Too many active calories?

Stefanie8137
Stefanie8137 Posts: 1 Member
in MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions
Hi,

I have my Garmin Lily connected to the app and I get the impression that it's double-counting the calories from a run and the steps I made that day.

Yesterday, I had 380kcal from a run + 560 active calories from my step counter. However, the majority of those steps came from the run, so I don't see why they should be counted again.

It said that I burned a total of 3100 calories yesterday but I mostly sat at my desk and did a 40min workout. That seems excessive.

Could someone give me feedback?

Best,
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Answers

  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,888 Member
    18k is high for only what looks like a 5km run, so you did a fair amount of walking too.
    By the way, steps don't give you calories, not directly anyway. It's just a metric that Garmin sends to MFP but MFP doesn't use it to give you calories (gain uses it indirectly to calculate your total calories for the day, which is what MFP uses to calculate your adjustment.

    There are a few things to check:

    Is it the sync that is not working, or is it your watch itself that is giving you many calories? To check that, you need to compare the total calories burned according to Garmin with the number MFP received.

    MFP: tap on the calorie adjustment line and then again on the number of the adjustment. You'll compare total burn as received by MFP with the total burn indicated in Garmin Connect under Health stats > Calories.
    If the number matches, the sync works fine and the high number is coming from your watch.

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    If the sync is correct and your watch is giving these high numbers, how accurate are the numbers from your watch?

    Estimating how many calories someone burns is precisely that: an estimate. Even watches just estimate, based on a series of data from you and based on data from population averages. You may or may not be average the best way to tell is to follow the number one month or two (or menstrual cycles if applicable) and see if your weight does what you expect it to do.

    Anecdotally, if these high numbers are occasional and not a daily occurrence: I've noticed that Garmin gives me more calories for the same number of steps when my heart rate is higher (from stress, illness...): that's an inherent flaw in how they calculate calories burned.

    (Experience has taught me Garmin actually underestimates my total burn by at least 100, at least with my previous watch - still collecting data for the new one I'm using currently)

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