Garmin Connect and MFP - Is there a calorie bug?

jamierosenblum

I use a Garmin Vivofit2 that syncs to my iPhone. I have been trying to figure out how the calorie adjustment works. When I click on the Garmin Calorie adjustment in the app, it shows that Garmin Connect currently reports that I've burned 2077 calories as of now and projects 2608 calories at the end of the day. It compares that to how many calories MFP thinks I should burn and gives me the difference. That all makes sense.

The problem is my Vivofit right now says I've burned 1555 calories so far today. It's 6 pm now. From what I can tell Garmin Connect is reporting what it thinks I will have burned at the end of the day (2077) and then MFP is adjusting that number up by 25% (the remaining hours in the day).

I have been eating exercise calories and the last week have been gaining weight. About a week ago, I played around with my baseline activity settings and before I changed them Garmin never gave me extra calories.

I think this changed started when I downloaded the latest version of the MFP app.

I also noticed that MFP tries to give me double credit for runs I track in MapMyRun. I also use C25K in the background for interval timing so it's possible that's the double credit. All this is to say the problem could be a setting I need to change.

Does anyone else find a disconnect between Garmin Connect calories and MFP calories?

Thanks for any suggestions.

solieco1

Yes. If you're using an HrM with your Garmin then use those calorie counts. If exercise is being double counted you can either un-sync apps so that only one (Garmin) can report the efforts or you can go to the bottom of your diary and delete the dupes daily. It's not a bug necessarily as much as different algorithms being used. Calories are notoriously difficult for any device to get accurate. I usually go with the lowest which is generally Garmin with HRM and then still try to not eat all back everyday.

20yearsyounger

Personally I think the MapMyRun calories are garbage compared to what Garmin gives so I don't use the app but I just let Garmin send the numbers to Mapmyfitness for the contests. There is a discrepancy, but I haven't had a problem losing weight and maintaining based on the missing calories that I don't get credit for. See this discussion. - http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1389383/calorie-count-in-garmin-connect#latest

jamierosenblum

I can definitely use the Garmin calories over the MapMyRun calories and I do delete double entries. Today though everything I did was measured by my Garmin. From what I can tell, Garmin is sending it's end of the day estimate and MFP is interpreting the Garmin calorie number as calories burned so far and adding additional calories I am expected to burn by the end of the day.

For instance at 6pm Garmin said I've burned ~1500 calories so far. MFP said Garmin says I've burned ~2000 calories so far. MFP assumes I will have burned ~2500 calories at the end of the day. If I ate those extra calories, I would end up eating too much.

Is this a MFP/Garmin bug or is this a setting I have incorrect.

20yearsyounger

I set everything to sedentary and let them work it out. Usually there is a small difference maybe 100 calories or less. I havent figured out exactly yet what MFP uses to projects my calories (I have my calorie goal set to specific numbers). Its the MFP projection that messes things up a little.

powered85

jamierosenblum wrote: »

Does anyone else find a disconnect between Garmin Connect calories and MFP calories?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Yes there is a variance and I've reported this to both companies.

But before going into detail, do you have mfp set to sedentary and do you have negative calorie adjustments enabled?

20yearsyounger

I have both a Fitbit and a Garmin. What I noticed is that for Fitbit I do need the negative adjustments for better accuracy. For Garmin I don't need to. It seems to work things out.

jamierosenblum

I switched MFP to sedentary and thought I set the Garmin for negative calorie adjustments when I changed the settings recently. The MFP app is still saying I have negative calories turned off. The issue I'm concerned about is that MFP is giving me too many positive calories for the Garmin step credits though.

I'm not sure I actually want MFP set to sedentary. MFP has me at 1200 calories. It seems like it took more exercise to earn extra calories when I had it set to somewhat active than when I have it set to sedentary.

I'm also concerned that the overestimate of calories burned in MFP are higher earlier in the day. I'd rather not eat too much earlier then realize I'm out of calories at dinner. That said the only way I can consistently stick with 1200 calories is to earn some back with exercise.

