Calorie difference between MFP and Polar activity

frenchbabe5

Hi,
I'm new to MFP and think the app is great for foods but I'm confused about why there is a loss of calories when the info is transferred from my polar flow app direct to MFP. For example today Polar says I burned 746 calories and yet MFP translates that amount into 519.
Any clues?
Thanks for any responses

Bookworm1860

I'm having this same issue, it used to work just fine.

heybales

So mostly sleeping time for that 746 calories?
Or a workout in there?
That's what Polar saw.
BMR level burn for the sleeping part.

MFP before sync estimated BMR x your selected activity factor - so at least 1.25 x BMR if you selected Sedentary.

So for the block of sleeping time - MFP is ahead of reality in estimating calories to 7:50am.

So a sync should lead to negative calorie adjustment - until the day progresses.

Since MFP doesn't show a place for daily calories burned so far - where are you getting the 519 figure - what exactly does the field say?

Many have misunderstandings with devices that sync.

dougii

All of this is relative and none of it is accurate. MFP is notoriously high when it comes to calorie burns; I believe the food tracking is fairly good. I run on a TM with a Garmin 220 w/chest strap HR monitor, an iPhone with Nike+Run Club app, and the TM stats. None of them gives me the same distance, pace, or calorie burn. If I were you I would take the lower number and go with it for a bit. Once you see how your body is reacting (gaining/losing weight) you can make some adjustments to fine tune the numbers if you so choose.

Bookworm1860

Syncing between the apps doesn't, or at least didn't, use MFP's burn estimates at all. It simply transferred over the time and calorie burn from Polar to MFP. Up through January 21 the calorie burns matched what Polar said. Now they are lower. Today I was the gym for over 2 hours. Polar says I burned 663 calories, MFP is only showing 525. Percentage wise they are substantial differences. Thursday it was 777 vs 638.

melissasue182

Hopefully MFP will fix it soon

melissasue182

I’m having the same issue. It was working before without any issues. I just manually correct the number after syncing unfortunately. Will have to do that until MFP fixes the issue.

heybales

@Bookworm1860

That's right - Polar actually syncs over a workout with attached calorie burn already.

If MFP was smart, they would subtract from that figure how many calories they already expected you to burn that your eating goal is based on - so they would only add what you truly did above and beyond accounted for.

So 2 hrs with 69 cal diff per hour.

If you selected Sedentary on MFP, that would mean base burn of 55 cal/hr, or 1325 daily.

Is 1325 about your Mifflin BMR shown on MFP Tools - BMR calculator?


@frenchbabe5 - you have a difference of 227 cal on that workout - how long was it for?

Bookworm1860

@heybales That does seem to be what it's doing, the adjustment remains roughly the same calories/time across workouts. I can see the reason for doing it but it would have made sense to tell us they were making that change, I assume it's not just Polar they made the change with.

Since I don't eat based on it but I use it as a place to track intensity of workouts (not everything comes from Polar) it diminishes its use for me.

heybales

Frankly, if they did it on imported workouts - they sure better have done it on the database logged workouts - which could have been corrected years ago per that suggestion I made.

I'll have to see if it appears they did. Tad harder to prove after the fact though, without knowing what the original database amount might have been.

And yeah - they really should have announced it for any device users that sync in workouts - Polar, Garmin, some apps. (Fitbit doesn't though).

aokoye

It's interesting because MFP overestimates the number of calories I've burned cycling (indoors at least) compared to my Garmin and TrainerRoad. During my last TR workout, which was on a smart trainer that has power, TR and Garmin said I burned 917 calories over the course of 90 minutes (I was doing vo2 max intervals). For the same miles per hour ballpark MFP estimated 1131. That's not a huge overestimation, however last night I did what for me is an easy steady state spin at the end of the evening while watching the olympics. Garmin said 410 calories over the course of the 45 min. MFP says 707 calories for the same average ballpark speed (15 mph) MFP was estimating based off of my weight (208lbs) and average MPH where as the garmin was estimating based off of power (152 average watts).

