Fitbit steps - greatly varying calories

[jmadd15]

Hello.  I have seen may posts related to MyFitnessPal and Fitbit steps/calories syncing.  However I cannot find a clear answer on this issue: Some days I have 10,000 steps and MFP shows a 400 calorie adjustment.  Other days I have 13,000 and the adjustment is 900 calories, then 18,000 is maybe 1,000 calorie adjustment.  The ratio varies so much, it's hard to understand.  Does anyone know a reason for this, or a way to stabilize?

[RobertoME · Accepted solution]

Hello @jmadd15, awesome to see you have joined the Fitbit Community! I was reading you are seeing different calorie adjustments in MyFitnessPal and you have some concerns about it.

I know calorie adjustment is a tricky topic, so In order to see a calorie adjustment in your exercise diary, the number of calories that Fitbit projects you will burn for the entire day, must be more than the amount of calories MyFitnessPal believes you will burn, or has already provided for you based on your profile or other added exercise.

If you are using your Fitbit tracker to control your daily activity, is recommendable not to log any exercise in MFP exercise diary. These will be more accurately recorded by your tracker and will then transfer to MyFitnessPal as part of your Fitbit Calorie Adjustment.

When you create a new account in MFP. It ask for your weight, height, age, gender, and your normally daily activity level. Note that MFP will use these information to provide you with your daily goals based on an average that may vary depending of the person.

If you are not as active as the original activity level you chose, then, depending on how you set your Fitbit account to be linked with MFP  your daily calorie goal will either not be effected, showing a 0 adjustment, adjust up providing you with additional calories or even go down, subtracting calories from your daily total. Keep in mind MyFitnessPal gives you the option to either have a negative adjustment or only a positive one if you are due.

In other words to give you an example, MFP may have given you a daily goal of 1700 calories based on your profile information, but activity recorded by your Fitbit may result in a projection that you will only burn 1600 by the end of the day. MyFitnessPal will now either give you no adjustment and keep your calories at 1700, or if you chose to allow negative adjustments, it will deduct 100 calories from your daily goal to bring your goal in line with data from Fitbit.

Also this goal may also fluctuate throughout the course of the day. If you sync your Fitbit in the morning after a work out, you will get an estimate based on that activity level. However, if you sleep the rest of the day, it will adjust again according to this new information.

If you find that you are continuously not getting an adjustment or are constantly receiving a negative adjustment (if you enable for the negative option), you may want to change your originally chosen activity level on MyFitnessPal. You can do this by going to at www.MyFitnessPal.com. In the main “settings” tab and then to “diet/fitness profile” and change your daily activity level. Make sure to click update at the bottom of the page to apply the changes.

But keep in mind If you are typically unable to sync your device until late in the day, you may wish to leave negative adjustments “off" In MFP settings.

For more details please review the following post: My Fitness Pal calorie adjustment.

See you around and hope this helps.