Help me understand this calorie adjustment?

moonangel12

I recently (a month or so ago) switched my settings to sedentary and turned on the calorie adjustment feature. Here is what it is showing me for today, and it’s not making much sense to me. I don’t have food logged because we were camping at a state park and I didn’t have enough service for MFP to function and we are just getting home. Maybe lack of food logging is part of it? I know it adjusts for exercise so that you don’t double dip for the same activity, but at >16k steps on sedentary I don’t know why it’s still taking more off? We did a slower hike/walk, it’s not like it’s way overestimating for that IMO (just over 3 miles). I thought I had it figured out, but guess not.

Nony_Mouse

If you have your activity tracker synced to MFP, you shouldn't also be logging exercise in MFP. Just let your tracker take care of everything. That's possibly what's causing the issue.

Lietchi

The calorie adjustment is intended to correct your calorie burn when you have been more/less active than the activity level you chose in your profile.
Sedentary is around 3500 steps, so it's normal to get a negative calorie adjustment if you took less steps than that not counting the hike. But that would seem unlikely if you only walked 3 miles on your hike and took 16000 steps in total that day.

Garmin sends over gross calorie burns for exercise (including BMR), so exercise can create a negative calorie adjustment: MFP compares total burn between MFP and Garmin, so the 'extra' you get in your exercise calories gets subtracted through the calorie adjustement. It all adds up correctly in the end though, it just looks a bit funny. But since your hike only took 75 minutes, I'm not sure that explains the difference.

Food logging has nothing to do with it, by the way.

Have you compared your total calorie burn on Garmin Connect with the details of your calorie adjustment on MFP?

moonangel12

Nony_Mouse wrote: »

If you have your activity tracker synced to MFP, you shouldn't also be logging exercise in MFP. Just let your tracker take care of everything. That's possibly what's causing the issue.

That’s what automatically logged 🤷🏻‍♀️

moonangel12

Lietchi wrote: »

The calorie adjustment is intended to correct your calorie burn when you have been more/less active than the activity level you chose in your profile.
Sedentary is around 3500 steps, so it's normal to get a negative calorie adjustment if you took less steps than that not counting the hike. But that would seem unlikely if you only walked 3 miles on your hike and took 16000 steps in total that day.

Garmin sends over gross calorie burns for exercise (including BMR), so exercise can create a negative calorie adjustment: MFP compares total burn between MFP and Garmin, so the 'extra' you get in your exercise calories gets subtracted through the calorie adjustement. It all adds up correctly in the end though, it just looks a bit funny. But since your hike only took 75 minutes, I'm not sure that explains the difference.

Food logging has nothing to do with it, by the way.

Have you compared your total calorie burn on Garmin Connect with the details of your calorie adjustment on MFP?

I haven’t compared because I don’t follow the calculation differences and MFP has worked well enough for the past year... this is what Garmin is showing. How did I only have 21 active? It even registered our biking that I didn’t officially log. Weird.

Lietchi

Under Calories (not Calories In/Out) you can see the total calorie burn Garmin has for you.



And in MFP you can tap on the calorie adjustment to see the details (total calorie burn as communicated to MFP by Garmin.



But it looks as though the sync with Garmin is the issue, if your active calories aren't correct.
You mentioned bad connectivity for food logging, but Garmin also needs internet connectivity to sync properly, maybe that was the issue?

Lietchi

PS: my printscreens are from different days - the Garmin total calories should be the same on both sides.

moonangel12

This is what it is showing for yesterday

Lietchi

And that's the day you hiked and did 16k steps? Definitely not normal, I think it's an issue with your Garmin then, rather than MFP.

moonangel12

Yep - there was biking (that I didn’t log, but it picked up on it based on the icon), hiking, and 16k steps overall.

Might explain why I’ve been hungrier 😂 but can’t gauge by weight loss because I have been more likely to cave to the extras since I was so hungry.

Slightly frustrating, but I feel better knowing that there is a hiccup in there somewhere and it’s not just me. Might just revert back to how I was tracking with the next level up on activity level and not worrying about the auto adjustment. It was working well enough, I was just trying to increase accuracy since I was so close to goal and winter was coming (so likely my activity level will be dipping).

Duck_Puddle

That’s definitely something wonky with your Garmin. I wonder if something went screwy if you didn’t have maybe enough service for Garmin to connect to its servers? Does your Garmin connect show all the other info correct and in total for yesterday (steps/activities/etc)?

