Inconsistent "calorie adjustments" from Garmin

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Jthanmyfitnesspal
Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,521 Member
edited January 2020 in Health and Weight Loss
I've complained about this before. But it really pisses me off, particularly when I'm trying to shed a few lbs.

The Garmin "calorie adjustments" are completely crazy.

Yesterday, I walked a mile to the pool, swam, and walked back. I had 11k steps for the day. Garmin calculated ~500kcals for the swim and added about ~90kcals as a general "calorie adjustment.'

Today, I have yet done any real exercise, but it's giving me ~240kcals as a calorie adjustment. All I've done is <4000 steps around the office!

Urg. I wish this worked better. :s
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Replies

  • Marjael
    Marjael Posts: 111 Member
    edited January 2020
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    Which Garmin do you have? I have a Fenix 5s and my calorie counts have been crazy high since they pushed the 15.00 firmware in December. (Active calories are higher than they should be in the History on my watch - Garmin Connect and MFP are just reflecting the bogus high calories sent from my watch - so its the firmware update.) I assume they’re working on it - check out Garmin’s forums for your device - I’ve only looked at the forums for the Fenix, and other people have posted with the same issue.
  • ritzvin
    ritzvin Posts: 2,860 Member
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    Mine used to do weird massive negative adjustments if I had a large non-step- based cardio that day (as in 2 hours of cycling hills). At least back then, I think the calorie-Fitbit-esque side of Garmin did the daily burn calcs based on solely the step tracker data, without properly connecting it up to work with the more traditional athlete side of Garmin (and allotted 0-ish calls to cycling, swimming, etc) . (Probably a not- fully- fleshed-out quick add of the step tracking stuff to get in on the giant new market for it).

    I'm mostly sedentary outside of exercise, so just disabled negative adjustments and upped daily calorie allowance a bit to account for typical non- logged stuff like dancing, walking.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,521 Member
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    @Marjael : I have a Vivoactive 3 music.

    I've now identified that, in days where I run, I will be allotted calories for the run plus a bunch of extra calories for my other activities. My additional activities consist mostly of steps, many of which I got while doing the run. The only explanation is that they are giving credit for post-exercise thermogenic effects. But, can this be accurate?

    In days where I swim, I get almost no extra calories, even if I have a lot of steps. Assuming the above, this is an algorithmic underestimate of the post-exercise thermogenic effects of swimming, which is about equal to running.
  • ritzvin
    ritzvin Posts: 2,860 Member
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    I think it's pretty much negating off the non-step swimming activity, as I've seen it do with my cycling. My guess is that the daily calories are calculated by adding up the steps with their associated energy (run vs walk based on the cadence) and only that data. Which means any adjustment to match that number would negate what you burned not stepping.
  • Duck_Puddle
    Duck_Puddle Posts: 3,224 Member
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    I don’t know. I ran 22 miles on Saturday. My run got me 2254 calories. My “step” adjustment was -412 (negative). 58k steps total.

    The next day I have yoga (161 calories), run (391 calories), strength training (151 calories) and a “step” adjustment of -108 (negative). 16k steps total.

    The day after was a rest day. 10k total steps just wandering around doing life. My “step” adjustment was 328 (positive - finally some extra calories).

    My “step” adjustments are calculated from Garmin’s TDEE minus MFP’s Neat + workouts. My Garmin TDEE is in line with my other trackers (except my Apple Watch which is crazy high - consistently).

    With things set as they are-my weight is changing exactly as expected based on my Garmin adjustments.

    I have stopped trying to figure out why doing laundry gets me 57 calories and 3 workouts gets me minus 100. In the end-the numbers work for me and they reasonably match my other trackers - so whatever methods are being used are being used across brands. I’ve stopped deciding that it must be wrong just because the number doesn’t make sense to me and I think I did more/less than my watch thinks.

    I had a vivomove that was always low, a vivoactive that was always high, my Fenix 5s was Pretty dead on. My 5s plus is a little high. But consistently-so I’ve adjusted for that. They weren’t high sometimes and low sometimes. Same with a bunch of Fitbit’s and polar devices.
  • Avidkeo
    Avidkeo Posts: 3,190 Member
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    I have turned off my adjustments but I think this is how it goes...

