Garmin connected to MFP
Replies
-
Smooth sailing for me so far. A slight difference in my bmr between mfp and garmin - which follows through in the active calories, but that is no biggie, and it is the same every day so it will be easy to factor in.0
-
I'm having problems in general in Firefox, so I'm using Google Chrome. Have you tried a different browser?
I know Garmin was shutdown for a bit today, they are obviously working and tweaking it daily.
At various times today everything looked right and other times it was a terrible mess--depending on my logged meals. As for the meal labels--I don't know. There is something to do with the meals, but I don't know if it's the labels or just the mere existence of more than 4 meals and that some of those meals somewhere in the middle might be left blank. I could NOT get the correct cals to move from MFP to Garmin UNTIL I made sure that all of my day's calories were contained in 4 consecutive meals (no skipped meals in the middle; but skipped meals on the ends, like in the first and sixth position is okay). ugh!!!!
If you are having troubles, just try it...to log all your foods into just 4 of your meals, all consecutive (no skipped meals) and see if that helps. I finally moved my early morning meal down to my mid-morning slot which had been blank, just so I could have 4 consecutive logged meals--after that everything showed up okay in Garmin. Before I did that, it was only taking data from part of the day because it wouldn't bring anything from earlier because of that skipped meal. sigh. They've GOT to get that fixed.0 -
It was all so fine. A couple of hours ago I had -2 kcal on the dashboard. Now all of the sudden I again have 617 kcal left (it's just before midnight). Just like yesterday, but not the exact numbers. What??? I've tried all tricks I can think of, but nothing changes this.0
-
Could it have dropped one of your meals (subtotal)?
I had something like this happen in the middle of the day, after I logged some food, it suddenly dropped an entire subtotal of my topmost meal. I'm pretty sure it was because of skipped meal. IOW, when early breakfast was logged, everything was great...but when I logged lunch (and skipped late breakfast), it dropped the early breakfast subtotal completely. After trying to get it back all day and then having more problems when I logged dinner....I finally just made sure I logged everything into 4 consecutive meals, with no skipped meals, and it all adds up now.
Also, just to mention, they sync weight too. I couldn't figure out WHY suddenly my Garmin BMR was a tad lower. Then I realized that I'd logged a slight weightloss last week in MFP, but NOT in Garmin. Well, they synced my weight and when they did...my bmr went down just a tad.
I'm happy for the weight loss, but not for the lower guaranteed daily cals. 0 -
Thank you for the reply. I'll have to take a look at meals and see if there's someting I'm missing. Right now, I simply don't get it...0
-
Ok, NOW things seem to be showing up. The full sized page HAD the data, but the small widget on dashboard never did. Played with the back/forth arrow and another small arrow thing on the widget and now I have a small widget with calorie info from both today and yesterday. Strange but very happy it seems to be working now.0
-
Well it's been a couple of days now and there is definitely an issue for me. The problem is that when the Garmin adjust meant is made, it looks at total calories burned in MFP, not just calories burned during normal activity. It then subtracts the Vivofit number from this and enters the difference as an adjustment.
So for instance if my calorie goal in MFP is 2300 and let's say that my vivofit number for that day turned out to be 2200. Then one would reasonably expect that the Garmin adjustment would be 100 (2300-2200)
Trouble is that if I ride my bike and burn 2000 calories, the system adds that to my expected number (2300+2000 =4300) and then deducts the base Garmin number. Therefore I get an adjustment of 4300-2200=2100. So effectively this becomes an upward adjustment and reduces my remaining calories by 2100!!!
The bike ride data is already in Garmin Connect via my edge, but the sync takes no notice of it. They should either add it to the number coming across or not include it in the MFP base number. Negative adjustment on or off makes no difference.
I have made MFP aware of it and we'll see on Monday what they come up with. Till then I just have to delete the Garmin adjustment and put in my own
0 -
I see what you mean. I noticed that Activities are ignored. In my case it's usually running or walking anyway, and tbh the calories counted by the hrm are sometimes completely off the wall. (Especially when I do two bak to back runs and one might be an hour and the other half as much but Garmin shows MORE calories burned ??.) I was relieved when that mess was ignored, but it really doesn't help folks like you. Maybe they'll have that fixed later in the Summer, when the other sports watches will come online.0
-
I'm still having the problem where my food must be logged in "Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snacks" or else things go haywire. I don't like it one bit. I have always had my meals as 5am-9am, 9-1, 1-5, 5-9, 9-5, because those are specific segments of my day. Changing the labels makes all my back data look ridiculous. Really hoping they fix that--it's got to just be some Garmin programming, b/c I rather doubt that other 3rd party apps are like that (like all fitbit users have those standard labels in their mfp diary?? doubtful!)0
-
Actually Activities are not ignored. For example, yesterday my only exercise was a cycling Activity and those calores came into GC as Active and moved over to MFP perfectly. What nobody will see until the July update is FR or Edge data. Beginning with that update, the Forerunner and Edge data will replace Vivofit data (HRM paired or not) for any minutes that they are used simultaneously. It's actually the perfect solution but, for now, it is just a promise. Until then, FR and Edge data are simply ignored. For that reason, if you are doing non-step based exercise wear your HRM or you won't get credit for your effort.