Psychgrrl

Here’s what I’ve done when something seems glitchy between the two:
1. Unpair Garmin and MFP
2. Turn off and restart phone
3. Turn off and restart Garmin
4. Re-pair Garmin and MFP

moonangel12

It might have been something with the lack of service even though I synched up after being home and on WiFi... this is today’s which is 7600 steps including a family game of ultimate frisbee (that I didn’t specifically log but it auto logged for a “walk” it looks like).

Duck_Puddle

Nothing got mysteriously changed in Garmin settings? Like some techno-fluke has your age/height/weight/gender/something way off?

That’s so bizarre.

moonangel12

Circling back - double checked my settings on both Garmin and MFP, disconnected and reset everything, on WiFi, etc. Still same results 🤷🏻‍♀️ so guess I just need to forget about using my Garmin for accurate calorie adjustments. Oh well...

4 mile walk with friends this morning and an afternoon on my feet fishing with the kids wandering from place to place.

Lietchi

It's not so much the calorie adjustment that is wrong, it's the calorie burn given by Garmin. I would contact Garmin, it is really weird that the calories burn for your hike is 385 calories (do you see this same number in Garmin Connect?) and you only see 56 active calories.

sijomial

You can't sync data that your Garmin doesn't have!

Until you fix the issue with your Garmin not picking up activity data there's no point trying to look at the MFP end and really you don't want to be syncing bad data anyway.

heybales

I'll mention this observation I had issues with, though this may have been the fact of having FR310XT for the workouts, and VF3 for the daily.
And Garmin has had an update or two on their processes, and I've not tested the problem method just to see.

Of course this means the VF3 estimate of any workout that has better data on the FR, order of sync may matter.

Originally I did like Fitbit process - sync daily stats from device (I manually did in evening), add workout that replaced original Fitbit data with better calories.
I already had a MFP-Fitbit sync issue, so only got 1 good sync a day, and the Fitbit daily burn usually went up so it would sync new daily burn to MFP.

Doing the VF3 sync first, then the FR did same thing, and usually burn went up so a higher value for daily calories meant new sync to MFP, along with that workout.

What I saw many times doing this though, Garmin Connect did not do the math for their daily burn with the FR workout before they resent the data.
Meaning Garmin would have say 2000 cal burn in evening just the tracker, with 200 cal of that bad data about to be replaced.
I'd sync the FR with workout of say 800 cal, and initially GC would show 2800 calories as total - and that would sync to MFP, along with the workout.

If I waited or went to a different view, it would show correctly the 2600 as daily burn. But it would not sync that to MFP again until the daily burn went up to 2900, 100 higher than last sync.

And if this all happened in the evening late enough - my daily burn sitting around was NOT going up to make that happen.
This was problem of too much positive adjustment.

I tested and I started and still do sync the workout first from FR.
It counts it all as Active calories, and syncs the workout over to MFP.
This allows me to correct the calorie burn if needed (my powermeter is different field for it's calories though on Garmin), though I have to manually correct the MFP side.

But even here - if I look at daily summary it doesn't correct daily burn lower until I refresh several times, eventually it'll lower to my correction.

Then I sync the VF3, and the Active calories which is only the workout (I'm very sedentary outside the workouts usually) lowers by the amount of BMR and duration of the workout (actually it recently changed to like sedentary level of burn, not sure what they are doing).

MFP now receives the daily burn (Active+Resting) and MFP does it's math with workout already there, and already expected calorie burn.


I'm throwing that all out because I'm wondering if you have a routine that may be getting hit with Garmin correcting themselves before they sync out figures?
Like have you started that workout on the device or another Garmin device?
Or manually entered the workout afterwards?

216 for workout of hiking for 75 min seems really low - is that still the case, underestimated calorie burns? or was pace really 1.65 mph perhaps?
385 for 83 min appears correct if you weigh 160 lbs - true?

moonangel12

heybales wrote: »

I'll mention this observation I had issues with, though this may have been the fact of having FR310XT for the workouts, and VF3 for the daily.
And Garmin has had an update or two on their processes, and I've not tested the problem method just to see.

Of course this means the VF3 estimate of any workout that has better data on the FR, order of sync may matter.

Originally I did like Fitbit process - sync daily stats from device (I manually did in evening), add workout that replaced original Fitbit data with better calories.
I already had a MFP-Fitbit sync issue, so only got 1 good sync a day, and the Fitbit daily burn usually went up so it would sync new daily burn to MFP.

