Macros dont match my calorie intake

[simong86]

Hi Guys, hopefully someone here can answer my question. So basically my calorie intake does not match my macros.I've listed them below to make it easier to understand.

Protein: 154.1g

Fat: 34.5g

Carbs: 126.8g

which is equal to 1434.1 Kcal (1g Pro/Carbs= 4Kcal, 1g Fat=9Kcal)

The problem is that under my daily total it says i have consumed 1724 Kcal? Thats 290 extra, which over the course of a week/ month can make a big difference. The strange thing is if i add the subtotal of calories for each meal it does equal 1724? I only recently noticed this and after going back over a few days worth of logs i discovered this happens everyday.                    

[BarrieF]

Have you checked if you have any unrecognized calories? Unfortunately, they only show up on the phone app, not on the dashboard. My husband has a discrepancy every day of at least 169 calories due to a glass of red wine with dinner. Somehow in determining calories, the calories from the alcohol aren't being recognized which messes with his macro numbers every day. There are a couple more homemade type foods we have as custom foods that have a few unrecognized calories but nothing like you're experiencing. Hopefully someone else has experienced this and has a definite answer for you.

[simong86]

Thanks BarrieF. I usually have around 250-300 unrecognised calories per day. I don't really understand what they are though as everything I log has all the info stored.

[MrMarv · Accepted solution]

@simong86 -

@BarrieF is correct as it pertains to both alcoholic beverages and custom foods.

First, the alcoholic beverages:

A 12 ounce beer will commonly be rated at 154 calories ("Lite" beers somewhat less). Which at first seems strange as it will have no fat, maybe 2 mg of protein and 13 grams of carbs. The protein and carbs account for 60 calories. But where do the other 94 calories come from?

Ethanol or ethanol alcohol - have 7 calories per gram - so that beer above has about 13 grams of alcohol.

My nightly glass of Blackstone Merlot at dinner is rated at 122 calories - but only 16 of those calories are accounted for my the 4 grams of carbs. The other 118 are in the alcohol.

And, by the way, the ethanol calories get burned before everything else because the body cannot store them.

Now the custom foods:

Due to a viral attack on my heart last year, we are watching my sodium intake. And while we were watching for the sodium, we have found that the fat/carb/protein numbers on the individual nutritional labels on food don't always "add up", sort of like the beer above. Not so outrageous, but there is still some differences. And Fitbit looks at the fat/carb/protein numbers and does the math. If those numbers don't match the total calorie number then the difference is called "unrecognized calories", and can be seen in the app's food page.

 But on the Web food log page the macro totals don't add up to the calorie total - it's off by 142, pretty close to the 138 unrecognized calories on the app - probably a small rounding error.

I know this was a long post, but I believe it was the only way to explain the differences.

Welcome to the boards.

[simong86]

@MrMarv Thanks for the explanation. So these uncategorized calories are added to the daily calorie expenditure? Or should I add them in myself? 

2920-2198 =722. Im currently on a 500Kcal deficit so am I ok or should I subtract 267 from 722? (722-267=455) does this mean im only at a deficit of 455 and not 500? Thanks

[MrMarv]

@simong86 -

I am 99% sure that your calorie total is 100% correct - it is just that for the macro percentages the app is ignoring 267 calories that it cannot figure out where they came from. They total up the calories for total Fat, total Carbs and total Protein and work out the percentages for them. If that total is different from the total off each food calorie entry, then the difference is "unrecognized calories".

For instance, if the Weetos in your image is the image you posted is one-half serving of the Weetos Original, then from their web site:

Using their numbers for Carbs, Fat and Protein, I come up with (4.9 * 9) + (75 * 4) + (8.4 * 4) = 377.7 calories, but the label says 390. That is 6 of your unrecognized calories right there (12.3 / 2). Six calories that Fitbit cannot figure out where they came from and lets you know they were left out of the macronutrient calculation.

And if you mostly use the numbers provided by Fitbit for nutritional values, they, just like myFitnessPal and fatsecret do not always get it right. In fact, they all are wrong about at least one value a large amount of the time. And as I showed above, even the foods manufacturers, themselves, mess up.

This rounding of numbers, misstating of calories, etc. is why once my wife and I nearly always book a food and shortly thereafter customize the food and correct the numbers. A nice side benefit of that is that when a food is customized, it is always available for selection using the Fitbit app.

Although, as I mentioned in a previous post, I can't wish away the unrecognized calories in my nightly glass of wine, or the occasional beer.

I hope this helped.

[AlvaroFitbit]

@simong86 @BarrieF Welcome to the Fitbit Community! It's great to have you here! @simong86 it seems that @BarrieF and @MrMarv have given a great explanation about these calories not matching your logged food. I am really happy as I was also able to learn from these knowledgeable members who learned due to their personal situations. Thank you both for sharing your knowledge and taking the time to respond in the community.

I'll be around!