getting Started
I teach Math, and for some reason, this doesn't click in my small brain. Why does the "negative calorie adjustment" subtract from the "exercise" column when they both calculate the number of calories I'm burning through exercise and/or regular daily activity like walking??? Thanks for any help you can give.

Replies

  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,849 Member
    What are you looking at, website or app? Net calories consumed or calories remaining?
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    The negative adjustment isn't tracking what you burned from exercise. It's subtracting calories from your daily goal when you *move less* than MFP would have estimated given your activity level. This is designed to keep you in a deficit even on days when you move less than you usually do.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,260 Member
    It is not an exercise even though it is reported as such.

    It is an accounting adjustment to render MFP's pre selected activity level equal, at midnight, to your connected tracker's estimation of your TDEE since it is assumed that your tracker has more knowledge and is more accurate.

    Often there are negative adjustments early in the day and declining positive adjustments late in the day.

    This is an artefact because MFP apportions your selected activity level equally to the 1440 minutes of the day.

    Your tracker, however, tends to assign less calories when you don't move and more when you move.

    So MFP assigns relatively more calories to times you're inactive or sleeping since it splits it all equally over the 24 hours of the day.

    Your tracker keeps a more "to the minute" tally.

    Thus, when you wake up, MFP says you're a slacker and you get a negative adjustment due to your underperformance while asleep.

    And before you become a couch potato MFP thinks you have a huge positive adjustment because it assumes you will keep moving at your preselected activity level (even sedentary is estimated at 1.25x BMR, whereas a tracker would assign 1.0x BMR to a period with no detection)

    The upshot is... the adjustment is accurate at midnight.

    You can easily compensate mentally once you have a handle as to how it tends to change based on your activity levels

  • AZTeri2016
    AZTeri2016 Posts: 77 Member
    I’ve read the explanation above and I’m still confused. I work out - right now it’s walking primarily or biking. Here’s today for example - Goal 1499 Food 1204 Negative Calorie 299 (I burned 387 on my 60 minute-12 mile bike ride). -4 calories left for the day. I have an Apple Watch. I generally burn at least 300 calories on my walks, and on my longer weekend rides I burn between 800-1500 depending on how far I go. So I don’t get the negative adjustment?
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,260 Member
    edited April 2020
    You're using an apple watch. many people have reported that the direct integration with mfp is buggy. disconnect.

    then connect apple watch to intermediary app.

    @heybales spent a lot of time researching this and found out that an app called "Pacer" works fairly well for this. feel free to use another app if that suits you better.

    Connect the intermediary app to MFP.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    mbhall412 wrote: »
    I teach Math, and for some reason, this doesn't click in my small brain. Why does the "negative calorie adjustment" subtract from the "exercise" column when they both calculate the number of calories I'm burning through exercise and/or regular daily activity like walking??? Thanks for any help you can give.

    To add to janejellyroll comment.

    This can also happen if you log a workout on MFP.
    If that happens, in order to not double count it, MFP removes that calorie burn from the daily burn the tracker sends over. (except in case of Apple that doesn't send a Daily burn over)

    So if there is a workout, it just means that outside of the workout, you didn't reach MFP's already estimated activity level burn.

    That could happen if a really hard or long workout wiped you out, and you were less active rest of the day.
    Or the workout took up a chunk of time you'd normally be more activity anyway.
    It's merely showing the net effect of say a workout adding 300 extra burn to the day, but then you were 100 cal less active in general.
  • DarthKurt
    DarthKurt Posts: 1 Member
    edited May 2020
    I'm also hardly confused about the adjustment feature. I had a week of observation and it totally blew my head out.

    From the documentation, there should be quite simple math on the back, just take my tracker calories projection and subtract MFP calories. But some days I'd seen strange numbers at the end.

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    xuktdleqdv36.png
    iz342qntuezt.png

    Did anybody have the same issues and ask the support?
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,260 Member
    Well... I don't trust google fit numbers and have been happy (enough) with the older fitbit-mfp integrations... so I haven't messed with connecting more things.

    Obviously the numbers mostly make no sense as presented. Only the last two days that you display make sense.

    Could it be that they've corrected an issue?
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    Some days are right for straight math.

    Now, on the days where it says it's not going to take that number in order to not go below the minimum eating goal allowed, yes, that is not simple math.

    Appears your daily expected burn is 2043 and then 2024 - did you change your weight during the week?

    The screwed up math days are where the total is 2043, perhaps the weight change reset something.
    The 2024 on is fine.

    Did you change weight loss goal or rate also on this day?