    You do a 10k run in the morning and garmin estimates you burned 600cal doing that run. MfP automatically just adds that to your calories. So at the beginning of the day Garmin estimates your total burn for the day will be around 2200 (tdee of 1600 because you set it to be active in your job + exercise). But you sit on your butt and watch TV all day. Lowering your Tdee to only 1540. That means a - 60 adjustment.

    I think if you do your big workout in the evening you are less likely to get negative adjustments. But I don't know.

    I've set my calories to the minimum so I don't want negative adjustments. I just want the 1200 + exercise only.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,521 Member
    edited January 2020
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    @Avidkeo : That's interesting. So, maybe it's timing. The thing is that I always leave MFP set to "sedentary" so there is no chance I will burn less than that in a day.

    You know, looking at Garmin Connect: They just plain give a lot of calories on days where I do a running or spinning without much concern for how many steps I took otherwise. In fact, the "other" calories don't seem to scale with steps at all. I'm thinking Garmin is not doing a good job of doing the "incidental calories burned" estimate at all and I should turn it off, adding the workouts manually.

    A few years ago I came to the same conclusion with my Fitbit. I was expecting more from Garmin.
  • Duck_Puddle
    Duck_Puddle Posts: 3,224 Member
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    The adjustment you get at the end of the day is whatever Garmin says your TDEE is minus your mfp neat plus any workouts showing in mfp.

    Click on the actual adjustment entry in the app (then click again) or click the “i on the web.

    That’s it. That’s how it works.

    Steps have nothing to do with it. Showing the number of steps only allows you to confirm that the latest info is showing (or not). My “steps” adjustment currently shows 742 steps. I know that is not the most current info because my watch is showing 1862 steps.

    Garmin calculates your TDEE based on a whole number of factors-not just the number of steps but speed, intensity, type of movement, etc. Taking a step is not the only way to burn calories. So number of steps tallied is not going to always track with calories burned.

    If it’s before 11:59PM, then your total TDEE for the day will be estimated. But at the end of the day-it’s your TDEE for the day.

    Whether your adjustment at the end of the day is large, small, negative, positive is determined by what Garmin says your TDEE was for the day (minus your mfp NEAT plus workouts).

    Your adjustment may change during the day based on what activity you’re doing. So your adjustment may go down a bit during the day if you are very active in the morning and not later on. Conversely, your adjustment will go up substantially later in the day if that’s when you do your workouts/activity (aka-me). But at the end of the day-your adjustment is one simple exercise in subtraction.

    OP-I think you’ll save yourself a lot of grief if you just unlink your Garmin. You have complained about this before and your complaints are always about the incidental calories that you are certain are always wrong. Since you don’t trust them anyway, you’d probably just be best off to take that feature off and have less stress from a watch that you’re certain isn’t working right.
  • ritzvin
    ritzvin Posts: 2,860 Member
    edited January 2020
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    Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »
    A few years ago I came to the same conclusion with my Fitbit. I was expecting more from Garmin.

    Not too surprising for me. Garmin is traditionally outdoors navigation & athletic trackers. This attempt to tell people exact daily calorie burn was probably a very, very quick jump by them to get in ASAP on the insanely huge market of mostly sedentary dieters wanting exercise credit for things like waddling about the supermarket - a large revenue source that they didn't realize existed before Fitbit.

  • angf0679
    angf0679 Posts: 1,120 Member
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    I ignore my calories adjustment from my Garmin. Espcially since some of it would be a slight overlap from my running or cardio workout. I only use the calories from running or my cross-training workout to count as my calories burned for the day.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
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    ritzvin wrote: »
    Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »
    A few years ago I came to the same conclusion with my Fitbit. I was expecting more from Garmin.

    Not too surprising for me. Garmin is traditionally outdoors navigation & athletic trackers. This attempt to tell people exact daily calorie burn was probably a very, very quick jump by them to get in ASAP on the insanely huge market of mostly sedentary dieters wanting exercise credit for things like waddling about the supermarket - a large revenue source that they didn't realize existed before Fitbit.

    But eating back my "waddling" calories feels so good! :p
  • ritzvin
    ritzvin Posts: 2,860 Member
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    I doubt it's a timing issue... On example days with minimal walking and long rides, the attempted negative adjustment was to almost exactly negate the ride. I don't think it takes workouts recorded via the athletic side into consideration for total calories, just the movement data from the cadence sensor during that time period.

