fitbit and HRM -- how to enter it right on MFP?

ucfeng02
ucfeng02 Posts: 2 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
How do I use both correctly? I wear the HRM when I take actually classes, I wear the fitbit all day long. I manually enter the time I start, number of minutes, and calories burned (on MFP) for the classes but when the fitbit auto syncs, it doesn't seem to be accurate. Take this morning (its 11:00am ish east coast). I wore fitbit and had HRM on during boot camp style class. Per my HRM (Polar FT7) I started a 9:31, did it 57 minutes, burned 510 calories. I entered all of this into MFP manually. Then my fitbit synced and I had 3532 steps but when you look on MFP, it lists boot camp 510 calories burned and then for fitbit it says -132 calories burned so my total for calories burned shows up as -378--- how did I 'lose' some of the calories I burned by exercising? This happens every since time. I didn't wear my fitbit on Wednesday when I took the class and that is the only time I didnt 'lose' calories. I should still have burned that 510 calories right? Am I confused or entering it wrong??

Replies

  • brianpperkins
    brianpperkins Posts: 6,124 Member
    Disable negative calorie adjustments in your settings.
  • Pirate_chick
    Pirate_chick Posts: 1,216 Member
    That's right, fitbit deducted the calories over the MFP calculation. Since you manually entered your class MFP does not count the activity from the fit bit for those 57 minutes. Essentially fit bit is deducting the calories from your daily goal total making your total or net calories consumed fewer than your actual calories consumed. When you have not burned the amount of calories MFP has calculated fit bit will then use a plus sign to show that it's adding calories to the total amount consumed. It confused me at first too. You're only losing out on calories if you see a plus sign.

    Right now these are my figures

    1320 Goal
    774 Food
    -
    55 Exercise
    =
    719 Net

    If I was under my projected goal it would read

    1320 Goal
    774 Food
    +
    55 Exercise
    =
    829 Net
  • Kinseykick
    Kinseykick Posts: 59
    I don't have either but maybe just not wear the fitbit during your class so that it doesn't get confused. I'm looking into getting both as well so thanks for posting this question because I'm sure I will run into it in the future.
  • pammiejean40
    pammiejean40 Posts: 56 Member
    I wear the fitbit to. The downfall to the fitbit is it doesn't register your heart rate. Simply your steps. So it doesn't know the difference between walking, running, biking… so on and so forth. I just go by what MPF says. If you have the fitbit synced with MPF it will credit you for calories burned as well. I notice on the days I don't work out it will credit me for calories burn depending on my activity level for that day.
  • linka411
    linka411 Posts: 101 Member
    In case you're not yet aware of this group, you can post here if you have any fitbit related questions:

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/groups/home/1290-fitbit-users
  • scubasuenc
    scubasuenc Posts: 626 Member
    I use both regularly. I have negative adjustments disabled.

    If I wear both the HRM and the FitBit, I enter the calories from the HRM into MFP. This overwrites the FitBit calorie number on the FitBit device. For example, because I wear the FitBit all the time, I might have it on when I go for a bicycle ride. My HRM will show I burned 300 calories, but the FitBit has about 150. I go into MFP and enter the start time, duration and calories. When the FitBit next syncs it will pick up the MFP calorie burn for that activity.

    For walking I generally just let the FitBit capture the activity as I have found its calorie burns to be close to the HRM. I don't enter the walk into MFP at all. If I had a nice walk, they will show up in MFP as a FitBit positive adjustment at some point during the day.

    Most days the estimated TDEE is within 200 calories between the two. I have compared them to my actual TDEE and it gets me within a reasonable range.

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