Garmin calorie adjustment

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cyndit1
cyndit1 Posts: 170 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Would someone explain to me what the garmin calorie adjustment means? I'm confused on how to use the exercise section of MFP when using my Garmin vivosmart HR to log activities.

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  • Katerbels
    Katerbels Posts: 106 Member
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    Do you track your activity with your Garmin by using the active mode feature when you work out?
    My Garmin only enters calories on MFP when I do that, I could walk 20,000 steps and get no calorie adjustment lol. I let the Garmin adjust my workout calories this way and then I don't add any exercise in MFP. I find MFP calories burned to be incredibly high, and I'm going on the assumption that the Vivosmart HR is more accurate. So basically...I would use the Garmin calories and enter nothing on the workout section of MFP.
    If you want to keep track of your actual activities on MFP to have a record of what you're doing, you can still enter them manually and it will adjust your Garmin calories accordingly at the end of the day. You won't be double dipping, however these calories may still be more than what you've burned. Use caution if you eat back your exercise calories.
  • PiperGirl08
    PiperGirl08 Posts: 134 Member
    edited May 2016
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    cyndit1 wrote: »
    Would someone explain to me what the garmin calorie adjustment means? I'm confused on how to use the exercise section of MFP when using my Garmin vivosmart HR to log activities.

    Polar does this as, well. What happens is this: both Garmin/Polar predict how many calories you're going to burn in a day. Since you are using Garmin to track your calories, when the number that it forecasts is not the same as what MFP forecasts, Garmin enters an adjustment.

    So under exercise you may see, for example, -89. This means that Garmin forecasts that you will burn 89 fewer calories than MFP does, so it adjusts your total calories allotted for the day downward by 89 by taking it out of exercise. This number may change throughout the day as you continue to burn fewer or greater calories than forecast.
  • MikeH63
    MikeH63 Posts: 1 Member
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    So just using Garmin to record activity through the tracker and then synching will record the correct information. If I log exercise with Garmin AND have activity tracker active, I'm essentially double-dipping?
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
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    How it should work is you set your activity level to sedentary, link your Garmin through Garmin Connect and don't enter any exercises into MFP. SO if you record an activity with your Garmin, it will come through to MFP as a separate activity, but may adjust up or down for your normal activity as it sees fit.

    Problem is, you bought a VivoSmart HR and, when I had mine, it screws up the calories if you use activites and will double count them. So if you do a 30 min run with an activity selected on your watch, the watch will push through the calories burned specific to your run and will add calories for the steps taken. When I had mine I track a few activities until I realized what it was doing and then stopped using the activities.

    Other Garmins don't have the same issue. I now have a VivoActive and it tracks activites and calories burned much better.
  • srk369
    srk369 Posts: 256 Member
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    I have found that my Garmin calories are about 10% too high compared to my average weight loss. I've heard others say theirs are spot on. Just something to keep in mind as you set your goals.

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