Fitbit Charge 2 and logging

Blankcanvas89

I am so confused about the syncing of my fitbit charge 2 and my fitness pal...if I sync them, does it mean I don't log the exercise I do? I go to Planet Fitness about 5x a week, switch up my cardio with The water rower or elliptical then do strength training sets (3 sets of 10 on various machines)
I lost weight with MFP before but then I somehow got off track after I synced the Fitbit...then I gave up altogther (last year) so now I'm back to try again and dont know if I should unsync my device or what. Thanks...bear with me, I just tuned 60 and a little technology challenged, lol

lottieouroboros

If you wear the fitbit all the time, and you have synced the fitbit with MFP, you don't log exercise manually – the fitbit does it all.

If you also manually log your exercise, this is why you're off track – because your exercise is being logged once by the fitbit and once by you, so MFP thinks you are doing double the exercise you actually are and this will throw off your calorie deficit (ie. you'll be eating waaaay over what you should be).

kcstephens87

As long as you put the time of the exercise in MFP will disregard any data from your Fitbit within that time so you DONT get double calorie deficit. I personally prefer to manually log my excercise rather than rely on my Fitbit to guess that I’m doing a class.

heybales

This 1st section should help.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10098937/faq-syncing-logging-food-exercise-calorie-adjustments-activity-levels-accuracy/p1

I believe the Charge 2, where you can select Weights as the workout you are doing when you do it, is actually a good calorie burn estimate because it does NOT used HR-based calorie burn and give inflated values.
It uses the same database burn as if you manually logged it on Fitbit's site.
So it will seem small, but that is true.

The cardio you can select to track the activity or not depending if you want to review it later - which can be helpful if your workouts are about improving in some way and not merely to burn calories.

And to point above about double logging - that is incorrect info.
Fitbit is a replacement only system, so only double logging is if you entered in Fitbit or MFP manually a workout at say 4 am when Fitbit has it down at the correct 4 pm.

Otherwise whatever is entered last replaces in the daily stats whatever was there already.

That includes a Fitbit created Activity Record with stats, and you manually enter a Fitbit Workout Record, or MFP workout that syncs over - the Activity Record is still there with it's stats, but the daily totals have been updated with your later entry.