Fitness trackers/watches, which ones integrate the best with MFP

klamond1

I currently have a fitbit sense. It works pretty good, but drops true HR at times. Like when I’m on the stair mill. 10 minutes in, doing intervals, sweat pouring, working really hard and HR is 85. Then it will jump to 150 after a few minutes which is more realistic. Same with weights. I can be fully pumped, breathing hard doing supersets and HR is 88. I know that’s not right. I do like that mfp reads direct after syncing and adds the exercise calories. In your opinion, which tracker/watch is the most reliable and integrates the best with MFP?

AnnPT77

This isn't exactly an answer, but: I have a Garmin. I don't sync it with MFP (long story, reasons irrelevant to your needs as per your post).

There are some activities where my Garmin loses wrist contact with my skin enough to drop the heart rate, give goofy results. For me, it's things with large amounts of arm flexing/movement, chiefly rowing (boat or machine), which is my main activity. It rarely or never drops for walking, lifting, biking as far as I can tell.

Therefore, I got a chest belt that syncs with the wristwatch via Bluetooth, and use that when I row. That essentially never drops heart rate, unless I didn't fasten the belt right and it slips off or the transmitter battery dies (rare) or something.

For me, I think the same thing would happen with any wrist-HR device. Some people like the ones that go on the upper arm; I think that would annoy me when rowing, and maybe still have enough arm movement to be unreliable. (Obviously I don't know that for sure, since I haven't tried it.)

When it comes to strength training, a heart rate based calorie estimate has very high odds of being incorrect, and potentially a major overestimate. That's because it's oxygen consumption that correlates with calorie expenditure, and heart rate is only a proxy for oxygen consumption, not a measurement of it (let alone a measurement of calorie burn!). Heart rate goes up because of breath-holding, strain, high ambient temperature, dehydration (potentially even minor dehydration), strong emotion, and more . . . not just oxygen consumption.

The implication is that heart rate is likely to overestimate calorie burn where those conditions are present. Most strength training has a significant anaerobic component, i.e., effort that doesn't involve burning many calories, but involves things like strain and intra-body pressure. Heart rate will tend to overestimate strength training calorie burn.

This is one case where I think a METS-based calorie estimate is probably a better bet. IMU, some good trackers now shift to METS for estimating strength training calories these days, if they know that strength training is what the user is doing.

klamond1

Thank you, really good information 😊

klamond1

So looking up mets, I’m guessing outside of breathing into a device there isn’t an accurate way to measure it. If it is measuring oxygen consumption/volume and comparing it to resting consumption. Breath rate doesn’t really mean more or less as it doesn’t take into account depth of the breath. I could be way off though. In my case that’s ok though. I don’t need that kind of detail. Im able to hold weight and know when I’m working hard, I guess that’s good enough.

AnnPT77

klamond1 wrote: »

So looking up mets, I’m guessing outside of breathing into a device there isn’t an accurate way to measure it. If it is measuring oxygen consumption/volume and comparing it to resting consumption. Breath rate doesn’t really mean more or less as it doesn’t take into account depth of the breath. I could be way off though. In my case that’s ok though. I don’t need that kind of detail. Im able to hold weight and know when I’m working hard, I guess that’s good enough.

MFP uses the METS method under the covers. There's a theoretical flaw in how they implemented it, IMU, but it's not arithmetically very important for something like strength training. (The effect of the flaw is worst for things done at low per-minute calorie expenditure for long time periods, such as very long, slow walking.)

From a common-sense perspective, METS are also likely to be relatively more reasonable/reliable for some activities vs. others. (Example: Using body weight in a calc for something that doesn't vary much with bodyweight could be iffy. Ditto for things where individuals' objective intensity level varies lots, but there's only one average-y METS number.)

I just log strength training in MFP in the cardiovascular section as "Strength training (weight lifting, weight training)" and consider it close enough. That one's for standard reps/sets strength training with normal rest intervals between sets, so just log the whole time period. (Of course, if you take a long break to do something, don't count that time!) Some of the circuit training options might work better for higher-rep lower-weight get-your-HR-up kind of strength-y stuff.

You can also do your own METS estimates using formulas and research-based typical METS values you can find here:

https://sites.google.com/site/compendiumofphysicalactivities/home

There are also some calculators out there that will let you input a METS value (such as from the Compendium) and your personal characteristics, get a calorie number. This is one, picked pretty much at random:

https://ergo.human.cornell.edu/MetsCaloriesCalculator/MetsCaloriesCalculator.htm

Anything METS estimated that way of course isn't as accurate as a metabolic lab, but maybe good enough to work out in this context, eh? I've been eating back exercise calories for almost 8 years now, year of loss and 7 of maintenance, and various approximations/estimates have worked fine for me. (I estimate different activities using different methods, personally.)

There's other stuff that I think about exercise calorie estimating, but what the heck do I know, I'm just a li'l ol' lady with lots of opinions; and this essay is too long already. 🤣

If I had a decent all-day calorie estimate from my Garmin as compared with my logging history, I'd just sync that to MFP and call it good. That works well for lots of people with Garmin, Fitbit, any decent compatible tracker. For some reason, I'm kind of an outlier for the base calorie estimate from either Garmin or MFP, so that won't work at all well for me.