893 calories from 1634 steps with Garmin Sync???

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Anthonyvaughan
Anthonyvaughan Posts: 1 Member
in MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions
Hey all,

I am really confused! I have started syncing my Garmin watch with MFP and include the steps as this is more accurate than my phone step count. However, I am realising that the calorie adjustment seems way off.

Already today I have apparently burnt 893 calories from just 1600 steps. This is surely a mistake and is making me confused.

My base calories are at 1780 a day in line with my goal but I apparently have 2,673 calories remaining (i haven't had any food today yet).

My activity level is set right (not very active) as I have an office based job.

Can anyone help?

Answers

  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,127 Member
    edited February 6
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    Have you checked your Garmin Connect app? How many active calories do you see there?
    The step count itself is irrelevant, MFP doesn't use that to calculate your calorie goal.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,187 Member
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    Yes, generally the calorie adjustment is a reconciliation between what MFP expected you to burn (based on the data entered in your profile) and what the tracker believes you burned. MFP will pretty much take the tracker's word about your calorie expenditure, and record an adjustment that by end of day will reflect what the tracker saw you as burning, minus your deficit for the weight loss rate you told MFP you wanted.

    The calories from your tracker could be steps, other exercise, movement on your job, playing catch with your kid, cleaning the garage, or any other thing. The adjustment will almost never numerically match your tracker's active calories, exercise calories, etc.

    The steps are just a memo entry, not anything that directly equates to the calorie adjustment.

    One thing that I'll mention even though it may confuse the matter: For an office worker, "not very active" may be right . . . but it may not. If we only think about steps-based activity (which is not everything relevant), then the border between "not very active" (a.k.a. "sedentary") and "lightly active" is probably going to be somewhere in the range of 3000-5000 steps (-ish). If your step totals are more than that, or close to that but there's other non-exercise activity in your daily life, you might be lightly active or higher in daily life activity level. If so, you'd get a bigger calorie adjustment.

    Note: If you have negative adjustments turned off in MFP, MFP will adjust calories upward if you're more active than it expects, but generally won't adjust downward (by end of day) if you're less active. I'd turn negative adjustments on, personally.

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