Fit bit syncing vs recording excercise

torie079

So I'm just wondering if it's worth it to sync my fit bit... or just record exercise. I ran over 4 miles this morning and fit bit accounted for around 200 call burn but I know I burned more than that. This happens all the time. Should I just stick to the fit bit by itself or manually enter? What do you do?

msujack

Since cal burns are estimates any way you slice it, I just let the fitbit do its thing. I know that if I stride longer on pace runs, I don't get the distance I actually covered (there is a calculation on stride length that longer steps aren't accounted for), but its always in the ballpark. I just try to eat back at best 50% of my exercise cals, so if I log correctly, I don't have to worry about over estimating my deficit.

melsouth1972

I just go by fitbit too - I think some of the MFP ideas of calorie burn are over estimated.

shilshilshil

I sync my fitbit to myfitnesspal, and also sync runkeeper to fitbit. So when I go for a run, I track it in runkeeper, and it gets automatically added to fitbit, and then gets automatically added to myfitnesspal. I like this because the only thing I have to do manually is use runkeeper, which I want to do anyway.

On days that I run, I get some number of extra calories on myfitnesspal, and also see a fitbit adjustment - if I've been fairly active on top of the run, the adjustment is positive, and if I've been around 5000-6000 steps on top of the run, the adjustment is close to zero (i.e. fitbit and myfitnesspal both seem to think my run is worth about the same amount). I have negative adjustments turned off, but if I didn't, on days that I'm pretty sedentary other than the run, I'd get a negative fitbit adjustment. I like this system, because it takes into account both variations in how much I'm running, and variations in how active I am outside of that, both of which tend to fluctuate a lot (and both of which I'd like to push up!).

CharlieBeansmomTracey

for a more accurate burn(as well as amount of steps),you can go to fitbit.com and log in and put your stride for running in,you can also do that for walking. it tells you how to do it. I know for walking you Count your steps as you walk across that distance, making sure you travel at least 20 steps. Divide the total distance (in feet) taken by the number of steps to get your stride length. I have a more accurate calorie burn this way. you can sync it to MFP but most likely what you burn the whole total may not be counted. like when I exercise,if I burn say 500 calories MFP usually gives me less because of their formula

kuroshii

Sync the fitbit so you have a more accurate activity level vs estimate, *and* log your excercise over in fitbit and it will add those calories to what it posts to MFP. I notice that even if fitbit logged my "steps" while biking, if I tell it that I was on a bicycle it adds more calories.

shilshilshil

Chiming in again to say that I think fitbit gives a different calorie number for logged exercise rather than just steps. If you just went for a run without telling fitbit it was "exercise" (either on the website/app or the device itself), it probably gave you fewer calories for the run that it would have otherwise. Like I mentioned, I log in runkeeper and sync that to fitbit, so I don't have to manually input exercise to fitbit.

Irishsugar

shilshilshil wrote: »

Chiming in again to say that I think fitbit gives a different calorie number for logged exercise rather than just steps. If you just went for a run without telling fitbit it was "exercise" (either on the website/app or the device itself), it probably gave you fewer calories for the run that it would have otherwise. Like I mentioned, I log in runkeeper and sync that to fitbit, so I don't have to manually input exercise to fitbit.

I never log a brisk walk as exercise... Didn't realize I needed to. Thanks for this!

lynnepk34

How do you sync your Fitbit with MFP? I haven't been able to figure that out yet, and MFP only tracks a portion of what I actually do. Thanks!

shilshilshil

Irishsugar wrote: »

I never log a brisk walk as exercise... Didn't realize I needed to. Thanks for this!

I'm not 100% sure about this for walking, so I'd check it both ways and see if there's much of a difference! But it does seem to be the case for running.