Digifit, Fitbit, and MFP

kevinsmithrn

Hello - just wanted to tell everybody how I set up my digital apps and how they seem to be working together. Before I bought my fitbit I used MFP and entered my exercise manually. Like everyone else the MFP native exercise calories always seemed a bit high but I just rounded down and it seemed to work for me. I added a heart rate monitor belt and paired it with my iphone (Bluetooth). Then I signed up with digifit to record my cardio workouts. I'm a heart patient so I really like the heart rate feedback while doing cardio work and how you can really tweak your workouts in real time to improve performance. Being a heart patient I take a mild beta blocker. ( medication that acts as a governor for your heart muscle) anyway this medication limits the high end of your heart rate so the digifit app lets you customize your HR zones for a more personalize approach to HR tracking. Digifit and MFP link nicely and when I am done with my cardio workouts I just sync and the exercise cals cross over without manual input required. ( note : I only record my cardio workouts because mixing and matching exercise seems to lead to overly high calories estimates. Example - today I recorded 3 workouts on digifit - a 5k row at home on my concept 2 - a 10 minute warmup on elliptical at my gym - a 20 minute treadmill run to finish my workout. Today was arm day so during the 50 odd minutes I was lifting weights I had my heart rate monitor off. Anyway total digifit calories somewhere around 650. A week or so ago I added a fitbit flex and I couldn't be more pleased - it's a great motivator at work - parking at the far end of the parking lot and walking and taking stairs instead of elevators really racks up those step miles and the sleep monitor function is a great bonus. Even those all these apps are "partners" they are a little touchy when working together and there was some problems with them syncing correctly - this is how I did it - not an expert by any means but it seems to be working well for me. I killed the links between all apps. Then I linked digifit to fitbit then fitbit to MFP. Notice MFP IS NOT LINKED DIRECTLY TO DIGIFIT. I leave the fitbit on all day - when Digifit is recording it's calories trump the fitbit calories automatically - now here's the key - sync your digifit workout results after you do them - just hit the sync button from the results page on the iphone app. Then whenever you want sync your fitbit - it will pick up the cardio workouts from digifit - then you can load up the MFP app when you want to update your food diary or whatever and after the sync you will have your "FITBIT ADJUSTMENT" it will include your activity steps thus far in the day and your exercise calories. This "adjustment" seems to be fairly accurate for me.. anyway I'm happy with the results - there was a little hiccup as I had forgotten to set my profile as sedentary ( in order to set my MFP calories to there lowest amount ) this resulted in giving me an extra 300 plus calories that I couldn't account for- the MFP profile change fixed this. This is my system and it's really working for me - it seems complicated but it's all done from apps on my iphone and takes seconds - much less time than it takes to enter items into my food diary - sorry for the long post but you guys have helped me a lot attaining my goals - so I thought I would help others who were experiencing difficulties and didn't have the time to research the solutions. Thanks - hope this helps.

rowie78

Hi Kevin,

Great post, thank you!
I just wanted to ask whether your workouts that you log with Digifit actually sync as individual activity records in your fitbit log?
I'm having a few problems getting all of the apps to work together.
It would be great to know what I should be seeing in the fitbit log after digifit has done a sync.

Cheers!

Rowena

kevinsmithrn

In the Fitbit app - today's cardio workout showed up on the dashboard as " digifit cardio 22:02 " today's row session showed up as " digifit other 20:02". This morning when I was getting on the treadmill I opened my digifit app and selected workout then cardio then indoor workout then start... 20 mins and 2 secs later I stopped my workout and end the workout on digifit. I then selected the results page and synced... Now since digifit does not talk to MFP directly - I didn't link them - fitbit includes the digifit excercise and it's step count calories ( time wearing HRM trumps the normal fitbit calorie credit during those 20 mins)... Now here's the thing I think u were asking - in MFP the excercise diary only shows the fitbit calorie adjustment - which I kind of like better because I never like the way digifit used to send over excercise calories anyway - just seemed a lot! This all seems complicated but I swear it works great... Just break all the links. Then link digifit to fitbit then link fitbit to MFP.... Then your done... Remember MFP will not be accurate until you sinc digifit excercises the open up fitbit to get a current step count - then open up MFP and your good.... I group all my fitness icons in one folder on my phone... It helps! Good luck!