Apple Watch steps giving me no calories burned

torijgrant1993

I recently switched from a FitBit to an Apple Watch, and I notice a huge difference now in my calories burned per day. It seems Apple Watch will only give me calories burned for exercise I have tracked using the Apple Watch workouts, whereas Fitbit used to give me some calories burned from steps along with workouts.

I find this a bit odd, since I know my heart rate goes up when I go for a long walk. I’ve had days we here I've walked 20,000+ steps and MFP says I burned NO calories that day. My Fitbit used to give me a bit for a day like this.

Is there something not syncing properly with my Watch, or does it simply not work that way with Apple watches? I would like to get credit for days where I work hard and walk far but maybe didn’t formally “track” my workout.

ClaireDenise30

Mine is the same. If I am purposely walking (dog walking) I will set my watch to ‘outdoor walking’ and it then adds calories onto my diary. HTH x

PAV8888

Based on forum feedback, Apple's direct integration with MFP has more remaining opportunities for improvement than Fitbit's integration with MFP. At least so far to date.

dhiammarath

I sync AppleWatch with Pacer and sync Pacer with MFP. Seems to work decent enough to give me a fair estimate of how much I burn. YMMV, of course!

gemiller87

For me it appears to be because if any inputted exercise outweighs steps logged on the watch that aren't tied to an exercise it removes the walked calories because of MFP or Apple (not sure which?) thinking that the steps were part of the manually or other app inserted calorie burns.

gewel321

I had this problem as well. I love my apple watch for everything except the exercise tracking. I agree with @dhiammarath I have pacer that takes the steps I use with the apple watch and then I have MFP synced with Pacer. It has solved the problem. I get a more accurate count of the calories I spend through the day.

Mahayogi_Das

I recently switched to apple watch from fitbit as well, it's a little frustrating but I've just had to be more mindful of actually starting a work out when I'm doing anything physical for a prolonged time.

torijgrant1993

Thanks everyone!! I'm glad I'm not the only one running into this issue. I downloaded Pacer and set it up - but it's giving me 433 calories burned for only 6000 steps, which is WAY too much. It may take some time to sync properly so I'll give it some time to see if it figures itself out a bit, otherwise I may delete it.

Otherwise, I'll just make sure I'm starting a workout as much as I can for activities.

PAV8888

torijgrant1993 wrote: »

Thanks everyone!! I'm glad I'm not the only one running into this issue. I downloaded Pacer and set it up - but it's giving me 433 calories burned for only 6000 steps, which is WAY too much. It may take some time to sync properly so I'll give it some time to see if it figures itself out a bit, otherwise I may delete it.

Otherwise, I'll just make sure I'm starting a workout as much as I can for activities.

You often need more than a day for things to start working well together.

The timing of your steps may have something to do with it and the totals may go down as the day progresses.

If you exercise early in the day and become sedentary later in the day, you should (generally) expect to lose an appreciable portion of any MFP exercise adjustment between when you become sedentary and midnight.

You can generally estimate that if you want to. Either through experience and experimentation or by considering that MFP assumes a constant expenditure of 1.25x BMR Cal for sedentary, 1.4x, 1.6x, and 1.8x for lightly active/ active / very active. Many trackers assume 1.0x BMR Cal when not detecting movement. The difference is what you will lose from your MFP adjustment per minute of inactivity between when you become sedentary and midnight.

panda4153

Hi there! Good luck with your goals!! I am also an Apple Watch user, I did not set up pacer but what I did do was increase my activity level in MFP from sedentary to slightly active, and the set my workout in the watch for any purposeful exercise. This has resulted in a pretty accurate daily allowance and weightlossnrate for me. It also seems to match up pretty close with what Apple shows my TDEE at.

Stockholm_Andy

My Samsung watch has an even worse integration.

The more active I am the more calories is takes off of me

I did over 30K steps on Sunday and with activity level set to sedentary it took +2000Kcals off of me

I've just turned it off again. I use the Strava app on the watch to log actual exercise and ignore the rest.

hmichaud09

panda4153 wrote: »

Hi there! Good luck with your goals!! I am also an Apple Watch user, I did not set up pacer but what I did do was increase my activity level in MFP from sedentary to slightly active, and the set my workout in the watch for any purposeful exercise. This has resulted in a pretty accurate daily allowance and weightlossnrate for me. It also seems to match up pretty close with what Apple shows my TDEE at.

Where did you find the workout watch was able to be set for purposeful exercise?

NovusDies

hmichaud09 wrote: »

panda4153 wrote: »

Hi there! Good luck with your goals!! I am also an Apple Watch user, I did not set up pacer but what I did do was increase my activity level in MFP from sedentary to slightly active, and the set my workout in the watch for any purposeful exercise. This has resulted in a pretty accurate daily allowance and weightlossnrate for me. It also seems to match up pretty close with what Apple shows my TDEE at.

Where did you find the workout watch was able to be set for purposeful exercise?

