Fitbit Calorie Adjustment wrong

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Replies

  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    Don't let your emotions from an innocent question cloud your reading ability.

    "Rather it's a matter of Checking Fitbit, and the others will then be deselected."

    Might be time to do some zen gardening.
  • cathyf_123
    cathyf_123 Posts: 14 Member
    Ok, I've been fighting this for the past week... Earlier today I tried to go into the MFP Apps & Devices menu and disconnect and reconnect to FitBit. My Apps showed 2 members, the Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi-Smart Scale (which I don't have and never set up) and the Fitbit Tracker, which I do. I tried various patterns of disconnect, quit the app, start the app, reconnect. I've managed to get myself into a state where My Apps doesn't show any members, when I go down to the Fitbit entry in the Apps tab, it has a "Disconnect" button, which changes to "Connect" when I push it, but if I return to the Dashboard and come back, or I kill the app and come back, it's connected and says "Disconnect" again.

    Yesterday, MFP sync'd with the Fitbit at 3:23pm with a Fitbit projection of 1,674 based upon 1,052 and an MFP calories burned of 1,684. My actual calories according to Fitbit were 1,052 at 3:23 and 2,039 at the end of the day. I tried multiple times to quit/restart both apps in various orders, and to disconnect and reconnect, and reset preferences, and I couldn't get it to sync again.

    Today I went through all of the same rigmarole and I got it to sync once, at 9:20am, 5-1/2 hours ago. It still shows 631 calories burned and a projection of 1,686 from Fitbit, and MFP Calories Burned of 1,727. (I'm fasting today, and have zero calories, so I'm not sure how that does effect or should effect the calculation.) All of my usual tricks to force a sync are failing.

    I noticed this starting last week, and what was particularly striking was the Sun, Jan 31st behavior. I KNOW that I was not over my goal on Sunday, and I completed my diary that night and I still have the entry on my home page "completed her food and exercise diary for 1/31/2016 and was under her calorie goal". But NOW when I go to my diary for Sun, Jan 31, it says:

    Goal: 1,260
    Food: 1,245
    Exercise: -545
    Remaining: -527

    When I drill down into the -545 exercise adjustment, it says
    Fitbit Calories Burned: 2,079
    MFP Calories Burned: 2,624

    The 2,079 is right on target with my activity that day, but the 2,624 is from another freaking PLANET! And it was obviously not there on the 31st, because on the 31st I was under my calorie goal, not 527 calories over.
  • NancyN795
    NancyN795 Posts: 1,134 Member
    edited February 2016
    @cathyf_123: Looking at your post, I can't tell if you've tried two crucial things.

    First, when it comes to the disconnect/reconnect procedure, you need to be sure to "Revoke access" from the Fitbit site (or app) after you have disconnected in MFP. Then wait. Don't reconnect right away. I'd probably give it 10 or 15 minutes, at least. Then, and only then, go into MFP and connect (no need to do anything on the Fitbit side when connecting other than giving permission when asked).

    Second, it looks like your Steps setting in MFP may be messed up (for some reason, if your steps source is wrong it causes a wild value for MFP Calories Burned). I don't know that the disconnect/reconnect will fix that. I wouldn't count on it. So, with your accounts connected, go to Apps->Steps (on the website) or Steps (on the app - I think getting to this differs between Android and iPhone) and make sure that "Fitbit Tracker" is selected.

    Keep an eye on that Steps setting - it is spontaneously changing on people. Mine was fine one day and then wrong the next.

    Oh, and don't worry about the Aria scale showing as connected in MFP. That's just the way Fitbit and MFP connect - it always shows up, even if you don't have one.
  • cathyf_123
    cathyf_123 Posts: 14 Member
    Well last night things seemed to get back on track. My Fitbit sync'd at 11:52pm, and my MFP Calories Burned stayed at 1,727 all day and is still there, and is at the same value for today. The days before yesterday still have their wonky values, which is not surprising.

    If you go to the tech team announcements page there is an article Fitbit - MFP's total daily energy expenditure calculation incorrect that was updated yesterday and says that they pushed out some fixes. I've got that announcement page bookmarked now. A warning-- it behaves kind of badly with my browser cache-- they updated the article yesterday, and even though my machine was powered off and the browser restarted in between, it was still showing me the version of the announcement from Feb 7. When I clicked on the main announcements page and then clicked on the article again, I got the update.

    Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the only thing that is breaking/fixing stuff for me is what the MFP developers are doing on their side. All of messing around with turning settings on and off and starting and stopping programs is suspiciously like protecting against a sea bear attack. (SpongeBob SquarePants allusion... :smile:)
  • GSV3MiaC
    GSV3MiaC Posts: 22 Member
    For some reason the MFP 'steps' setting only seems fixable from the app (when I look at it there is says 'no source') .. the website swears I have fitbit selected as a steps tracker AND as an activity tracker, but still the data was not making it across.

    MFP development has definitely messed it up somehow .. and it seems impossible to fix it via the web, even disconnecting and reconnecting FBit didn't get Fbit reset as the step tracker (at least as far as the app would tell me .. and the Fbit corrections were not being shown, so I assume the app was telling the truth and the web page wasn't)
  • cathyf_123
    cathyf_123 Posts: 14 Member
    Well last night things seemed to get back on track. My Fitbit sync'd at 11:52pm, and my MFP Calories Burned stayed at 1,727 all day and is still there, and is at the same value for today. The days before yesterday still have their wonky values, which is not surprising.

    If you go to the tech team announcements page there is an article Fitbit - MFP's total daily energy expenditure calculation incorrect that was updated yesterday and says that they pushed out some fixes. I've got that announcement page bookmarked now. A warning-- it behaves kind of badly with my browser cache-- they updated the article yesterday, and even though my machine was powered off and the browser restarted in between, it was still showing me the version of the announcement from Feb 7. When I clicked on the main announcements page and then clicked on the article again, I got the update.

    Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the only thing that is breaking/fixing stuff for me is what the MFP developers are doing on their side. All of messing around with turning settings on and off and starting and stopping programs is suspiciously like protecting against a sea bear attack. (SpongeBob SquarePants allusion... :smile:)
  • ziggy2006
    ziggy2006 Posts: 255 Member
    cathyf_123 wrote: »
    The days before yesterday still have their wonky values, which is not surprising.

    If you would like to fix them, add a fictional cardio exercise (doesn't matter what values you use). It should trigger MFP to recalculate using the correct numbers, then you can delete the fake cardio entry.

  • Justmeanyway
    Justmeanyway Posts: 5 Member
    I went on and disconnected mine from mfp , don't want it to mess with my caloric intake , i'll be using my polar strap to track my exercices and will estimate my overexpenditure of the day t'ill they fix it permanently
  • KimiChristina
    KimiChristina Posts: 2 Member
    About 3-4 days ago I finally got around to check up on one the the suggestions here in this forum, I went into steps and discovered that my settings was on Don't track steps, moved the tick to Fitbit and it has worked beautiful since, thank you very much for the good advice. Hopefully future updates doesn't cause problems again.
  • chelsea1420
    chelsea1420 Posts: 1 Member
    I'm having this issue as well, so it must be an issue with MFP as I have a Garmin. What mine is doing is putting my tdee too high so it's saying I've burned 422 calories, instead of the actual 582 that is shown on my Garmin app. Hoping there's a fix soon.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    edited April 2016
    I'm having this issue as well, so it must be an issue with MFP as I have a Garmin. What mine is doing is putting my tdee too high so it's saying I've burned 422 calories, instead of the actual 582 that is shown on my Garmin app. Hoping there's a fix soon.

    Huge thread to read - but those adjustments have nothing to do with ONLY the calorie burn of a workout - so they should rarely if ever match.

    The are the difference between MFP with no exercise logged and your selection of activity level, and what the activity tracker reported as total daily calorie burn.

    You could have no exercise and be very active and have big adjustment.
    You could have exercise and very inactive and have no adjustment.

    So you had a workout that burned 582 and was added to your daily burn in Garmin stats - and that total daily burn was only 422 above what MFP thought you'd burn with no exercise.

    So it corrects for exercise and actual daily activity level compared to what MFP estimated it would be.

    And actually, from the numbers you gave - you should be thinking it made your TDEE too low, not too high. You have the idea reversed. But that's ok, that's not the way it works anyway.
  • mom4gj
    mom4gj Posts: 1 Member
    I'm new to the group, so please excuse me if I am posting this in the wrong place. Thank you to whoever wrote the FAQs. Very helpful. I recently purchased a Fitbit zip. It is syncing steps to MFP perfectly, but when I look at look at Calorie adjustment, both the Fitbit calories burned and the MFP calories burned are zero. The Fitbit calorie adjustment is zero. I see from this post that there are issues with the MFP app. Is what I'm seeing normal? Or not? Thanks!
  • NancyN795
    NancyN795 Posts: 1,134 Member
    @mom4gj : There's apparently a bug in the iOS app, from the messages I've seen, so if you have an iPhone that's probably the issue. Try looking at your account using the web site instead of the app. I believe I saw that MFP knows about the bug and is working on it.
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