Adaptive TDEE calculation, Why don't we have it?
I've seen this asked on 2 other posts going back a while with no official answer, what's the deal? Seems like a no brainer to me.
We can have all the fancy integrations with fitness trackers and scales that make assumptions and then add or subtract numbers, but when our macros themselves are a guess, and the calories burned is also a guess, what's the point?
More and more competition has this now, MacroFactor is doing it very successfully, Carbon does it, MM+ has done it for a while, and it's a priceless feature. So much goes into the in/out equation and the gray area is huge, but since most people's goals are either to gain, lose, or maintain, the scale doesn't lie.
I still feel Cronometer is the most feature rich by a lot, but missing that one is a crime. I won't lie, I've been cheating with MF, having the ability to set a weight gain/loss goal and just track and having it auto adjust to keep me on track in real time can no longer be lived without. I workout more and raise TDEE, I get more cals, or maybe an adjustment to the macros otherwise, I start slacking off like around the holidays now, it'll back be off if the scale is showing i'm regressing, it just keeps going and it's almost impossible to screw up. This HAS to be added!
Would love an official word on this.
Assuming you guys are smart enough to have moles using your competitors products, the overwhelming majority of their users coming in daily are MFP people that smartened up, and Cronometer people that came and paid more specifically for the AI TDEE adjustments. It's a pretty regular conversation one that side. Worst part, is all of us agree this is the better overall tracker, but that one issue sells people.
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Since when? It will "calculate" TDEE like every macro calc, but it won't watch trends and results and adjust your macros accordingly to keep you on track with your chosen goals to gain/lose/maintain.
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That's not what adaptive TDEE is, that's a guess that doesn't influence or react to real life changes. Adaptive TDEE figures out your true TDEE based on your progress to your goals based on what you're eating.
Cronometer as is, will guess my TDEE, which will be terribly wrong for me by almost 2000cals, if I were to trust that it would then assume I'm burning based on a multiplier that I provided, and most people aren't correct with what they chose. It would also subtract/give back cals if chosen, based on more assumptions. If I'm not hitting my goals nothing happens, in an adaptive TDEE model my normal day to day weight fluctions would be watched and trends established, normal flucations start being ignored and overall trends would start dictating whether to add or subtract calories and macros. All based on real life and what's happening on the scale, which ends with you finding your true TDEE and macros that are specific to you, your activity levels.
Not a guess, not an assumption of what "moderate effort" is on 45min on a treadmill, which would be drastically different for everybody, my true results would be the one driving it, not guesses.
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What I want is for you to use the daily weight measurements from my connected withings scale and my entered calories to back into an ACTUAL TDEE rather than one based on a BMR guess + random activity adjustment.
Seems simple enough to calculate a calorie delta from my average that would result in the weight change that you see on the scale.
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Agreed, please work on this before I decide to switch to MacroFactor
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That's what I did, it's literally amazing! Both me and the wife dropping like crazy since. It's a shame the devs just ignore this, you know they see it! All these insane tracking options, which are cool, but refuse to add the one thing that actually makes tracking macros work in the first place.
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MacroFactor costs $71.99/year. I personally found it a bit slow and sometimes unreliable, especially the adaptive TDEE estimates.
You can instead use Cronometer with Google Health Connect and pair it with MacroCodex (free, no ads, no subscription). It gives you adaptive TDEE along with built-in lean bulk, cut, and recomp tracking features.
And i just use Cronometer because it's a much better and reliable imho.
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Always been dead on for me, and there's 3 different algorithms you can use depending on how responsive you want it to be, but MacroCodex seems pretty good. I may let it pull from Health Connect and see how in line it stays with what I'm doing as a trial.
On the slow, can't figure out that one, Crono needs WAY more screen touches to accomplish the same thing as opposed to the flow MF uses.
Just compared with some chicken and sweet potato
+, Add Food, Start typing chicken, select my food, Add to diary
+, Add Food, Start Typing sweet potato, select it, Add to diaryThat's 10 taps not counting the letters in the foods as that could change drastically, but 10 mandatory screen touches for two commonly eaten foods.
With MF
+, Search, Start typing chicken, add, keep typing for the sweet potato, log
That's 4 less screen touches for 2 items, a dinner or my normal lunch has way more. That's a very substantial difference. Still having to hit add to diary then add food again each item is nuts. Most stole that flow at this point for that reason.
MF with all that built in for $72 vs Crono for $60 is a pretty ignore-able difference, even leaving out that one still can't perform it's basic function without using 3rd party apps and running on never ending Mifflin St Jeor garbage. What would be nice is if Crono actually addressed why they've been ignoring this for years.
Ever new tracker on the block is smart enough to implement this, while many of them will take a while to get any real userbase, gets around pretty quick when one tracker figures you out, and one makes guesses indefinitely.
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tbf, enabling multi-add lowers the usability cost to comparable levels to MF. I understand why it’s not default, but it would change a lot of people’s tone if it weren’t
but I’m with you regarding TDEE. I flirted with MF for the same reason. Did like it, ended up coming back. Set up spreadsheets for a weekly check in of my own, but it’s a lot of work ngl. -
I used MF like year ago, it used to freeze.
My calorie tracking needs have also changed. I have a fairly predictable meal plan now, so I don’t need all these AI calorie-tracking features.
Cronometer offers a permanent, completely free plan (the Basic account), which MF doesn’t.
Also, MF lacks coverage of food items in the European market. Yazio is more popular in Europe.
I pay $0 for calorie tracking, and I don’t see myself paying $72 a year for MF.
Cronometer or MFP DO NOT offer adaptive TDEE, which is a major flaw. But for that, MacroCodex is sufficient.
As for AI photo-to-calorie tracking features, most AI calorie trackers are just wrappers around the Google Gemini API, and Gemini already offers some free usage through Google AI Studio, which i often use and don't pay a cent for this and it can do all AI photo calorie tracking and as bonus you can modify prompt too and all of this is free.
$72 is hard to justify for me. Why? Because nearly all of this has become close to free in recent times.