Thankfully for whatever reason MFP doesn't adjust the Garmin calorie data, at least not for me.

heybales

Can't use the MFP database entries for outside cycling speeds that expect wind resistance on an indoor bike that is giving you speed readings.

It should be wrong, much more effort to hit those speeds with air resistance, and much higher calorie burn.

Also, you shouldn't be re-entering a workout on MFP if you already have one syncing in.
You can start an entry just to see, but why create a double entry if Garmin workout came in.

Just make a wall post about the workout with much more interesting info.

elrosenberg

Any updates from folks on this issue? My polar flow / polar HR calories are materially higher than what is showing in MFP - even though MFP is ONLY connected to that one polar device. I only wear my HR monitor during active workouts (i.e. the 35 minutes of cardio + 30-60 min of resistance/strength) so shouldn't be deducting significant calories for "at rest burn" during that 60-90 period

heybales

So you are receiving in synced workouts from Polar, but Polar says you burned X, and MFP says you burned X-Y?

Always some amount less?

Because I don't believe MFP is adjusting anything, that would be more likely Polar adjusting what it sends for some reason.

And this is an actual workout you are comparing, not the Adjustment that happens to be in the Exercise Diary, right?

kmflanigin

Im having same issue. Record 200 calories burned on Polar. Sync to MFP and it will be 160 ish. Seems to be aroud 20% loss each time. Is it possible that it is a)not transferring calories but transferring activity and time and calculating calories in MFP? Or is it dropping out some of the calories burned that are below a certain level of physical activity?

heybales

The MFP API's are pretty simple, though some options are available.

For workouts - the sender has time stamp, duration, and calories burned - and then the description to pick from MFP database is up to them.

What does your line in the MFP Exercise Diary say about the workout?

And for the line that is for the Adjustment, when you go into more details on that one, can you include screen shot?

AlejandroDecap

This is also a problem I am facing.

jweidner33

I think this is working as intended. When Pilar pushes the workout to MFP, calories are being subtracted based to prevent double counting. MFP gives you credit for being alive.

A 60 minute workout may yield 600 calories burned but sitting on the couch could also burn 60. So the net difference would be 540. Interestingly, Garmin doesn’t do this. Just my polar.

heybales

If there is a workout that MFP knows about - whether manually entered or synced from a tracker, MFP assumes the tracker knows about it and it is contained within the Daily Calorie Burn the tracker also sends.

After all, daily burn should include workouts.

Since the tracker is counting Gross burn for any chunk of time, it works correctly when the workout is set to Gross.

If you have a NET workout on MFP that syncs over to the tracker, it'll be replacing it's Gross burn for that chunk of time with a NET burn, missing the BMR level calories.

Doesn't amount to much either way, but it is more correct for workouts to be Gross when tracker sync is involved.

NET would be at least closer to correct if MFP was on it's own. Actually, a tad less than NET would be more correct.

And this whole method is why Apple direct syncs are so screwed up. They play by their own rules.
Their daily burn doesn't contain workouts, or extra activity above sedentary level.
But they send the workouts over.

allother94

My polar and MPF numbers are never in sync. I go with MPF so I can eat more. Maybe that’s not optimal...

Lietchi

I also have a Polar tracker. I've always assumed that Polar counts the total calories during a workout, and MFP takes the number of calories burned on top of the basal metabolic rate, hence the lower number of calories taken into account in MFP.

heybales

MFP isn't doing any special math with those syncs concerning gross or net - it's pretty simple.

Tracker daily burn (say 2500) - MFP expected burn (say 2000) - listed workouts (say 400) = adjustment (so 100, though more math there for midday)

Base eating goal (say 500 deficit from that MFP 2000 so 1500) + workouts (400) + adjustment (100) = new eating goal (2500)

So you burned 2500, ate 2000, had your 500 deficit still.

That's it.

Some trackers don't send workouts, so above example for Fitbit say would still end with 500 adjustment and same end result.

So from the way it's handled - gross should always be what's involved.

For Polar - does the workout they send to MFP have calories that match their own list workout?