Sherry's comment about activity based calories being all messed up is a different issue that I am still providing test data for and Garmin is actively working on fixing. There is more information on this particular mess here: https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?90474-Vivofit-Calorie-Expenditure-Mess.0 -
This problem may be a variation of the problems being discussed about the connection between vivofit and MFP. I apologize in advance if this has been noted before.
The connection has been good for the first few days. Now however, my exercise credit transferred over from the vivofit is being subtracted from my daily calorie goal so that my balance left is lower. My calorie goal is 1800 per day. I got a 250 caloric credit from the walk I did using my vivofit. Now my daily goal has been reduced to 1550 calories.0 -
Hello people,
i'm new to the group. I have skimmed read most of the posts and get the sense the integration with MFP is buggy. I use both Vivofit and Garmin Edge 800 for cycling. A couple of questions:
1) Do I have to manually add the calories burned (in MFP) as shown on Garmin Connect from my Edge 800?
2) Garmin Connect appears to be counting my steps when cycling and therefore not stepping. Any else noticed this? I don't want to be over counting my steps and therefore burned calories.
Any help appreciated,
Antony0 -
Hello people,
i'm new to the group. I have skimmed read most of the posts and get the sense the integration with MFP is buggy. I use both Vivofit and Garmin Edge 800 for cycling. A couple of questions:
1) Do I have to manually add the calories burned (in MFP) as shown on Garmin Connect from my Edge 800?
2) Garmin Connect appears to be counting my steps when cycling and therefore not stepping. Any else noticed this? I don't want to be over counting my steps and therefore burned calories.
Yes this is the problem I have been having. I emailed MFP asking them about it and this is the reply I received today. I'm not quite tracking with their thinking on this and have asked for some clarification.
Hi,
This is Justin stepping in for Derrick. My apologies for any inconvenience with Garmin integration.
Unfortunately at this time if there are any manual exercises logged to a Garmin - connected account, you will see very inaccurate values, as you have discussed in your PDF and emails.
This is due to the fact that currently Garmin does not pull exercise data from MyFitnessPal. Unfortunately the fix is not as easy as it seems it would be since Garmin is syncing with our API.
We are working with them to fix this. What needs to happen, is Garmin needs to pull the exercises manually logged from MyFitnessPal and chunk out VivoFit calories burned that occurred during that timeframe. This will make it so we do not negate those calories burned, and you are not getting duplicated calories burned.
We hope to have this fixed soon, for the time being we will need to ask you not to manually log any exercises.
My apologies for the trouble that this causes in the meantime, but we hope that once we have these issues fixed, the integration will be very useful and stress-free for you.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Justin
MyFitnessPal Staff0 -
Many thanks. Will wait for fix and manually input into mfp in the meantime.0
-
Hello, I've been playing with the Vivofit for the past two weeks, and just added MFP when they announced the link up. Joining the two has resulted in a pile of confusion as I now seem to get four numbers...calories burned on the band, calories burned for activities in Garmin Connect, calories burned/consumed on the MFP app, and another number again (can't tell if the "Garmin adjustment" is the exercise activity I did that day, or something separate) on the MFP website! What a mess! I've been poking the setting and trying to figure out what it's doing, but with limited success. I'm considering ditching Garmin Connect AND MFP, just using the numbers on the band, and enter calorie burned numbers manually into my old LoseIt account (which has a nicer interface). Sometimes more tech isn't the answer, haha....
If anyone here has a clue where to start looking or adjusting to get these four numbers to line up, I'm all ears. I have OKed "allow negative entries" on the settings, set the activity level to sedentary (as suggested by FromHereOnOut) but still no good.
Thanks!0 -
Mayalass, I typed a reply but it got lost. Til;dr versio is that if you're doing stepping exercise just log food and exercise as usual and anything above or below what is logged will be adjusted by garmin, whether it be normal daily activity or exercise (above or below the mfp estimate). You don't even have to log exercise if you don't want, garmin will adjust anyway, to bring mfp to what is showing in the wrist, less your desired deficit as setup in mfp.