Doing the VF3 sync first, then the FR did same thing, and usually burn went up so a higher value for daily calories meant new sync to MFP, along with that workout.

What I saw many times doing this though, Garmin Connect did not do the math for their daily burn with the FR workout before they resent the data.
Meaning Garmin would have say 2000 cal burn in evening just the tracker, with 200 cal of that bad data about to be replaced.
I'd sync the FR with workout of say 800 cal, and initially GC would show 2800 calories as total - and that would sync to MFP, along with the workout.

If I waited or went to a different view, it would show correctly the 2600 as daily burn. But it would not sync that to MFP again until the daily burn went up to 2900, 100 higher than last sync.

And if this all happened in the evening late enough - my daily burn sitting around was NOT going up to make that happen.
This was problem of too much positive adjustment.

I tested and I started and still do sync the workout first from FR.
It counts it all as Active calories, and syncs the workout over to MFP.
This allows me to correct the calorie burn if needed (my powermeter is different field for it's calories though on Garmin), though I have to manually correct the MFP side.

But even here - if I look at daily summary it doesn't correct daily burn lower until I refresh several times, eventually it'll lower to my correction.

Then I sync the VF3, and the Active calories which is only the workout (I'm very sedentary outside the workouts usually) lowers by the amount of BMR and duration of the workout (actually it recently changed to like sedentary level of burn, not sure what they are doing).

MFP now receives the daily burn (Active+Resting) and MFP does it's math with workout already there, and already expected calorie burn.


I'm throwing that all out because I'm wondering if you have a routine that may be getting hit with Garmin correcting themselves before they sync out figures?
Like have you started that workout on the device or another Garmin device?
Or manually entered the workout afterwards?

216 for workout of hiking for 75 min seems really low - is that still the case, underestimated calorie burns? or was pace really 1.65 mph perhaps?
385 for 83 min appears correct if you weigh 160 lbs - true?

I’ll have to read through your post a few more times to make sure I have fully grasped all that you said (ADHD, my reading comprehension is crap).

I have an Instinct, and mostly what gets logged is me starting an activity on my watch, and it automatically synching up. One thing you mentioned is that it would correct itself in time, and I think that might be the case because I looked back at our 6 mile hike a couple weeks ago and it looked as it should whereas that evening I know it showed -10 exercise calories because I remember scoffing and showing my husband.

The hike you referenced was, I think, one I did with the kids where we would truck it for a stretch, then they would stop to explore or climb some rocks, then keep going… 145lb female.

heybales

AHDH for reading - guess how I wrote it!!!!
Ok, not really, but with enough distractions I was probably on verge of timeout. Sorry about not as smooth as it could have been.

So both calorie burns actually are in the realm of realistic of what Garmin would give for weight and distance/pace/time. Especially with HR used along with distance.

Now I'd expect a single device to not have this issue of correcting itself within Garmin Connect with daily and workout data before a sync to MFP. Should come from the device correctly.
Only thing I could see GC doing is throwing in some auto-workout assignments if it thinks you did.

I did not notice back in Oct with my own data when you were reporting this, but what I seem to see now does match what was going on back then a bit.

Not unheard of for a company to test rollout changes to a subset of subscribers - you may have gotten it before me.

What I've noticed this year at some point, the Resting calories is actually at a level around sedentary it seems.
Not the RMR it used to be, which was slightly above BMR anyway.
In fact my web Summary page no longer mentions what RMR is and the formula it used to give.
But I noticed it's still on the Dashboard box for Calories In/Out: Active = Total Calories - RMR Calories (but the help link for RMR is actually not coming up now).

With that, it seems the Resting calories expects some level of activity, and Active calories is what's extra above it.
In other words, ughhh, imitating what Apple does.
Which is kind of what MFP does when it receives in activity tracker sync.
MFP already expects you to burn a certain number of calories for the Activity Level you selected, you tracker has to report above that to start getting positive adjustments, otherwise negative if enabled.

I think that's what Garmin is doing now similar - so while the daily burn ends up the same, where it happens to report the calories is different (if they did the math right, and that I gotta prove to myself still).

Does that past day for you with 83 min walk still have the same figures - or was that mid-day totals?

nooshi713

This happened to me with Fitbit a few months ago and it was a syncing issue. I tried everything but nothing worked, emailed MFP and of course after 3 days it corrected itself. 😋