Man…it sucks when you think you’ve been doing something right only to find out that you spent the last few weeks miscalculating calories. I have been making low carb foods for Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday to do carb cycling. Today I decided that I wanted to drop my calories by 5% through the week to see if I could see a difference in my weight loss and as I was doing that, I noticed that – despite using the UPC to scan – MyFitnessPal (MFP) was giving me incorrect information.
In a nutshell, the low carb food I was making included some meatballs that I had been using half the bag of per day. I figured since you scan the UPC and pay for the larger size, MFP would have the larger size in there when I scanned it. I guess not. This whole time I had been using the larger size only to find that it was inputting the smaller size. That meant that I had been getting about 2400 extra calories every week. That is an entire day’s worth of calories!
I guess the good news is that I was still losing weight, but it helps explain why I was always up on Monday (a day after I ate more than I expected) and why I wasn’t losing quite as fast as I had hoped. Another bit of good news is that it taught me to never trust what programs tell me and to double-check everything. So I will be doing that from now on.
Other than finding out about this debacle, Sunday was a relaxing day. I squeezed in 10,000 steps, did 3 miles on the bike and just sort of vegged out the rest of the day after we went shopping.
Here’s to a better week and many better weeks going forward!
NOTES FOR THE DAY:
| Exercise | Reps/Distance |
| Active time | 82 Min. |
| Bike | 3 miles @ 10 minutes |
| Other Goals | Notes |
| Eating/Tracking | All tracked |
| Steps | 10,352 |
| 250+ Steps Per Hour | 7 out of 14 |
| Sobriety | 40 days in a row |
| Liquid Intake | Iced decaf coffee and water |
I have had this problem with MFP before…
It also over estimates how many calories you burn through exercise, so I have the adjustment turned off and use my garmin instead for that!
Yeah, I only use my FitBit for my calories burned (and even that I take with a grain of salt).
yeah, me too tbh… I certainly don’t try to match me food to it…otherwise dome days I’d be eating 3000+ calories which I am pretty sure wouldn’t do me much good in the long run!!