  • Garelaos
    Garelaos Posts: 1 Member
    Basically it’s pants. It doesn’t work properly. They should can it until it does. MFP doing adjustments that are accurate “at midnight” is as useful as a chocolate teapot. I’ve just walked 15k at a good pace and so far MFP is crediting me the grand total of 31 calories for it. It may roll it all up at midnight but If I’m trying to track meal count and stay within limits as I go it’s useless. It’s trying to be too clever. It was much better before it introduced the feature.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    Garelaos wrote: »
    Basically it’s pants. It doesn’t work properly. They should can it until it does. MFP doing adjustments that are accurate “at midnight” is as useful as a chocolate teapot. I’ve just walked 15k at a good pace and so far MFP is crediting me the grand total of 31 calories for it. It may roll it all up at midnight but If I’m trying to track meal count and stay within limits as I go it’s useless. It’s trying to be too clever. It was much better before it introduced the feature.

    There was a workout logged too, right, from Google Fit?
    How many calories in the workout?

    Those workout calories, and the MFP adjustment - are both credited to your base eating goal.

    If there is no workout - then you have a sync issue - not math issue.
  • OceanAddict
    OceanAddict Posts: 55 Member
    I don't understand it either. With the amount of walking I did today, I normally would get between 300-400 calories credit just for the steps. I have a misfit watch, if that matters. But, instead of an afternoon playing video games I went on a 90 minute bike ride. I tracked the ride with Endomondo and a HR monitor, it estimated 800 calories burned. However, because of that, my calorie adjustment for Misfit steps went negative. This makes no sense to me because a bike ride doesn't trigger any steps on the watch. It's like the app is saying I'm double counting a workout when I'm not. Anyway for now I turned off negative calorie adjustments because I dont trust the math.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    OceanAddict wrote: »
    I don't understand it either. With the amount of walking I did today, I normally would get between 300-400 calories credit just for the steps. I have a misfit watch, if that matters. But, instead of an afternoon playing video games I went on a 90 minute bike ride. I tracked the ride with Endomondo and a HR monitor, it estimated 800 calories burned. However, because of that, my calorie adjustment for Misfit steps went negative. This makes no sense to me because a bike ride doesn't trigger any steps on the watch. It's like the app is saying I'm double counting a workout when I'm not. Anyway for now I turned off negative calorie adjustments because I dont trust the math.

    How exactly would MFP know when the steps and those calories are from?

    Does it know what time and the calories from the bike ride are from?
  • OceanAddict
    OceanAddict Posts: 55 Member
    heybales wrote: »
    OceanAddict wrote: »
    I don't understand it either. With the amount of walking I did today, I normally would get between 300-400 calories credit just for the steps. I have a misfit watch, if that matters. But, instead of an afternoon playing video games I went on a 90 minute bike ride. I tracked the ride with Endomondo and a HR monitor, it estimated 800 calories burned. However, because of that, my calorie adjustment for Misfit steps went negative. This makes no sense to me because a bike ride doesn't trigger any steps on the watch. It's like the app is saying I'm double counting a workout when I'm not. Anyway for now I turned off negative calorie adjustments because I dont trust the math.

    How exactly would MFP know when the steps and those calories are from?

    Does it know what time and the calories from the bike ride are from?

    I mean, fair enough. MFP has no information to be able to judge whether the workout calories and steps actually are double-counting or not. The default assumption that they are double-counting seems undocumented and unconfigurable however, which to me is a user experience flaw. I'd like to be able to mark certain workouts as non-overlapping with my step count.
  • TimC340
    TimC340 Posts: 1 Member
    The negative calorie adjustments are utter rubbish. They are based on an assumed generic level of activity, not an activity level that the user has specified. Thus if you can't do the 10,000 steps a day MFP assumes as a target no matter what other exercise you do, you will be 'negatively corrected'. Until and unless MFP allows the user to specify in detail their planned weekly exercise regime, including expected steps, the assumptions that MFP makes are worthless.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,849 Member
    TimC340 wrote: »
    The negative calorie adjustments are utter rubbish. They are based on an assumed generic level of activity, not an activity level that the user has specified. Thus if you can't do the 10,000 steps a day MFP assumes as a target no matter what other exercise you do, you will be 'negatively corrected'. Until and unless MFP allows the user to specify in detail their planned weekly exercise regime, including expected steps, the assumptions that MFP makes are worthless.

    Sorry, that's just wrong.
    MFP adjusts based on a comparison between the selected activity level and the actual activity level, the 10k steps goal has nothing to do with it. I've had plenty of positive calorie adjustments with fewer than 10k steps, because I was more active than my selected activity level (sedentary).
    And MFP's activity levels have nothing to do with exercise, the selected activity level is meant to reflect non exercise activity. Exercise is meant to be added separately in the diary when it is done.

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