Fitbit calories vs. MyFitnessPal calories

[anderhammer]

I am trying to lose weight. I enter only my food into MFP and let Fitbit take care of the activities. My question is which app do I follow the calorie suggestions of? They are significantly different in how many calories I should eat.

[HelenaFitbit · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the forums @anderhammer! I'm also a MyFitnessPal user and I'll be glad to help on this. 

I have seen this situation happen whenever both accounts don't have the same caloric budget to work with; so I recommend to disable Fitbit's Food Plan and add your MFP caloric budget as a main calorie goal.

I'll show you how to do it from my profile information. 

First, you'll need to go to your Food log page and click on the arrows on Food Plan until you see the option "Edit Plan".

After you've done this, click on "Set a new Goal" 

Add your starting weight and your desired weight and click next.

Instead of choosing the food plan options provided by Fitbit, click on "Set my own Calorie Target".

Now on MyFitnessPal, click on Goals and (unless you have an specific nutrition goal) click on "View Guided Setup"

Now on your Diet profile, add all the information required.

Now, you will get a Net calorie target for the day. Please bear in mind that mine is low because of my settings, but yours will be different. 

Now, go back to your Fitbit Screen and add the Net Calorie target you were given for the day and click on Done. 

Now you're set! The food you log in from MFP will automatically edit your Fitbit caloric values for the day and it will reflect on your MFP calorie budget for the day. 

A couple things to consider about this: 

1. The accuracy of your Fitbit Log will depend on the accuracy of your MFP food logs.
2. All exercises and non-step based activities must be logged through Fitbit, otherwise MFP will count them as double. 

 Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions

[DavidQ1970]

Helena,

Thanks for the steps in setting this up to reflect the caloric info I get from MFP.  I tried it and it worked perfectly on the Fitbit website but then when I logged into my app (Android), the dashboard there tells me to start a Food Plan and I can't find a customized intensity level to enter my calories there.  It just shows the standard ones (easier, medium, kinda hard, harder).  Any way to get the custom one from the website match up with my app?

David

[RobertoME]

Hello @DavidQ1970, welcome aboard to our community and glad to hear the steps from my friend  @HelenaFitbit help you out to set up your MFP account. I bet since it been a while you were able to figured out this, but note that the food plan you have created in your online Dashboard, wont be reflect the same configuration on your mobile app. This does not mean you don't have a food plan, the only thing since is a custom goal, it wont be tracked by your mobile app as it will do with any of the default food plans that you already know.

See you around folks and happy stepping.

[Konfusius]

Necromancing this thread as I am still unsure about this - using MFP and fitbit (Charge 2), I calculated, as suggested by @HelenaFitbit my "calorie goal" with the fitbit food plan, giving me a claorie goal that is roughly 100kcal higher then my calculated BMR.

If I now enter this claorie goal into MFP, am I correct in understand that fitbit will sync my activities (walking, jump rope et al) - or, more precise, my HR based expenditure to MFP? aka, at the end of the day I should see a gross calorie level in MFP that is similar to the one my Charge 2 is giving me, despite MFP seemingly overestimating my MBR. 

The culprit in my understanding here is - the calculation on MFP adjusts the calories based on "how often do you plan to exercise". Which, I shouldn't be doing because I will get that from fitbit.

Thusly, wouldn't it be the correct approach to either get the calories from MFP without any workout intention (or manually calculate MBR based on an of the three commonly used formulas or their average) and enter this into MFP. Thus, MFP will calculate your caloric needs based on MBT, sync that to fitbit, which, in turn ,will sync back the activieties / calories burned in form of calorie adjustment (which, confusingly, will show up in MFP as "steps adjustment"). That would have been my approach?

[SunsetRunner]

This was so helpful.  I love my fit bit but find the food log choices lagging so I linked mfp.  After a heat assessment with a bod pod I wanted to make the calorie count exact.  This tutorial was very easy to follow.  Thank you!

[Carpsmarsh]

How on earth did you ever figure this out? Brilliant! Many thanks, especially for including the screenshots.

[RobertoME]

Hi there @Carpsmarsh, I saw the only thing left to say is welcome aboard to the Fitbit Community. I'm glad you have found helpful the post from @HelenaFitbit!

Stay awesome and don't forget to visiting us in the future.

[SunsetRunner]

Thanks!

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

[MirjamLCV]

Dear Helena,

Thank you for these clear steps, but I still have a question.

I followed all your steps without any problem. I want to loose a few kg weight and for the time being eat 1200 calories a day (as calculated by MFP). I wear my fitbit to track my steps, stairs etc.

But today, at the and of the day, my MFP display says this:

1200 (goal) - 1401 (actual intake) + 386 (activity) = 185
(185 is in green as in 'within limits')

On my FitBit, however, it says I am 202 calories over. 

I am confused which one to use as guidance. I didn't exercise much today, but it seems MFP and FitBit don't calculate 'activity' in the same manner? Or is there something I do wrong?

Thank you for your advice, because I really want to use my apps and FitBit in the right manner.

Mirjam

[mary221]

I"m having the same issue. I have followed all the screen shots and made the information identical on both fitbit and myfitnesspal. yet I still  have discrepancies in calories. 

On MFP

Goal:1220 -  Food: 1554 +  Excercise: 567 = 233 Remaining

On Fitbit is says I am 334 calories over.

If anyone has any ideas, It would be much appreciated. 

[MirjamLCV]

Yes, that's exactly the problem I mean! Thank you for adding your reaction. Hope someone can explain, or better solve!

[Nheaton11]

Did you work this out

mfp is showing more left over calories than fitbit snd both set to same calorie goal of 1200 a day but fitbit shows much much less left at the end of day. Some days i am within target on mfp but over on fitbit????

[Gerh]

I have asked the same question in this thread - hopefully a solution can be given. 

[Kawaiipanda]

I have the same question, MFP says I’ve got 73 calories left but Fitbit is saying 335??

which one is correct?

thanks 

[louischarlesdal]

this solution worked for me. i think it's also worth mentioning this step: 

I activated step counting in myfitnesspal, receiving data from fitbit. It was calculating steps and messing with the numbers. Now that I have disabled the step counting to myfitnesspal, and using this solution, both calories allowed to eat for the day make sense. Thank you!