MFP/Garmin Connect Integration

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fyoung1111
fyoung1111 Posts: 109 Member
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/05/01/myfitnesspal-starts-tracking-steps-to-grow-the-worlds-largest-nutrition-database/

"Many of these free apps, like MyFitnessPal, RunKeeper and Runtastic, cross reference data with one another via open APIs to help them scale up. Over time though, some may choose to stop sharing data in a bid to create single platforms that users go to for a holistic view of their health and activity. This seems to be the road MyFitnessPal is going down with its private API and now, the inclusion of steps tracking."

Lets hope this new attitude does not derail Vivofit/Garmin Connect Integration with MyFirtnessPal.
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  • fyoung1111
    fyoung1111 Posts: 109 Member
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    Here is the manual workaround discussion from an earlier post of mine. It takes less than a minute a day once you get used to doing it.

    Now that I have been mucking around in MFP for a bit, I realize that they have their own version of adulterated BMR. At least they don't call it BMR like Garmin does. MFP calls it "Calories Burned From Normal Daily Activity". My number (with normal daily activities setting on Sedentary) is 1,900 which is 70 calories higher than my Garminized BMR of 1,830 and 25% higher than my "Real" BMR of 1525. What this means is that MFP, like Garmin, has baked some level of activity into their baseline number.

    To make manual integration work out right, you would add your Garmin Total Calories less your MFP "Calories Burned From Normal Daily Activity" (CBFNDA) in the form of a Vivifit Custom Exercise in order to feed MFP an accurate picture of TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure or BMR+Activity Based Calorie Burn).

    For example, Garmin Connect Modern (GCM) says I burned 4,254 total calories yesterday (1,830 BMR + 2,424 Active). Subtracting MFP's 1,900 CBFNDA from 4,254 leaves 2,354 which is the number of calories I put in as a custom exercise. Works perfectly.

    I wish I had all of the time back I have spent whining at Polar and Garmin about their failure to integrate with MFP. I still wish it was automatic but, for now, I trust this more than anything Garmin might decide to feed MFP on their own. The main problem with this work-around is that you don't get accurate real-time feedback regarding your status at any point "Today" as GCM does not give you an accurate total calorie burn until you sync after midnight yesterday so this is necessarily a "morning after" retrospective exercise.

    To summarize, sometime TODAY

    1. Get YESTERDAY's Total Calories From the Steps widget on your GCM Health & Fitness (default) dashboard
    2. Subtract your MFP Calories Burned from Normal Daily Activities (found under Goals in the Your Diet Profile section)
    3. Add the difference to MFP as a custom exercise (I call mine Vivofit Activity but call it anything you want)

    All done. How easy is that?
  • ann121212
    ann121212 Posts: 290 Member
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    Thanks for those posts. I had just been putting my garmin active calories in as aerobic exercise - now it has been updated to a customised vivofit adjustment.

    I am also using my mfp base line calories subtracted from my daily garmin connect total to give me a more accurate (from a mfp view) exercise total. Although I am adding the exercise calories to the following days mfp diary to simplify things.

    I am looking forward to see how it all shakes down :)
  • woodzer24
    woodzer24 Posts: 1 Member
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    Wow! Thank you for that information. I have contacted vivofit and MFP via facebook, have not had an answer from vivofit yet as just done it but MFP said

    "MyFitnessPal We definitely plan on adding more integration partners to our program in the future. At this time, we can not say who those partners will be, but we will definitely take your recommendation into consideration when we do. May we also recommend that you contact them as well and let them know you would be interested in having them integrate with us?

    For now, to view a list of our current partners please visit: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/apps

    In the meantime, thank you for using the program. Please let us know if you have any other problems or questions. We wish you all the success in reaching and maintaining your weight management and fitness goals."

    I am really hoping that they add garmin vivofit intergration soon, from all the threads that i have looked at there seems to be a great demand for this.
    Thank you for your help.
    Amy
  • fyoung1111
    fyoung1111 Posts: 109 Member
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    Hi Amy, Thanks for supporting the Garmin/MFP integration cause. There have been enough leaks that we know conversations must have been taking place between these two companies for months. I still think it will happen and expect to be getting some new information on the subject from an authoritative source soon.

    Having said that, the fitness world seems to be migrating away from integrating related best in class apps (think MFP and Fitbit) to trying to "own" 100% of the user even when the offering is sub-par (think MFP counting some of your steps on an iPhone 5s and pretending to be a Fitbit). Lets hope thatis not what is happening here.
  • fyoung1111
    fyoung1111 Posts: 109 Member
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    Update. I still cannot guarantee anything but I can say that Garmin is well aware of its Vivofit Users' demand for MyFitnessPal integration. I can also say that Garmin is not investing any effort in developing a calorie consumption capability of their own.

