Calories burned SO confusing!

ToniOliviaLynn

I have read all the articles already and they confused me more, so please don't reply with a link telling me to read a MFP article.
I am so confused about the calories earned through exercise. It is so inconsistent. One weekend I did a 10k one day and a 5k the next, went on a 2 hour bike ride, and totaled over 35,000 steps for the weekend. My calories earned back each day was about 600. The next weekend, I hung out in my garden, got less than 10,000 steps a day, and my calories earned back was over 1000 a day. I use a Garmin but my Garmin isn't even set to track calories. It just tells me whatever MFP says. I've read these articles that say to see a break down click on the activity in MFP diary. That only takes me to the screen that says I'm connected to Garmin. How can the exact same walk on my lunch break each day give me 100 calories back one day and 600 another? Is this a broken algorithm? Math is pretty consistent and there's no way that piddling in the garden burns more calories than 2 hours of biking and running a 5k. What can be done to simplify and fix this?

springlering62

This doesn’t make sense. If you’ve synced a fitness tracker to MFP, the tracker is telling MFP what the burn is, not vice versa.

MFP is simply a blank slate to record the tracker info to.

Sounds like an issue with the Garmin sync.

Sorry, I’m an Apple Watch user so can’t tell you diddly about Garmin. But maybe try disconnecting and re-syncing the device??

I don’t know if this makes a difference, but with Apple, I have to “start” and “end” an exercise for it to record as exercise and thus post to MFP.

Did you start or end any of these on your Garmin?

If I walk the mile to the yoga studio, I don’t record it as a walk. It just goes in under regular steps, and counts as part of my “highly active” activity setting I chose during set up.

If you are set as highly active or record long or frequent exercise, you can get some pretty wonky numbers. For Apple Watch users, Apple and MFP set up an “Apple Watch adjustment” that deducts calories that are recorded as duplicate burns. Again, no clue if Garmin is doing that.

Do you have any kind of negative burn recorded down under exercises?

This is how it looks to an Apple Watch user (my food diary today) who has enabled the adjustment:

ToniOliviaLynn

I normally don't record activities on Garmin. It just measures my steps. If I do record an exercise it will tell me a calorie burn, but if I don't record any activities at all, it's just a step count. MFP gives me an adjustment that I thought was based on that step count. It says "Garmin Connect Calorie Adjustment 10,000 Steps." but one day that 10,000 steps will be 200 calories and another day it will be 900 calories. The same amount of steps, but dramatically different calorie adjustment. If I get those 10,000 steps running 5 miles, it might only give me 300 calorie adjustment but if I get those 10,000 steps spending all day relaxing at a cookout and gardening it might give me 800 calorie adjustment. I just don't understand how it determines the amount of calories to deduct per steps.