Looking for help with my Apple Watch and how it works with MFP

mdcoug
mdcoug Posts: 397 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I just transitioned from a Fitbit to an Apple Watch and so far it's great for all the extra things it does, but I'm not quite up to speed on how it works with MFP. I found a great post yesterday that walked me through how to connect the two. So that's done, but a couple of things:

1. I have my calories set to maintenance, which MFP says is 1600/day. Yesterday, the Apple Heath app said I burned about 2320 calories (1581 resting and 739 active), but only added 74 exercise calories. So, if I were to go with MFP (and if I bothered to log my food yesterday), I would have only had 1674 calories for "maintenance." Which, given the fact that I had a 60 min. boot camp/circuit training type workout and was out and walking around in the evening, doesn't make sense. So do I need to totally discount the calories that Apple automatically adds and manually figure it out and add/subtract it each day?

2. Today I forgot to start my workout on my watch, so I tried to go back and manually add it, like you can with a Fitbit, but I couldn't see how or where you could do that. Am I just out of luck when I forget to start and stop it on an Apple Watch?

Any other tips or tricks for tracking calories in/out with an Apple Watch?

Thanks!

Replies

  • mdcoug
    mdcoug Posts: 397 Member
    Anyone?
  • healthy2700
    healthy2700 Posts: 1 Member
    In response to #2 have to manually enter your exercise in map it has happened to me too when I forgot to press workout I am unsure about #1
  • BECav0602
    BECav0602 Posts: 200 Member
    There are multiple postings about Apple Watch and MFP. I've found they just don't play nice. MFP doesn't account for Apple's "active calories". i've been trying lose it and like the intergration with apple watch better although its food logging has it's challenges. It seems like they could figure out a better integration with apple watch or maybe they just don't want to.

    This is the standard response I got when i emailed support about ti matching up. Many others have gotten the same response.
    "Hello,

    Thank you for contacting us regarding your Apple Watch integration. At this time we are currently only reading the step data, and individual “other” workouts sent from the watch via what transfers directly from Healthkit. We are not yet considering the active calories amount, also being measured by the watch.

    In the meantime, you may notice that your total calorie burn showing on the watch, does not match the total being reported to MyFitnessPal by the Healthkit. This is to be expected. Please do, however, let us know if your step count is not matching up or you do not see your “other” workouts displayed in your MyFitnessPal Diary as “Apple Health Exercises.”

    We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work out all the kinks. We will also do our best to update the following link as we have more information available: https://myfitnesspal.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1957681

    Please let us know if you have any other problems or questions."

  • Piper911
    Piper911 Posts: 46 Member
    Yeah this is exactly why I traded my watch back in for a fit bit. The calories always synced super weird like there was no math/settings that would make what the Apple Watch told me come close to what the fit bit used to tell me or what myfitness pal was telling me to do. So I went back to fit bit because that combined with mfp is what really works for me. It’s a shame though except for that I loooooved the Apple Watch and hope one day they will sync better because I’ll go back in a heart beat
  • 2011rocket3touring
    2011rocket3touring Posts: 1,346 Member
    Here is how I use mine.
    Power it up, exercise and once I end/save the exercise on the watch I'll start the MFP app on my iPhone and usually the calories burned during exercise show up.
    When I take it with me because I need the functionality, it adds my steps.
    I keep it simple.
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
    I've typed so many replies to AW questions lately, you should do a quick search and take a look.
  • sjacobsfarmer
    sjacobsfarmer Posts: 5 Member
    Not sure if this is quite the same issue, but I noticed that exercise from my Apple Health App ADDS calories while my Garmin Connect App subtracts them. So I get -50 calories from my Connect and +100 calories from iHealth so it’s like I consumed 50 calories instead of burning 150 calories.
  • Ian_mc84
    Ian_mc84 Posts: 41 Member
    Never had it reliably transfer activity to manually so I manually add the data into mfp. Unless it’s a gym session then I add the whole work out in to mfp as I will do the same sessions for 4-6 weeks

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