Inputting exercise

alliecat123

Hi all,

Wondering if you could help me out. I sync my MFP with my FitBit. I know FitBit is generally wonderful for calculating any workouts that are step-related. However, I'm mainly wondering about when I do yoga and stuff like that. FitBit doesn't show any "active minutes" and, thus, no calories burned. I know yoga doesn't burn a whole ton, but am I safe to input yoga and whatever calories I burned into MFP?

Additionally, I'm pretty certain I'm burning more than what FitBit says during a cardio exercise. What would be your suggestion? I.E., it'll tell me I burned 100 calories during a 45 minute cardio workout. But I know I burned beyond that... Would you guys suggest just inputting any excess calories burned beyond what FitBit tells me?

Hope this isn't too confusing. I don't want to over-input calories, but I also don't want to short myself.

Any guidance is appreciated!

Allison

LovingLife_Erin

Hi!

I log all my exercise into my fitbit and let it tell MFP what I'm doing. I believe that the active minutes are only added if it is an activity that a certain amount of effort is needed (based on how many calories it burns per minute). You can go into your activity log and at the bottom there is a space to add in any non-step activities. If you do yoga, you should log it, and even though it might not add to your active minutes, it will add the calories to your burned calories for that day. Some of the activities might not be in that database, but you can add it as a custom activity and input your own calories in there.

For me (and I can really only speak about my experience) most of the fitbit logged exercise falls pretty much in line with other calculators, however some things are very off. For me, swimming tends to be at least 100 calories lower than any other thing will say, and it also told me that an hour of aqua aerobics only burned about 150 calories, when it really is closer to 450. I believe the rowing machine is also not accurate, so for those things, I usually look them up elsewhere on different sites (plugging my distance, time, and stroke if swimming in) and then average out the calories, going to the lower end of things, and then just add those calories into fitbit manually. I know it won't be 100% accurate but it will give me a general idea of how much I'm burning. If your cardio numbers are wildly inaccurate, then I'd suggest doing something similar. After doing it a couple of times, it becomes a quick process that only takes a couple minutes to do.

Michael190lbs

I had the same problem- If you put in circuit training under a cardio search in exercise it will allow you to adjust the time and calories on the right. The calories burned for the workouts on the site are in excess for me. My cardio is about 600 calories it logs it as 701 so I adjust those accordingly as well.