If you're doing non stepping exercise, you might have to do things a bit manually until the fix is made.0 -
Thanks for the reply! Unfortunately I'm doing non-step exercise, cycling and yoga, for which I want to use the heartrate monitor. I think I'm understanding from your post that the "garmin adjustment" is related to the STEPS (or lack of steps) and if I want to add any calorie deficit from heart-rate monitor "activities" I should add it manually for now. Is that right? Except when I've done that, the exercise still doesn't show up in the daily +/- remaining cals (that number that tell you if you can have an evening snack or not, haha). Which is frustrating. Grrrr.....0
-
I was of the understanding that is why the Vivofit integrated the HR monitor into it -- to more accurately track no step-based activities. Most of my activity is step based so.................I have no firsthand experience w/it.0
-
Read what veloman posted. If you do hrm exercise that can't be tracked as regular steps, I think you will have to uncheck allowing adjustments and do all the exercise logging yourself for the time being. I think that Garmin fitness doesn't sync with the hrm activities atm, therefore Garmin fitness doesn't "know" about those exercise calories when syncing with mfp and will adjust them out when you log them manually unless you turn off the adjustment.0
-
Im not too sure about that. I did what FromHereOnOut did, and I changed my food to the default settings of Breakfast Lunch Dinner, and Snack...I still didnt see the garmin adjustment. Then I finally remembered to disconnect fitbit, and then it worked. So I tried the past week with the HRM, and it seems to be working great. When I sync it updates garmin connect, and I can then later see it automatically adjust my calories in MFP. It works just like the fitbit did, where you will only see the adjustment, you wont see individual entries in MFP for the work you did, that will only be viewable in Garmin Connect. YMMV, but I have not manually entered anything, eg. items that i didnt not wear the band or hrm. That was the reason I brought them, as I didnt want to have to manually do too much.0
-
Read what veloman posted. If you do hrm exercise that can't be tracked as regular steps, I think you will have to uncheck allowing adjustments and do all the exercise logging yourself for the time being. I think that Garmin fitness doesn't sync with the hrm activities atm, therefore Garmin fitness doesn't "know" about those exercise calories when syncing with mfp and will adjust them out when you log them manually unless you turn off the adjustment.
I'm not 100% certain but I think that if you wear the HRM, Vivofit will calc calls burned. It doesn't know what it is you are doing. The steps data will be meaningless but the calorie count would be more accurate. So for instance if you shake a cocktail with the arm your vf is on very vigorously, vf will count extra cals if your HR increases. However, it will also count extra steps that you are in fact not taking. Who knows how accurate this is but I think it's the way it works. The total burn will come across to MFP.
The problem arises when you use another device to measure activity such a cycle meter. If you do this and enter the data into MFP as a manual activity then you will need to turn adjustments off or delete the adjustment each day else you will skew the results significantly.
I have had a number of emails back and forth with MFP support and am not sure we are both on the same page. Very frustrating!!0 -
Yes veloman, what u wrote about turning off adjustment is what I was getting at. As for steps and cals, maybe it's only my problem that I can wear the hrm and run six miles stop it to rest and restart for three miles and it will show upto twice as many calories burned for the three miles than the six in my activities. I don't trust that Activities data at all and the cals from those activities are NOT affecting my mfp at all, just calories calculated on the wrist according to taking that many steps in that amount of time. I'm glad those hrm results aren't getting used because they are flat out wrong.0
-
Does anyone know when they will allow us to manually edit activity on the wristband. As sometime I can be shaking markers and paint at work, and it seems to add them in as steps. How can we edit this information to just go back to the normal daily hrly burn and remove the erroneous steps?0
-
An update of MFP is out. Bug fixes, it's said but I still don't know what bugs are ment. I now log all my meals as breakfast. That way it works great. Does anyone know what bugs are corrected?0
-
Nope. I tried to add lunch and dinner. Still a mess and removing those meals doesn't remove them from GC. So I'll keep on having a lot of breakfast.0
-
With the meals, you might have to wait a little while for it to register. I'd give it half an hour just to be sure.0
-
Hello! First I apologize if this has been explained before. Just got my Vivofit today and was excited about the MFP connection but I can't get it to work at all. I only show a "red" calorie count. 0% of my daily goal. In settings it has an option to "disconnect from MFP" so I assume it means I'm connected??? Can't figure it out at all....any suggestions?
Thank you!0 -
Hi petey - I am sure you will love your vivofit (eventually lol). Yes it does take a bit to figure out, but doing so keeps your mind focused on your diet and exercise.
A couple of tips that may help you -
- It takes 5-20 minutes for Connect to talk to mfp regarding the transfer of calories or exercise
- connect and mfp have a basic difference on bmr so the figures never quite match (yet, I hear they are updating soon)
- if you have a fitbit or other device connected to mfp, connect gets it nose out of joint and refuses to talk to anyone
- put all activity setting to sedentary (mfp and connect) and the numbers will get a bit closer
- I have had my vivofit for 3 months and still have 'what the ?' moments
- Garmin really are working hard at improving the connect site - so there are often changes with no warning
VERY VERY important - get a small rubber O ring (or bitbelt or something) to secure the latch on your vivofit. I have heard of many falling off never to be found again.
Hope this helps a bit. :happy:0 -
A couple of tips that may help you -
- if you have a fitbit or other device connected to mfp, connect gets it nose out of joint and refuses to talk to anyone
An 'AHA" moment...this COULD explain why I'm getting half a**** calorie data on Connect. I do have my Fitbit connected as I don't trust Garmin yet (plus I get some nice benefits from using Fitbit to track steps & food etc). Odd that Connect does show "something" for each day, despite the 2 devices being connected-I'm hoping Garmin can work this snafu out0 -
I purchased a Vivofit on Tuesday. I have been trying to connect MFP with Garmin Connect. I was able to calculate the calories burned and post them. What I found interesting was that when I clicked on Garmin Connect, even when the app was already opened, it would take me to the App Store. I clicked on open and was taken to the app. I have deleted the app off my phone and reinstalled. What else can I do to connect Garmin and MFP.0