Click on the running person app. There should be a list of activities for you to select from. I think most are based on heart rate but outside walk is based on pace. If your exercise ring does not start to fill in there is a problem. I usually get full credit walking if I average at least 3 mph while swinging my watch arm freely.

katermari

im about this feed, downloading pacer as we speak.

panda4153

hmichaud09 wrote: »

panda4153 wrote: »

Hi there! Good luck with your goals!! I am also an Apple Watch user, I did not set up pacer but what I did do was increase my activity level in MFP from sedentary to slightly active, and the set my workout in the watch for any purposeful exercise. This has resulted in a pretty accurate daily allowance and weightlossnrate for me. It also seems to match up pretty close with what Apple shows my TDEE at.

Where did you find the workout watch was able to be set for purposeful exercise?

Hello, in addition to the above, if you are still wondering where to look here is a good link for how to track exersize using the watch.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204523

Good Luck!!! Also remember, even if your tracker isn't counting you exercise, your body still is

NovusDies

I am trying Pacer too. I just unlinked IOS and synced. I have gone to the other extreme I believe. My exercise calories have more than tripled. I will be the first to admit I am having a hard time judging my activity because I have not had good scale results since my surgery but I haven't jumped from lightly active pre-surgery to very active.

I think I am moderately active because I only do 30 minutes on the elliptical each morning and I walk outside for about an hour a day. I am averaging over 14k steps a day but I have never quite believed the AW step counting. I plan to borrow a pedometer and do a side-by-side comparison.

PAV8888

@NovusDies , when I was logging food carefully and was losing at about 1.5lbs a week, I found that 14K steps were within MFP very active, with 15,725 (which has remained my daily goal ever since) pretty much for sure giving me a positive adjustment to MFP very active (because of course there is still variance between walks/locations/elevation, etc).

My steps were mostly purposeful walks outside. Some keyboard induced steps are inevitable in the 15,725; but, also, in the case of Fitbit, a lot of "softer"/slower/less than 12 (I believe) in a row steps do not get recorded, so for me on the long term this aspect is a wash.

wilkie17081

I synced mine with the health app and I have no problems. It shows steps walked and calories burned
Go to health app on Apple phone. Like ur profile. Click privacy and change the setting to sync with MFP

hope this helps

NovusDies

PAV8888 wrote: »

@NovusDies , when I was logging food carefully and was losing at about 1.5lbs a week, I found that 14K steps were within MFP very active, with 15,725 (which has remained my daily goal ever since) pretty much for sure giving me a positive adjustment to MFP very active (because of course there is still variance between walks/locations/elevation, etc).

My steps were mostly purposeful walks outside. Some keyboard induced steps are inevitable in the 15,725; but, also, in the case of Fitbit, a lot of "softer"/slower/less than 12 (I believe) in a row steps do not get recorded, so for me on the long term this aspect is a wash.

@PAV8888

I think you are the primary reason I do not believe my steps are reliable enough to trust. I have read you break it down for other people and when I was mathematically confirmed lightly active but averaging 8k steps I decided you were right and it was wrong.

By this Friday I should have the rest of my holiday bloat gone, if it is not gone already, and then I just need to wait 3 weeks to get a fresh new TDEE which will finally lift the fog I have been in since the surgery. It has been quite a run of inflammation and then by the time that started to settle there was Thanksgiving, a vacation, then Christmas. My water weight has been a constant roller coaster.

I know I am more active than I was I just do not know how to properly judge it. The worst that happens is that I lose a little too fast for 3 weeks. Actually the worst that happens is that I find out I am still lightly active and I am super disappointed. That last bit won't happen. I may not be fully moderate but I have to be close.

cannedgoo

I found that the steps Apple Watch counts includes purposeful exercise (exercise I track on the watch & click “start”) steps. On the odd occasion I have a very high step count before the exercise it will adjust the step count cal burned to be lower (but not zero) and then also add the exercise. Otherwise it would be double dipping those step calories.

For the sake of accurate logging, I just have my activity level set to sedentary & eat at about a 1500 cal/day deficit based on my total calories from Apple Watch vs my MFP logs - results in about 2.5 LB/week, so I know my watch is calculating 250 high or I’m eating 250 high per day, but loss is what I expect with this knowledge

NovusDies

I have been wearing one of those old rattle pedometers today to see how it compares with my aw steps. Through my first 10k steps and keeping mind I am not yet in the habit of wearing it so I left it in the restroom for an unknown number of steps earlier the variance is really only a little over 250 steps. I am, of course, not expecting them to match perfectly. I am planning on wearing it all weekend too and then decide if I need to delete the apple health calibration data and let it start again.

nurees

I use Pacer app. Sync that to Apple Watch. Then sync Pacer to MFP. I get all my extra exercise calories earned and steps showing up. Before Pacer nothing worked.

Fitmomof4girls

So glad I read this thread, I used to have a Fitbit and got a Apple Watch for Christmas and was confused as to why I wasn’t seeing calories burned! I’ll download pacer like suggested, ty