20yearsyounger

jamierosenblum wrote: »

I switched MFP to sedentary and thought I set the Garmin for negative calorie adjustments when I changed the settings recently. The MFP app is still saying I have negative calories turned off. The issue I'm concerned about is that MFP is giving me too many positive calories for the Garmin step credits though.

I'm not sure I actually want MFP set to sedentary. MFP has me at 1200 calories. It seems like it took more exercise to earn extra calories when I had it set to somewhat active than when I have it set to sedentary.

I'm also concerned that the overestimate of calories burned in MFP are higher earlier in the day. I'd rather not eat too much earlier then realize I'm out of calories at dinner. That said the only way I can consistently stick with 1200 calories is to earn some back with exercise.

That's why I switched off the negative adjustments. It's not good if you exercise later in the evening or do an early morning workout. I don't want it estimating for me, I just want it to tell me what I earned.

If you don't like sedentary, then it might be best to keep negative adjustments on. If you do put it to sedentary then you can turn off negative adjustments. All in all, Garmin is fairly conservative with what it gives you and I have never had a problem losing weight with it.

You can always set MFP to something more reasonable than 1200, keep negative adjustments off, and earn the extra calories from Garmin if you do something that gives you more calories.

KimLavene

We should link up on Garmin Connect! My handle is CABUbyKim! Let's get some challenges going!

powered85

Negative adjustments are toggled on or off in mfp exercise settings on the website. Can't do it through the app.

Part of the issue is to get mfp and your garmin device to have the same base calorie calculation so there isn't a negative adjustment off the bat...

mfp calculates sedentary base daily calorie needs as st jeor bmr formula x 1.25 (https://myfitnesspal.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1375583-a-message-about-myfitnesspal-s-updated-nutrition-goals). Garmin currently appears to use St jeor bmr formula x 1.2 for base calorie daily burn which creates a negative adjustment just by that alone as mfp sees the garmin as burning less over an entire day by default (Note this base daily value is your bmr x activity level at maintenance. It doesn't factor whatever weight loss/gain goal you enter in mfp) . Using a higher activity level in mfp throws this off even more as the other multipliers add even more of a calorie variance between the two values mfp and garmin use. There is no option to adjust activity level or bmr formula on the garmin side that I've seen.

So presuming you set mfp to sedentary, you can try and make them closely match..... but you need to edit age/height in garmin connect to effectively match the bmr + sedentary activity level set in mfp to make it match as close as possible to mfp values; otherwise the negative adjustment will always occur.... At least until you exercise/move enough and sync your device up to mfp so the adjustment eventually becomes positive. At least for me, exercise calories doesn't seem to be thrown off very much by changing my height/age in connect. Think weight has more to do with calorie burn than those two factors but best to check a few online calculators with the modified values to ensure they aren't thrown off too much against what you expect.

Hoping they address this problem. It'd be nice if they used the same formulas for the base activity multipliers. That way your basically starting each day at the same base calorie needs and negative adjustments wouldn't occur.

When you use a tracker, I think the general concept is to set mfp to sedentary and let your fitness tracker log all your NEAT (activity level like cooking, cleaning, working, washing etc that is counted through general steps movement) calories AND actual planned exercise calories like running etc.

Although I log things like strength training through mfp manually as I don't find the tracker logs those accurately to give me enough calories burned from them.

If you set your activity level to higher than sedentary if mfp and also add in tracked NEAT and exercise from a tracker you could be double adding extra activity level calories that you have already accounted for in mfp settings. This is provided your fitness tracker can track both general NEAT/exercise accurately. Nothing is 100% accurate for everyone with these formulas and trackers. Always best try things out for a bit and see where it lines up with the goals you set.

jamierosenblum

It seemed to take about 24 hours for the new settings to take effect for some reason but MFP and Garmin seem to be talking the way I expect now. I have the negative calorie adjustment turned on. In fact, Garmin seems to be adjusting fine if I wear it and use MapMyRun at the same time. The Garmin seems to give me about half as many calories for the run (without a heart rate monitor). I can now click on the Garmin Connect calorie adjustment in the app and the numbers match what's on my wrist. Either this thread prompted someone somewhere to fix something in the ether or it took a day for all the new settings to take effect!

