logging exercise

violetphoenix82

OK if I just added my fitbit to sync to myfitnesspal it appears I wouldn't need to manually add my exercise since fitbit sends your activities to myfitnesspal. Is that correct? I would think not since you don't want to overestimate your calories you burn.

heybales

Fitbit does NOT send your activities to MFP.

It sends the figure of your Steps for MFP to display, and it sends your daily calorie burn whenever it's gone up by 100 from last sync, for MFP to do math with to correct itself and your eating goal.

MFP is trying to correct itself to a better estimate - the Fitbit.

Fitbit of course can be improved, and if a HR-based device, it'll take a couple weeks for it to learn you and have more accurate HR-based calorie burn for only workouts.

But you can improve daily activity calories based on steps - by walking at average daily pace a known distance and seeing what Fitbit saw - then correcting if needed your stride length setting.
Not grocery store shuffle, not exercise pace - average daily walking speed.

And since Fitbit estimates ALL non-step time as sleeping level BMR calorie burn - it's underestimating all awake non-moving time, standing time, eating time (which takes about 10% of energy calories eaten to process).
All underestimated.

If you want a wall post for people to see- just make a wall post - check out mine for example, it's public if you are signed into your account.

If you need to manually log swimming or lifting or such where the Fitbit estimate is not possible or wrong - do it on Fitbit.