Really should, and hopefully that's a gross value, since strictly speaking it's about how many calories did you burn in this chunk of time.
Frankly, being awake burns more than BMR. That's why it's actually difficult to find sources of NET calories, machines, databases, trackers - almost all give gross.

Power meters, bike or rower or other, are glaring example of NET.

And on Polar, when you click on the entry for the Polar Adjustment (tap and hold) the extra details says time of last sync, and daily burn at that point.
Does that match what Polar has on their side?

ronaldjbenton

I just adjust the number manually to correspond with my Polar Beat. A pain to be sure but for me, MFP is a tool that works for me, I don't work for it. Meaning it's not going to make decisions for me. Anyone who puts in a heart pounding chest heaving sweat pouring knee buckling workout shouldn't be deprived of their hard work and effort. Imho

xynthus

Hello guys. Polar user here as well. Thankfully googling led me to this thread, so apparently it's not just me!

I've also tried doing the syncing "manually", i.e., overwriting the lower provided calorie value in MFP.

There's a workaround though, if you don't mind installing another app!

Prior to buying my Polar Vantage, I was already logging workouts / runs / etc using the Endomondo App. So when I got my Polar, I just synced Polar's data into Endomondo. I only started MFP recently, so when I did, I let it sync the Endomondo data into MFP.

I only learned that I can sync Polar directly into MFP this week, and this was when I noticed that there's a discrepancy in the calorie logs.

That's why today, I'm reverting to my original setup: Workout with Polar -> Endomondo -> MFP. You might want to try this option so you won't have to manually change it (which you might miss doing so on some days), or you're just lazy like me. :P

IgboMeso

Hello all, Polar flow is sending the net calories burned during that activity. If you are increasing your total calories with the gross amount you will end up overeating. I have a Garmin and a polar, and I'm actually grateful that polar does this, for my garmin connect activities i would always subtract BMR/exercise duration from my gross calories burned.

heybales

IgboMeso wrote: »

Hello all, Polar flow is sending the net calories burned during that activity. If you are increasing your total calories with the gross amount you will end up overeating. I have a Garmin and a polar, and I'm actually grateful that polar does this, for my garmin connect activities i would always subtract BMR/exercise duration from my gross calories burned.

Is the Polar also sending a total daily calorie burn over like Garmin does?

In which case Garmin is correct and MFP does the math correctly.
MFP cancels out the workouts it knows about - so you are left with total daily calorie burn.
Minus a deficit to get eating goal.
Bam - weight loss at expected rate.
If everything was accurate - which it's not.

If Polar is only sending workouts over to MFP, then NET is a little closer to correct. Still not totally correct though.
If Polar is sending a daily burn, then it really doesn't matter since it's cancelled out anyway.

In other words you can stop wasting time correcting the Garmin calorie burn, you are actually introducing an error.

Lietchi

heybales wrote: »

IgboMeso wrote: »

Hello all, Polar flow is sending the net calories burned during that activity. If you are increasing your total calories with the gross amount you will end up overeating. I have a Garmin and a polar, and I'm actually grateful that polar does this, for my garmin connect activities i would always subtract BMR/exercise duration from my gross calories burned.

Is the Polar also sending a total daily calorie burn over like Garmin does?

In which case Garmin is correct and MFP does the math correctly.
MFP cancels out the workouts it knows about - so you are left with total daily calorie burn.
Minus a deficit to get eating goal.
Bam - weight loss at expected rate.
If everything was accurate - which it's not.

If Polar is only sending workouts over to MFP, then NET is a little closer to correct. Still not totally correct though.
If Polar is sending a daily burn, then it really doesn't matter since it's cancelled out anyway.

In other words you can stop wasting time correcting the Garmin calorie burn, you are actually introducing an error.

Certainly true when Garmin is synced with MFP (not so much for people who want to enter exercice manually using the calorie burn given by Garmin).
Anytime I have a long exercise session such as hiking for several hours - which means the calories burned according to Garmin include quite a bit of 'BMR calories - my calorie adjustment goes down quite a bit to compensate. Since total calories burned for the day is sent over, there is no double counting.