Would MFP calories assumed in 'sedentary' setting include Apple Watch 'active calories'

EDIT: Ignore the below mostly. I updated my app today and the new setting didnt originally show up. But now it is -- yeah!

However, I have to say that they estimates look very high compared to my fitbit. Meaning, how MFP used to calculate calorie adjustments for the fitbit given the same level of activity would show much lower than how much it is not showing for the AW.

MFP team, not sure how you are calculating calories, but just note that the AW currently seems to have a bug in how it calculates resting calories. May not matter but FYI.

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I spent a few hours last night trying to determine this. Love for someone at MFP to opine. here are my thoughts so far below, although i could be off base.

MFP is calculating your BMR and then EER to establish your baseline. So your 1480 represents a calorie deficit of X taking into account your resting calories (BMR) and then the sedentary setting you chose for the EER.

Before I get to AW, I was coming from a fitbit. So the fitbit adjustment used to work as follows. Fitbit would calculate our steps (and taken into account your active minutes which i assume increased your caloric burn relative to a normal minute) into calories burned. Once the total calories in my fitbit surpassed my MFP baseline, I would start earning positive calories. However, from what I could tell, MFP and fitbit were not using the same baselines and additionally, fitbit was making some estimate of the calories you SHOULD be burning as part of the Sedentary setting you chose. So when I saw 2800 calories burned in the Fitbit and had walked 10K steps, those calories were a combo of resting calories, base calories included as part of the sedentary setting, and then additional calories burned beyond. In theory, assuming the same baselines for MFP and fitbit -- lets say 1800 for me, plus the additional calories as part of the EER calculation (sedentary) of 620, equaled my baseline of 2420. So any calories that fitbit calculates by 11:59pm beyond this should show up as a positive calorie adjustment. Im ignoring separate exercises you might log.

The problem with the Apple Watch i have found is as follows:
1) The calculation of resting calories is way too high for everyone (there are various threads on the web about it). I thought it may in fact be calculating EER as well but that doesnt seem to be right either. As such, the total calorie counts the AW shows are likely way too high.
2) Similarly, the active calories burned that the AW shows are likely inclusive (as was the fitbit) of some calories that the sedentary setting would expect you to burn. However, I do not believe there is enough data to try and reconcile how many of these calories should be added to MFP.
3) In my very precursory analysis of both my fitbit data and the AW data, it seems that after about 7200 steps, a positive calorie adjustment would start to kick in. However, this will not take into account the intensity of the steps that the AW and fitbit use to calculate calorie burn.
4) So for now, I am just estimating until MFP is updated to pull steps and calorie data directly from Apple Health where the AW writes its data. Currently -- and even with todays update -- MFP only pulls directly from the iPhone M7 step data which I have turned off to save battery since I have no need for the iPhone M7 to constantly measure my steps and motion.

Hopefully all the blabber above is wrong and there is an easy way to determine calorie burn, even if we just have to enter manually for now.

rabbitjb wrote: »

Sedentary rating is 1.2 x BMR

It takes me 2500-4000 steps on my fitbit (dependent on intensity) to reach sedentary setting

Apple watch is a HR monitor right?

Yes and no. When you tell the watch to track a specific workout, it then uses a constant HR sensor plus steps and accelerometer to calculate caloric burn. Otherwise, it is no different from a fitbit in that its utilizing steps and what it thinks is your level of activity to guess at calories burned.

It would be very helpful for someone on the MFP tech side to help us understand how they AW and MFP are working together because it is such a new device and we want to make sure we are accurately capturing (or approximating) calorie burn. Of course its not exact and can be off by a large % but more about the consistency of the calculations so you can baseline.

Well. Overall, was tracking fine. Although perhaps there is an MFP bug because it keeps switching between MFP iOS steps (which i think means AW/Health) and iPhone steps in terms of the label but i believe its always pulling from Health/AW. Not sure how MFP reconciles between various fitness trackers because my fitbit would have to get to about 7000 steps before it would start giving me credit for positive calories. Whereas AW and MFP start giving you positive calories from the first step it seems. But it will all we worked out in time.

As an aside, my digital crown became very difficult to double click. Took into apple and they need to replace. But of course since you can't get the watch in stores, they have to send out and its a week before i get back. Bummer.