What is better: FitBit or MFP for tracking exercise?

loralye211
loralye211 Posts: 29 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I have a fitbit flex and it's synced to mfp. In the past, I used mfp to track exercise, but I noticed the fitbit is not completely accurate in distance tracking, so after running 5 miles my fitbit would only show about 4 or 4.25 miles. Recently I started tracking workouts on fitbit which seems to make the steps/distance much more accurate, but, it takes a much longer time for the calories burned to come close and/or surpass what the treadmill says. I know neither are completely accurate, but I feel like my calories burned were more accurate when logging on mfp than they are when logging through fitbit. Anyone else feel this way? Or have suggestions as to which tracking method is better?

Replies

  • MamaBirdBoss
    MamaBirdBoss Posts: 1,516 Member
    You can sync the FitBit to your stride length to get more accuracy.
  • loralye211
    loralye211 Posts: 29 Member
    MamaBirdBoss wrote: »
    You can sync the FitBit to your stride length to get more accuracy.

    You can do that with a flex? I did not know that. Thanks for the tip! I'm going to hunt around fitbit's website to see how to do it.
  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    You need to figure out your stride length and put it into your Fitbit Settings. Fitbit by default will use the average stride length of someone your height. From the sounds of it, your strides are longer than the default number.

  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
    loralye211 wrote: »
    I started tracking workouts on fitbit which seems to make the steps/distance much more accurate, but, it takes a much longer time for the calories burned to come close and/or surpass what the treadmill says. I know neither are completely accurate, but I feel like my calories burned were more accurate when logging on mfp than they are when logging through fitbit.

    Fitbit's burns are way more accurate than either MFP or the treadmill. Trust your Fitbit! I log only in Fitbit, and I've lost the weight and maintained for a year.

    Exercise can be logged either in Fitbit or in MFP—never both. Your Fitbit burn is TDEE, and exercise logged in logged in MFP overwrites your Fitbit burn during that time. (If you want your Fitbit exercise to appear in your newsfeed, post a status update.)

    As for distance, as the others have said you need to calibrate your stride: http://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/How-do-I-measure-and-adjust-my-stride-length

    You can learn more in the Fitbit Users group: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/1290-fitbit-users
  • snickerscharlie
    snickerscharlie Posts: 8,578 Member
    I log food on MFP.
    I log exercise on Fitbit. But since the vast majority of my exercise comes from walking, Fitbit does that for me anyway. :)
  • GabinkaP
    GabinkaP Posts: 188 Member
    I log food and non-step exercises on MFP. I log step exercises on Fitbit or let it just record the steps.

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