    Turning off negative adjustments works pretty well for me, I think. If I have 1000+ cycling calories, I'm not really going to miss the little bit I would've gotten for extra walking around the plant or neighborhood much. If I didn't get a real workout in, then I'll still see some extra calories if I've been on my feet more than usual that day.
  • ritzvin
    ritzvin Posts: 2,860 Member
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    janejellyroll wrote: »
    ritzvin wrote: »
    Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »
    A few years ago I came to the same conclusion with my Fitbit. I was expecting more from Garmin.

    Not too surprising for me. Garmin is traditionally outdoors navigation & athletic trackers. This attempt to tell people exact daily calorie burn was probably a very, very quick jump by them to get in ASAP on the insanely huge market of mostly sedentary dieters wanting exercise credit for things like waddling about the supermarket - a large revenue source that they didn't realize existed before Fitbit.

    But eating back my "waddling" calories feels so good! :p

    Ditto. Although they aren't much, anyway, I kept positive adjustments enabled on mine (activity level set to Sedentary) for days I'm on my feet extra but don't get a workout in. (I'll typically record the walk if I'm going more than a half a mile to a store /venue rather than leaving to step tracker).

    Large festivals with hours of untracked walking that I ride to/from do complicate calorie estimates though. And, of course, it can't correct for the terrain either anyway. Hike versus walk. Trail run versus road run. Since those trails can vary widely in difficulty of movement.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    I just received a Garmin Instinct for Christmas...I haven't figured out what it's doing calorie wise. The calories I get from selecting and performing a specific exercise seem fairly accurate...like I did a spin class the other day and per the power meter on the spin bike I burned 433 calories and the Garmin put it at 452...but my total daily seems pretty high to me. It gives me a RMR of 2,133 and then active calories and outside of deliberate exercise and deliberate activity I don't think I'm particularly active...but the other day when I did the spin class I had a total of 2,340 active calories (452 from spin) and a total of 4,473 calories for the day which seems crazy high to me.

  • Duck_Puddle
    Duck_Puddle Posts: 3,224 Member
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    ritzvin wrote: »
    I doubt it's a timing issue... On example days with minimal walking and long rides, the attempted negative adjustment was to almost exactly negate the ride. I don't think it takes workouts recorded via the athletic side into consideration for total calories, just the movement data from the cadence sensor during that time period.

    Turning off negative adjustments works pretty well for me, I think. If I have 1000+ cycling calories, I'm not really going to miss the little bit I would've gotten for extra walking around the plant or neighborhood much. If I didn't get a real workout in, then I'll still see some extra calories if I've been on my feet more than usual that day.

    For your first paragraph I think it might depend on which watch you have? I know for both my Fenix 5s & 5S plus, if I check my total calories before and after logging a workout/activity, the difference is the amount of workout calories. I checked for a while because there was much hubbub that Garmin workout calories were the “net” amount (vs gross calorie burn) so I wanted to verify. And since my total calories burned went up by the exact amount of the workout-the calories shown for the workout are gross and not net (that’s not what you’re mentioning specifically-but just confirming that my watch does include workout/activity calories in the total).

    I also don’t bike much (some-but not enough for me to have a lot of data points to know what effect that has compared to running/lifting/yoga/rowing/circuit training-type stuff/etc).
  • amyliz1230
    amyliz1230 Posts: 1 Member
    edited January 2020
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    it was explained to me that a lot of the workouts tracked on Garmin are based on your heart rate and that's why some calorie adjustments are higher than others, ie yoga vs spin.
  • mbaker566
    mbaker566 Posts: 11,233 Member
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    i've had a vivoactive 3 and not found an issue. shrug
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,521 Member
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    mbaker566 wrote: »
    i've had a vivoactive 3 and not found an issue. shrug

    You're not looking hard enough ;)

    But, in general I've been really happy with my VA3m.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,521 Member
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    @cwolfman13 : The calorie accuracy for an exercise totally depends on the exercise:

    - I think it is quite accurate for walking, running, and cycling outside.
    - It is not very good for treadmill, because it assumes you are running/walking on the flat. I always run on a 1% incline or more. Garmin reads lower than the Precor and I pick the higher estimate.
    - I think the swimming estimates are low in general and it totally misses kick sets (you get a big blank and it doesn't count the yardage).
    - On days where I swim (as stated) it gives me the calories for the swim, but no mater how much I walk around at work, I get a very low adjustment. I think that's just plain WRONG.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,521 Member
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    Aarrrrgh!

    5qxbbfaminhr.jpg

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