Apple Watch Calorie Adjustment Zeros After Adding Apple Watch Workout

jmm7200

I have been searching for an answer, and I can only find discussions from a few years ago and no answer.

My MFP diary shows the Apple Watch calorie adjustment correctly in the Exercise section as it should until I perform a workout on my Apple Watch. The workout can be anything: outdoor walk, strength training, elliptical, etc. Once it syncs with MFP, the workout shows up in the Exercise section of my diary, but the Apple Watch steps calorie adjustment goes to zero. I have tried everything, but it still does it.

This happened to me a while back where I had 20,000+ steps in the day, but I only had my Apple Watch Outdoor Walk turned on for a fraction of those steps. MFP only gave me credit for the small outdoor walk workout.

This looks like it has been a known issue for a while now. Is there now a way to resolve this?

I have MFP Premium and I use an Apple Watch Series 6 and an iPhone 12 Pro.

heybales

Convince Apple to send the correct figures to MFP like other trackers do.

In other words - forget resolving the issue. If you like fun with math I can share the issue.

There is a work around though if you really want MFP to do what it wants to do - correct it's estimate of your daily burn using that adjustment, and then create an eating goal with a set deficit from it.

If you want that - unlink accounts, set the MFP app setting for step source back to nothing.
Find in MFP Apps the Pacer app and sync to that from both MFP and Apple.
Confirm the step source is now Pacer.

They talk to each other through that app - and Pacer sends the correct figures to MFP to do math with.

Total Daily Burned - pretty simple figure, total means total, base or sedentary burn, extra daily activity, and exercise.
Pacer sends it, Apple failed, MFP allowed it.

Jthanmyfitnesspal

I see some things like this on Garmin as well. I will presume your activity setting on MFP is "sedentary," which I recommend when linking to a fitness tracker. Call the MFP calculation your "baseline calories," as you would burn sitting at your desk all day. Any activity would presumably raise your total needs above this value.

It is essential that the profile information for your apple watch is very close to that at MFP. Then the watch will have a very similar estimate for your baseline needs.

It seems as though MFP pulls your "total calories" and your "workout calories" from the tracker (but not your step calories, which are inferred by MFP as follows). MFP takes the total, subtracts the workout (which it reports in your diary), then subtracts the MFP baseline. If there is a residual, they are assumed to be un-accounted-for activity calories, and they are reported as "steps." If everything is set up right, this residual can't be negative.

(Note there is an MFP option called "negative calorie adjustments" which will actually subtract from your daily calories if the residual is negative. I never turn that on.)

But, even when everything is set up correctly, the step adjustment can be very small or zero. It really depends what your level of activity aside from exercising was. Also, it is not perfectly accurate, and it has mystified me as well in the past.

Best of luck!