dazdarren

I have noticed the issues above also and I think its been a known problem for sometime. As of today it seems to be fixed so fingers crossed it is.

crazygreyhounds

Powered85, I wish I understood it like you do. I understood some of that, but I am grateful for what I understood, I thought I was setting something up wrong. So, now that I understand, a bit, where the differences come from, my question is this trying to lose, do I use the MFP numbers (which "gives back" fewer calories for activity throughout the day) or the Connect app numbers? They are often a couple of hundred apart. Thank you in advance!! :-)

ctgaff

powered85 wrote: »

Negative adjustments are toggled on or off in mfp exercise settings on the website. Can't do it through the app.

Part of the issue is to get mfp and your garmin device to have the same base calorie calculation so there isn't a negative adjustment off the bat...

mfp calculates sedentary base daily calorie needs as st jeor bmr formula x 1.25 (https://myfitnesspal.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1375583-a-message-about-myfitnesspal-s-updated-nutrition-goals). Garmin currently appears to use St jeor bmr formula x 1.2 for base calorie daily burn which creates a negative adjustment just by that alone as mfp sees the garmin as burning less over an entire day by default (Note this base daily value is your bmr x activity level at maintenance. It doesn't factor whatever weight loss/gain goal you enter in mfp) . Using a higher activity level in mfp throws this off even more as the other multipliers add even more of a calorie variance between the two values mfp and garmin use. There is no option to adjust activity level or bmr formula on the garmin side that I've seen.

So presuming you set mfp to sedentary, you can try and make them closely match..... but you need to edit age/height in garmin connect to effectively match the bmr + sedentary activity level set in mfp to make it match as close as possible to mfp values; otherwise the negative adjustment will always occur.... At least until you exercise/move enough and sync your device up to mfp so the adjustment eventually becomes positive. At least for me, exercise calories doesn't seem to be thrown off very much by changing my height/age in connect. Think weight has more to do with calorie burn than those two factors but best to check a few online calculators with the modified values to ensure they aren't thrown off too much against what you expect.

Hoping they address this problem. It'd be nice if they used the same formulas for the base activity multipliers. That way your basically starting each day at the same base calorie needs and negative adjustments wouldn't occur.

When you use a tracker, I think the general concept is to set mfp to sedentary and let your fitness tracker log all your NEAT (activity level like cooking, cleaning, working, washing etc that is counted through general steps movement) calories AND actual planned exercise calories like running etc.

Although I log things like strength training through mfp manually as I don't find the tracker logs those accurately to give me enough calories burned from them.

If you set your activity level to higher than sedentary if mfp and also add in tracked NEAT and exercise from a tracker you could be double adding extra activity level calories that you have already accounted for in mfp settings. This is provided your fitness tracker can track both general NEAT/exercise accurately. Nothing is 100% accurate for everyone with these formulas and trackers. Always best try things out for a bit and see where it lines up with the goals you set.

It's December 2016 and this is still an issue. Without getting too complex in explaining the issue, Garmin is also calculating BMR + exercise calories and this is getting added to the BMR created in mfp as remaning calories. You can try to modify the starting point in mfp by fudging profile data, but it's never going to be correct until it can literally be replaced by the Garmin data, not added too. The same issue exists when pairing mfp with FitBit. However, Polar is sending only exercise data and this is is why I typically see a 300-500 daily adjustment instead of 2000-3000.

DzianiWonsacze

It's mid 2017 and the issue is still there, it's really weird no-one solved it yet. Both MFP and Garmin show off data. MFP gets all calories, both BMR and exercise from Garmin, so it adds all of it on top of your calorie goal, which should already include at least your BMR or even exercise, if you're building body mass. Garmin does exactly the same, that is take MFP's calorie goal as extra calories you wish to burn, therefore 'calories burnt' field will always be higher by your MFP's calorie goal, which is also wrong. The only way I can see it may work is to set MFP's calorie goal to minimum allowed (figured out it can be 100 calories), but then you won't know how much macros you should eat until the end of the day, as MFP does not sync real time with your calories burnt. Puzzled.