Calories in and Out - where do I find this?

nancy_latham wrote: »

testing out switching from fitbit to apple watch. With apple I'm syncing to myfitnesspal. in fitbit it was very easy to see my total calories expended and consumed and see the deficit. I get the theories behind exercising more needs more calories but adding them into the daily total goal cancels out the deficit and if you want to lose weight you need to burn more calories to consume. The previous formula that worked in the other app really well was it pulled the calories burned that day through movement (as it varies day to day) and the calories / food logged and showed you the difference So if you wanted to lose weight your goal is the daily deficit that is calculated for you. e.g., if we eat all the calories we burn with no deficit there will be no weight loss.

The bolded is not what MFP is doing.

If you have a properly-implemented tracker synced to MFP and it adds calories, it's reconciling what MFP expected you to burn with what the tracker estimates you actually did burn, from all sources of burn: Just being alive, daily life movement like job and home chores, exercise.

It will keep the calorie deficit you asked for in your profile when you said how many pounds/kg you want to lose per week. It does not wipe out your calorie deficit, it keeps it. MFP only adds calories when it you move more (per the tracker) than MFP originally was expecting when it gave you your base calorie goal.

Example: You say you want to lose a pound a week. MFP tells you to eat 1500 calories daily. That means MFP expects you to burn 2000 calories, and has given you an estimated 500 calorie daily deficit to generate that loss. One day you move more than MFP expected, could be exercise or extra daily life stuff the tracker saw, doesn't matter which.

Let's say it was 350 calories more than MFP expected, maybe 200 of them exercise and 150 because you cleaned out the garage and burned more calories than usual that way. That means that that day you burned 2350 calories rather than 2000, i.e., your original normal 2000 plus the extra 350. MFP will update your calorie goal that day to 1850 (1500 plus 350), which keeps your 500 calorie deficit (2350 - 1850 = 500).

Rumor has it that Apple didn't properly implement its tracking interface to MFP, so the Apple sync may not work right in all circumstances.

nancy_latham wrote: »

thanks for your thoughtful response I will look into this more. I'm not sure if I should turn on or off the negative calorie adjustments? I think I should be enabling it....

I'd enable negative adjustments, if it were me. Enabling negative adjustments lets MFP decrease our calorie goal if the fitness tracker says we moved LESS than MFP predicted based on the activity level setting in our profile. Some people (who sync a tracker) like to set their activity level very low (like sedentary/not very active) so that they're much more likely to get positive adjustments than negative adjustments.

In general, I'd suggest people set their MFP activity level realistically, but if a tracker is synced and it's proven reasonably accurate for that person (over a few weeks), then I don't see the harm in setting activity level lower. (There can be harm setting activity level too low if no activity tracker in the picture.)