Weight maintenance calories and Fitbit import. New to Fitbit-confused. Topic

Preciouslahboub 07/07/20
Hello,
So as an early birthday present my partner bought me a Fitbit. Now I’ve been using mnd for a good couple years I believe and this year got the premium version to really bump up my weight loss/trying to lose weight.
I have a significant amount of weight to lose so accurately tracking is needed.

Now the Fitbit confuses me to my core. I did 30mins of yoga which said 179cals.
Then I did 65mins dancing workout at 625cals.
My Fitbit has logged the calories as significantly less.
It explains in the little message but I still don’t understand what it means.
It says
1400 Fitbit total calorie
(Including 689 workout calories)
Minus 831 MyNetDiary weight maintenance calories for 8hours 11 minutes if the day.

Please tell me in very simple terms what that means. I just cannot figure out why it’s subtracted wmc. And does that mean every day before getting my Fitbit I was over estimating calories lost through exercise based purely on what this app says?

Thanks you!

HaoRan 07/07/20
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HaoRan 07/07/20
The workout calories is your Yoga and Dance workout combined. The fitbit total calorie is how much you body burned naturally (just being alive) and i assume the MyNetDiary calories were how much u ate (based on what u logged)

Dietician 07/07/20 replied to Preciouslahboub
Hello Preciouslahboub-
Fitbit Active Calories is: the number of calories you expended during the day beyond your Weight Maintenance Calories, which depend on your Physical Activity (PA) level. For example, I have not exercised yet today so my fitbit exercise calories are zero.
For the most accurate calorie budget, we at MyNetDiary suggest choosing a "sedentary" activity level in the app. This allows for about 2,000 steps of incidental walking in your day.

MyNetDiary compares Total Calories calculated by Fitbit with your estimated calories for weight maintenance and records the difference as Fitbit Active Calories.
The reason for this is:
This way provides more accurate accounting of your calories than importing workouts and daily steps into MyNetDiary. Importing workouts as separate records as it was done before (sounds like you may be familiar with the old way) will result in double-counting of your workouts. You can see workouts that contributed to Total Calories in the notes of Fitbit Active Calories record.

This article goes into more detail about fitbit syncing with MyNetDiary: https://www.mynetdiary.com/calorie-counter-fitbit-integration.html

Finally, I would suggest (for fastest wt loss) to not enable the feature "add exercise to calorie budget." That way you won't be tempted to eat back the 652 calores (for example) you burned from the dance workout.

These math calculations are quite involved and it is confusing! The most important thing is that you are getting in daily planned activity, that you not eating over your daily calorie budget and that you are feeling good! The weight loss will come!

We are happy to answer any other questions that come up. Best, Joanna (MyNetDiary Dietitian).

Preciouslahboub 07/07/20
That’s pretty much what I thought but then that means every exercise I’ve input,before buying the Fitbit, was an overestimation then, as it didn’t subtract any wmc?
Is that correct or am I again misunderstanding that too!
I do apologise.

I have been steadily losing weight in accordance to my estimated goal so I’m not complaining at all.
Just want to really be in tune with my watch and app!

I do have a very low calorie set, for personal reasons so I do allow some calories to be eaten back. If I’ve danced for several hours a day, and my calorie cycling for that day is below say 1200. I will eat back a little of what I’ve burnt off.
But generally on days where I don’t exercise so hard I stick to my cals.

Thank you for taking the time to rely and explain. Much appreciated. :)

Dietician 07/07/20 replied to Preciouslahboub
Hi Preciouslahboub- Congrats on your weight loss! That is fantastic.
It sounds like you have set up a really wise plan to eat back some of the calories burned if you have a highly active day. That's exactly what I would suggest doing. And yet on the days when you aren't as active, no reason to eat extra.

I will have to check with support for the estimated calories from the predictive equations prior to the fitness trackers. The exercise calories burned in the app is based on METS (metabolic equivalents), your weight, age, gender and minutes the activity was performed.
Best, Joanna (MyNetDiary Dietitian)

Weight maintenance calories and Fitbit import. New to Fitbit-confused.