Fitbit HR Burn

joaniebalonie088
joaniebalonie088 Posts: 93 Member
edited November 15 in Health and Weight Loss
I am sure this has been asked elsewhere but I can't find the answer with the search function. Relative newbie here so be nice

Replies

  • joaniebalonie088
    joaniebalonie088 Posts: 93 Member
    I am sorry I don't know why my post cut off haha. Let me try this again...
  • joaniebalonie088
    joaniebalonie088 Posts: 93 Member
    I'm wondering if my Fitbit is smart enough to know not to give me "double credit" for my workouts.

    Say I log a 60 minute circuit training from 5-6pm on MFP, and I am credited with a 400 cal burn on this app. But I also got 3000 steps from 5-6pm while working out. Will Fitbit give me credit for those steps on top of the calories I got from the MFP logging? Thanks all!
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
    In that situation, you would end up with double counting calorie burn.
  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
    edited February 2017
    As long as the syncing is working properly, the Calories will not get double counted; provided both MFP and Fitbit are set to the same time zone and you have logged the correct Start Time for the activity in MFP.

    Edited to add: Did you happen to try and use an emoji in your first post that got cut off? Using non-standard emoji is one of the known reasons that could do that.
  • joaniebalonie088
    joaniebalonie088 Posts: 93 Member
    Yes! Thank you for the answer AND the emoji advice :)
  • SusanMFindlay
    SusanMFindlay Posts: 1,804 Member
    I'm wondering if my Fitbit is smart enough to know not to give me "double credit" for my workouts.

    Say I log a 60 minute circuit training from 5-6pm on MFP, and I am credited with a 400 cal burn on this app. But I also got 3000 steps from 5-6pm while working out. Will Fitbit give me credit for those steps on top of the calories I got from the MFP logging? Thanks all!

    No, it won't. As long as you get the times right. As I recall, the MFP entry will overwrite the FitBit data for that hour.

    But I don't know why you'd do that. Most entries in the MFP database will be less accurate than the data you get from your FitBit. So, by logging the workout on MFP, you're making your daily calorie burn less accurate.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    And even on workouts where HR-based calorie burn is not a good estimate (anaerobic and/or interval type stuff like your workout) - the Fitbit database, while built on the same one that MFP uses - is used better.

    It's a MET database, which is based on data from studies, and to equalize the fact calorie burn is different for people with different physical stats and therefore base metabolism, they always divided down calorie burn by BMR to get a MET value.

    MFP converts that to a weight based database using a default conversion factor, Fitbit leaves it as a MET database and uses your BMR they already have and use.

    Their's also has several exercises that actually have different levels of intensity available rather than just 1 on MFP database.

    They have circuit lifting and training, or used to. Since I used them both, I still have access to them. They have removed some duplicate MET entries, so sometimes it's a matter of getting the exercise name right.

    But your circuit training, while probably over-estimated calorie burn by HR by some degree - is how long of a workout?
    By MET it's going to be about 8 x BMR per time, so pretty high already. If HR-based is 50 cal over estimated - how big is that for your day as a whole.

    You likely don't even have to worry about it.

    For your workout on MFP - just make a wall post explaining what you did as a workout.
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