Fitbit Charge HR exercise sync

cschaeffer28
cschaeffer28 Posts: 7
edited November 12 in Fitness and Exercise
I just got a fitbit charge HR, and I am confused as how to sync exercise with the fitbit.
From what I'm reading, it sounds like when I am doing any step based exercises, like running on the treadmill, I should NOT press the button on the fitbit to track the exercise. Instead, I would log on myfitnesspal and record the start time of the exercise and it will automatically pull the information from fitbit. So does that mean fitbit will still recognize that I was exercising without telling it?
I ran on the treadmill today after just getting the fitbit last night, and it shows the exercise double on my fitbit dashboard because I pressed the button on the fitbit to track the exercise, but it's only showing once on myfitnesspal because I logged in on here, and it adjusted my step count accordingly.
What about other types of exercises? Like when I do strength training? In that case I am supposed to press the button to record the exercise on fitbit, AND manually input the calories burned on myfitnesspal?
It's so confusing! And everything I read only confuses me more. HELP PLEASE!!!

Replies

  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    Only log the exercise in one place. Pick either MFP or Fitbit. If you log it on MFP, make sure you have the correct start time and duration. If you use your fitbit to log, it won't show on your newsfeed here on MFP, but at the same time then you just have to press the button and let it do it's thing.
  • xcom923
    xcom923 Posts: 9 Member
    I have a similar comment. You can't look at the calorie burn on MFP it's a good place to log your food and look at the feed but look at your device's burn. The cool thing about MFP is that it can act as "glue" for your other devices/services. For example, when I run I use runkeeper. Because I have that sync'd here it'll go to fitbit with the map and everything. Keeping things simple is usually the best way to go
  • jbarr05
    jbarr05 Posts: 2
    Hey everyone, how do I get my fitbit steps to go towards my + excercise?
  • dan9001
    dan9001 Posts: 2
    When I MFP synchs with my Fitbit Charge HR, I was under the impression that any Workout I have done using the Charge HR should show up in the "Cardio Exercise" section of my MFP Diary.

    When I say "Workout", I mean specifically what the Charge HR considers a workout: you hold the Charge HR button down until it starts the timer for a workout; then when you are done you hold the button again, and it adds the stats for that timed period to the Fitbit database.

    My understanding was that on MFP I shouldn't have to manually "log" that Fitbit workout; the synch will automatically add the Workout entry to my MFP "Cardio Exercise" on my diary. That is not happening.

    The weird thing is that it IS happening in the opposite direction: When I manually log exercise on MFP, then look at my Fitbit app after a sync, I see the manually logged MFP exercise listed in the Fitbit app.

    Can someone help me on this? Are Charge HR "Workouts" not transmitted from Fitbit to MFP? I really expected MFP to be the place that gave me a unified view of my nutritional entries and exercise entries, including Charge HR workouts.
  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    @dan9001
    Fitbit doesn't send over individual workout information to MFP. It does however, send over your Total Calorie burn for the day. MFP uses your Calorie burn information from Fitbit to determine your adjustment. For this reason, your adjustment will include exercise calorie burns and any extra calories burned from normal daily activity.

    MFP sends logged workouts over to Fitbit so that your total calorie burn for the day can be adjusted on Fitbit.
  • dan9001
    dan9001 Posts: 2
    edited March 2015
    Thanks for the info, really appreciate it.

    Now that I get that, I'm confused about how the calorie adjustment is calculated and used. On MFP, under the Calorie Adjustment for the day, it says 5103 steps, 1 Calorie. I'm assuming that should include all the regular walking around activity I did yesterday PLUS the 35 minute Workout I did. In my Fitbit app, Fitbit shows the 5103 steps and it also has a line for the 35 minute workout, which Fitbit logged as 188 calories burned. So why is MFP just adjusting by 1 calorie?

    Also, on my MFP News Feed, MFP posted an automatic entry saying I burned 1002 calories doing cardio exercises. On that day, I manually logged exercise that equalled 867 calories and on the top line of my diary for the day, MFP added the 1 calorie from the Fitbit adjustment, to show 868 calories of exercise for the day. I guess I'm thinking the 1002 calories mentioned in the MFP News Feed post must include additional Fitbit exercise calories. But if that's the case, why isn't the same 1002 number showing up on the Diary page for the day?
  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    No idea what's going on with the news feed/diary thing. My fitbit adjustments never show in the news feed. Only exercise I manually log into MFP shows up there.

    As for your adjustment, here is a visual example:

    exercise logged only on Fitbit -
    780i6y8a4ip9.jpg

    exercise logged on MFP -
    w451v6cejj6e.jpg
    • under blue line = negative adjustment (must be enabled) or 0 adjustment
    • over red line = positive adjustment

    The graph displays data from the same day. The only thing that's changed is whether or not exercise was logged on MFP. As the calories burned increase on the MFP side, the adjustment gets smaller.

    You can always go to the website and if you click the "i" in your exercise diary next to your Fitbit Calorie Adjustment, it will show you the math breakdown for the adjustment.

    oh and here's an example of a negative:
    1exihv4eoc7y.jpg


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