Are workout calories being double counted in MFP?

If you have an Apple Watch, you can enable Apple Watch calorie adjustment. It will offset the double credit. This is how my exercise log
Looks today, including the negative adjustment:



It can be something of a shock to have a large negative adjustment, but I find it makes my overall numbers a lot more accurate.

If you touch that line, it will take you to a screen with links that explain further and that also gives instructions how to turn the adjustment on.



The double count seems to hit those who are active or very active harder. I’m set at very active.

You should be fine. That’s how I do it.

Someone here has a sort of chart of what the different classes are. @AnnPT77 or @kshama2001 do you know who?

But best guide, if after a month of experience (to allow for monthly cycle, beginners pangs etc) you haven’t lost, you’ve found your maintenance level and can cut calories from there. If you’ve put on weight, reevaluate and come here for help.

Remember, if any of the exercise is new to you and you’re experiencing sore muscles, you can have temporary water weight of many pounds while your body heals. I just got back from a trip and just the two weeks away from the gym gave me a mild case of DOMS. (Gotta love thighs. 🔥) cabin pressure from an international flight + DOMS= weight. I’m just now starting to release some of the extra water, and I’ve been at this for several years. It helps to know this in advance. I didn’t, at first.

There’s almost always an explanation for the daily ups and downs. Some you can help, some, well 🤷🏻‍♀️

I don't think there's an official chart. It's going to vary based on all the profile variables we input, right?

Some people have posted steps-equivalents for all the activity levels, but they're approximate, and with the tracker sync, all movement counts, not just steps.

I have a suggestion, and a comment:

Suggestion: If you want to know how MFP would calculate your calorie needs at different activity levels, set your profile to each of the activity levels, and check. Then set it back to the activity level you prefer. Keep the rate of weight loss in the profile constant, of course. Then you'll know the answer, in a personalized way. It's easy.

Comment: My advice would be not to over-obsess about this whole issue. Pick a setting that seems rational, sync your tracker, enable negative adjustments, then follow the recommended calorie intake closely for 4-6 weeks. You're looking to figure out your average weekly weight loss over a long time period, because it won't be linear/even. (If you have menstrual cycles, go long enough to compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles, because hormonal water weight can be that weird.) If the first week or two look wildly different from what follows, ignore those week(s), and go for another week or two.

How closely to follow? Maybe +/- 50 calories, averaged over a few days to a week. Don't get anxious and switch things up quickly, even if you seem to be losing "too slowly". (The only time I'd suggest doing that is if you seem to be losing very quickly after a couple of weeks, and also start feeling fatigued or weak for otherwise unexplained reasons. In that case, eat more, and maybe reset the clock.)

The aim here is to get a personalized, experience-based estimate of your calorie needs. With that, you're firmly in the driver's seat going forward.

MFP, other calorie calculators, and even fitness trackers just give you estimates, essentially the statistical average calorie need for people similar to you with respect to the small amount of data they know about you. For most people, they'll be close. For a few, they'll be meaningfully off, high or low. For a very rare few, they'll be surprisingly far off. Your personal situation is an ultra-useful insight IMO.

Once you get through that trial period, adjust your calorie goal if necessary. (Even de-sync your tracker if necessary, but you probably won't need to do that.) Use the assumption that 500 calories a day is a pound a week, and apply arithmetic for fractional pounds.

If you get twitchy and adjust before there's enough data to average, you can still do the exercise, but it's more arithmetic. You would need to add up the total calorie intake for the whole time period, then compare that against the weight change for the whole time period, and divide by the number of days to get daily averages. Even then, the variation introduces uncertainty.

I may be over-strong on this "run the experiment" thing, but I think it's a useful exercise for anyone. If you're statistically unusual, calorie counting will be much more confusing. Taking this time is an investment in long-run success, to me.

Reason I may be over-strong: I'm one of the very rare weirdos. Both MFP and my very good brand/model fitness tracker - two different ones now that are close for others - are off by 25-30% in estimating my calorie needs, as compared with nearly 9 years now of pretty careful calorie counting experience. That's quite unusual, but possible. That's around 500 or so calories a day!

If you think I may be miscounting, maybe overlooking things systematically, I'm pretty sure that's not true. I need more calories than those estimates. I weigh nearly all foods when at home, and I don't round up or add a little extra food weight "just in case". I've gotten a bit sloppy in year 8 of maintenance in various ways, but through loss and early months of maintenance, I logged meticulously like it was religion.

It probably goes without saying, but I don't sync my tracker. That would only make a giant arithmetic mess for me. I do use the tracker for some exercise estimates, when I don't have a better alternative, and figure those are close enough. I set my calorie goal manually.

Some people will tell you that if the results suggest a need for goal adjustment, it should be adjusted via exercise calories (percent to eat back). For the overwhelming majority of people, I don't think that makes sense.

For most of us (maybe other than folks like @springlering62, who is a genuine amazing woman-beast ), exercise is a small fraction of our total calorie expenditure. BMR (basal metabolic rate) and daily life calories (job, home chores, etc.) are much bigger numbers. There are good reasons why they are likely to be a source of variation between individuals.

I say it makes more sense to adjust base calorie goal if there's a material need to adjust. I've had periods of several weeks where I couldn't work out at all (post-surgery, for example), and my weight has behaved as expected using my adjusted base calories.

Best wishes!