Negative calorie adjustment seems inconsistent

SK8790za

I want to have the most accurate calorie calculation so I have enabled negative calorie adjustments but I don’t understand why on the days I do the most activity, I have the largest negative adjustment.
1. On a day where I ran for an hour, I burned 424 calories and did 13795 steps, I got a -250 adjustment - so I was only given an additional 174 for exercise.
2. But then on another day, I did half an hour run 263 cal and 9532 steps for which I got +185 , giving me an additional 448 for exercise.

How does this make sense?
I have a garmin vivoactive 4

Lietchi

The thing to understand about the calorie adjustment is that it is simply comparing these two numbers:
- what MFP thinks you burn in a day based on your settings and stats (including your activity level, which is not supposed to include intentional exercise +the calorie burns from your exercise sessions according to your Garmin)
- the total daily calorie burn according to your Garmin.

You should know that Garmin sends over gross calorie burns for exercise, which includes your BMR calories. So when MFP compares your total calorie burn for the day between Garmin and your MFP activity level setting, those BMR calories get 'taken away' through the calorie adjustment (no double counting of BMR calories). The longer the exercise session, the more calories this concerns. Extreme example: when I go hiking on holiday, I often don't reach sedentary level outside of my hike (very few steps outside of my hike) but I do have 3 hours or more of hiking (so 3 hours or more of BMR calories that get 'taken away' through the calorie adjustment) which leads to a considerable negative Garmin connect calorie adjustment (but still a positive total exercise adjustment since my activity level is set at sedentary).

Your Garmin calorie adjustment does not just look at exercise but your activity in general: on the day you ran for an hour, most of your steps were included in the run, whereas the other day you had a higher step count outside of exercise? Other factors can influence your total calorie burn as per Garmin: I have found that the same amount of steps doesn't always give me the same calories. For example: my HR is lower on my period, so I'll get a lower adjustment then, compared to for example steps taken when I'm stressed (elevated heart rate).

Without knowing what your activity level setting is and seeing some screenshots it's hard to tell if anything is wrong. But you can tap on your calorie adjustment in the MFP app and see if the number sent over by Garmin there is the same as the total calorie burn you see in the Garmin Connect app (under Calories, not Calories In/Out).