Does MacroFactor use Energy Expenditure Data from my Wearable Activity Tracker?

Short answer: no. That's a deliberate choice in order to calculate your expenditure more accurately

For an in-depth explanation of why MacroFactor doesn't incorporate data from wearables, we'd recommend this article. The knowledge base entry you're currently reading provides the abbreviated version.

But, in short, no: MacroFactor doesn't use estimates of energy expenditure from wearable devices for the purpose of calculating expenditure or modifying dietary targets.

The reasons for this decision are pretty straightforward:

1) Wearable devices are known to regularly misestimate energy expenditure. In fact, they under- or overestimate energy expenditure by at least 10% more than 80% of the time. Furthermore, their reliability (i.e. their ability to produce consistent estimates, even if those estimates are inaccurate) is unknown. So, incorporating this data would introduce error into MacroFactor's expenditure calculation, without an obvious mechanism to correct for that error.

2) MacroFactor doesn't need energy expenditure data from wearable devices in order to accurately calculate energy expenditure. Weight and nutrition data are fully sufficient. In fact, using those two inputs would arguably still be a superior method of calculating energy expenditure for the functional goal of adjusting dietary targets, even if wearable devices did accurately estimate energy expenditure. Using these two inputs (weight and nutrition data) inherently accounts for and adjusts for personal digestive and food logging idiosyncrasies in a way that wearable devices simply wouldn't be capable of.

If you'd like to learn more on this topic, we'd strongly recommend reading the full article on our website. The article also discusses what to do when your energy needs significantly differ from day to day, and when you anticipate your energy needs are about to quickly increase or decrease to a large degree.

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