There are too many failure points for calorie expenditure calculations. For one, to have an accurate one you need to have a watch on all day, and they mostly can’t compensate precisely for factors like slowing metabolism as you lose weight or muscle mass.
If you take off your watch at any point you miss any potential reduction in NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) activities that may result because of earlier calorie burning from exercise or activity.
Macrofactor by comparison doesn’t use ANY activity data and relies on only two sets of data to make its calorie expenditure estimates - calorie intake versus weight trend. Using the delta between them, and the conversion between calories and weight it generates an expenditure which can accurately capture all of the aforementioned factors -
Your (Actual) Basal Metabolic Level 24 hours a day + Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (Aka fidgeting or small movements that burn small amounts of calories) + Walking + Any other activity, like exercise
Whereas just wearing your watch 24/7 can give you an estimate of your BML, but to my knowledge those are mostly based upon your height, weight and dominant hormone cocktail on watches as opposed to measuring how fast your metabolism is burning. (Correct me if I’m wrong, I haven’t had time to research this part.)
Three objections
A / B) Wait, shouldn’t my calorie counting app care how many steps / how many calories I burn during exercise?
Not if it’s reducing your NEAT (fidgeting, small calorie burning motions) throughout the day, or in the latter case, slowing down your metabolism even if your muscle mass remains high.
C) But I like eating more calories on certain days!
Macrofactor’s got you covered. You can shift your calories so you eat more on certain days and less on others.
If you get started, they also run the Stronger by Science blog where they post a bunch of research related to weight loss / gain and exercise / lifting, where they also go through some of the methodology they use for Macrofactor. I would recommend a weekly rate of 0.25% body mass loss per week, as on the Stronger by Science blog they’ve found research shows you can effectively keep muscle mass on, so long as you don’t lose more than 0.5% body mass per week. Targeting about half that rate has been very sustainable for me over the past year of using the app.
Here’s a few screenshots from my data from the last few months of using the app.
It actually feels quite random when your body starts burning more calories or less calories, but I can usually correlate a period of three months of sustained change like exercise with a reduction in calories burned, or losing significant amounts of weight.
I would recommend starting with a cognitive behavioural therapy like Noom first if you have been struggle with the psychological aspect of calorie counting, as I couldn’t use Macrofactor at all until I broke the brain processes that made me eat as a response to stress instead of hunger.
In terms of Beeminder, I use a do-less goal to help me keep on my Macrofactor calorie goal. Having two places to enter calories makes me think more about what I eat and keeps me from panic eating. I’ve been sticking with having the same calories each day, and having a lag of 7 days of what my calorie goal is (from beeminder) has been quite useful.