    As a side note, this new steps thing on MFP is, maybe, a little better than absolutely nothing in the way of activity monitoring but not much. It's given be a 113 calorie adjustment for 5,512 steps at 3:30 PM (Vivo number 7,462 steps) including a 5K run.
  • ann121212
    ann121212 Posts: 290 Member
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    New step thing on MFP? I think I must have missed it. Could you tell me more about it?
  • fyoung1111
    fyoung1111 Posts: 109 Member
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    http://blog.myfitnesspal.com/2014/05/now-you-can-track-your-steps-in-myfitnesspal/

    "If you’re lucky enough to have an iPhone 5S, we’ve got an extra treat just for you: Using the M7 co-processor found in the 5S, you can now automatically track your steps simply by using you iPhone 5S—no external apps or devices necessary. However, if you have an activity tracker that you already enjoy using, you can choose exactly how you want to track your steps. Two things iPhone 5S users should know: - See more at: http://blog.myfitnesspal.com/2014/05/now-you-can-track-your-steps-in-myfitnesspal/#sthash.MThzmZvS.dpuf"

    It's pretty lame.
  • ann121212
    ann121212 Posts: 290 Member
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    Ahhhh thank you. I did miss that completely :flowerforyou:
  • Jen0414
    Jen0414 Posts: 466 Member
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    So what you are saying is it is not worth using? hehe
  • fyoung1111
    fyoung1111 Posts: 109 Member
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    Well . . . if I didn't have anything else, I might use it but I would probably use pocket tracker on Runkeeper instead. It does the same thing and feeds the calories to MFP. Since I'm already wearing three purpose built fitness trackers, I don't think I'll be adding another.

    If you essentially "wear" your iPhone 5s all day (I don't) it might be fun to compare the steps that pocket tracker or MFP Steps give you compred to Vivofit. Just remember Segal's law that states: "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."
  • marcellinus2121
    marcellinus2121 Posts: 17 Member
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    I really, really hope we'll be able to sync MFP to the vivofit really, really soon.
  • marcellinus2121
    marcellinus2121 Posts: 17 Member
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    Calories burned from normal daily activity: 2190.
    BMR (Garmin): 1639.

    Isn't this a bit too much of a difference? I wonder if MFP assumes you're moving at least a bit every day?
  • fyoung1111
    fyoung1111 Posts: 109 Member
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    My MFP Calories Burned From Normal Daily Activity= 1,900 cal/day

    My Garmin Baseline = 1,848

    My BMR from MFP's own online calculator found here: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator 1,520.

    So it looks like Garmin is baking in an extra 20% (which is what they have told me) and MFP is baking in an extra 25%.

    I am philosophically against baking in any level of activity. We have a 24/7 activity tracker. Let it MEASURE our activity and then add in an appropriate calorie burn for it.

    Garmin admits that the Vivofit's accelerometer measures all activity. In a kind of stupid move, Garmin focused first on eliminating the counting of false steps. Having achieved that, they began awarding extra calories only for steps (or HR) and ignored the rest of the data replacing it instead with this arbitrary 20% BMR "mark-up". Too bad they made that choice when they had the tools to do something more elegant but equating precision with calorie expenditure estimates is a fools errand anyway.

    So the trick here is simply to make sure to exceed MFP's Calories Burned From Normal Daily Activity every day and to record that positive difference as exercise.

    I do expect Garmin to be integrating soon but they have some internal messes to clean up first. Patience is a virtue :).
  • marcellinus2121
    marcellinus2121 Posts: 17 Member
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    Either it makes no sense or I just don't get it. Comparing our numbers just makes it so much more confusing. In this case I'd go with Garmin. MFP's BMR says 1368. Maybe that's the number to consider when looking at the calories registered by the Vivofit?
  • fyoung1111
    fyoung1111 Posts: 109 Member
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    You are right. Lets start over.

    Please go to : http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator. Plug in your numbers and tell me what you get for BMR.

    Next, go into settings on both MFP and Garmin Connect and make sure they have the same values for height, weight, sex, and age.

    Let me know when you have done that and we will go to the next step.
  • marcellinus2121
    marcellinus2121 Posts: 17 Member
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    Allright.
    The MFP-calculator gets BMR 1375.
    GC BMR: 1639.
    That seems fine. I can live with that. But "From normal daily activity": 2200 seems way off.

    The values regarding height, weight, sex and age are the same. I've double-checked that. I use the Tanita-scale every morning, the weight appears in GC and I register the weight in MFP.
  • Jen0414
    Jen0414 Posts: 466 Member
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    I think I might be blind. Where do I find my BMR on GC?
  • fyoung1111
    fyoung1111 Posts: 109 Member
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    You are not blind. You are just inexperienced :).

    After you enter all of your personal data into Garmin Connect Modern (GCM) it will calculate your BMR and then add 20% to that arbitrarily.

    Once you have completed a complete midnight to midnight day with Vivofit you will begin seeing bars on your Total Calories graph on your dashboard. The bottom portion of the bar for each day will be blue and will almost never change. The red top portion (if any) is the calorie credit you got for activity over and above whatever it was Garmin padded your real BMR by 20% for.

    If you let your mouse pointer hover over the blue portion of one of the bars your "Garminized" version of your BMR will be magically revealed. Note however that this bar grows as the day wears on to Today's blue bar will only be the pro rata portion of BMR depending on what time you last synced. Yes, it only grows if you sync. Strange no?

    How simple is that? Can't believe you didn't figure it out for yourself in the whole hour you have actually had a Vivofit in your hands :).
  • fyoung1111
    fyoung1111 Posts: 109 Member
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    Yes marcellinus21 that seems too high.

    On MFP, please go MY HOME/Settings/Update diet/fitness profile and tell me which radio button is "pressed" here:

    How would you describe your normal daily activities?
    Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
    Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesman)
    Active: Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. waitress, mailman)
    Very Active: Spend most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)

    For people like you with activity trackers, I would always recommend the lowest upwatd adjustment possible. In this case that is Sedentary.

    Please try that and let us all know what happened.
  • Jen0414
    Jen0414 Posts: 466 Member
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    Thanks for this!! Very helpful!!