Using Fitbit Flex AND Polar FT4

Kleenmachine

Hello! I am fairly new to this, so sorry if this is a dumb question. I just couldn’t seem to find the answer in the community posts.

So, I recently got a Fitbit Flex to track how much I walk through the day and to help make sure I get to 10,000 steps. I wear it all the time (except to charge).

When I work out, I do a lot of circuit training, or use the cardio machines and I found that the Fitbit is not really helpful to me in the gym. I also often feel sick at the end of my circuits (heart pumping, red in the face, nauseous…) so I got a Polar FT4 to monitor my heart rate, keep me in the target range and get a more actuate look at calorie burn than MFP offers.

So my question is…how do I document all this in MFP? Should I be taking my Fitbit off when I’m at the gym and manually add in my workout time/calorie burn in MFP? What about the miles I go on the treadmill?

For the past 10 days I’ve been wearing both, and I have noticed that my Fitbit will pick up some steps, but by no means captures my workout. But I will have some calories from exercise added to MFP from Fitbit, so then I’m confused as to how many calories I should manually enter.

Example, this morning I walked 3.13 miles on the treadmill. Fitbit picked up about 5,000 steps, not quite as many as I did, and added 61 calories to MFP. My Polar watch told me that I burned 358 calories, so I adjusted calorie burn to about 300 when I manually entered my workout into MFP, to account for Fitbit’s calories.

Is that right? I just don’t want to screw myself by either thinking I’ve burned more than I have and over eating, or not accounting for all of my calories and starving myself.

I’m thinking it may just be easier to take my Fitbit off at the gym, manually enter my Polar calories into MFP, and just use my Fitbit to track my steps throughout the rest of the day.

Thank you so much in advance for help! This probably (hopefully) has a simple answer but I’m pretty new at all the exercise tracking technology.

StaciMarie1974

When you're doing cardio work & using the HRM, pay attention to your start & stop times. Log it in MFP. MFP will only use one set of data at a time - so if you log it, MFP will use your manual entry from x:xx to y:yy and use Fitbit the rest of the time. You don't need to take the Fitbit off.

editorgrrl

Leave your Fitbit on. Taking it off just leads to forgetting to put it back on—or losing it.

Your Fitbit burn is TDEE, the number of calories necessary to maintain your current weight. If (and only if) you enable negative calorie adjustments in your diary settings, eating back your Fitbit adjustments means you're eating TDEE minus deficit.

No need to log your mileage on the treadmill—Fitbit is tracking all your step-based activity for you. Log non-step exercise (like swimming or biking) either in Fitbit (that's what I do) or in MFP. Exercise logged in MFP overwrites your Fitbit burn during that time, so log your Polar burns in MFP.

You can learn more in the Fitbit Users group: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/1290-fitbit-users

ScubaSteve1962

If you just purchased your FT4, take it back and get a polar loop with H7 sensor which will also display your heart rate and adjust levels on most cardio equipment. with the polar flow app, it will sync are your cardio calories to MFP for you with the calorie burn. and also track your steps, it may not be as accurate as the flex is, but most of the time it's not that far off. The loop separates your BMR calories from your cardio calories, it only records those when you're wearing the chest strap like the FT4 does.