Apple watch calories vs MFP adjustment

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torizia
torizia Posts: 140 Member
Hi all,
I wear my apple watch all day and use it to count my steps and as a HRM whenever I exercise - including when I go for walks (I select 'outdoor walk' and it monitors my heart rate and calculates my calorie burn accordingly). It has my weight, height etc input and I tend to assume that the calorie count during any exercise (i.e. when it's measuring my heart rate throughout) are pretty accurate.
However, MFP almost always does a negative calorie adjustment on the basis of my step count. I can understand this on days where most of my steps haven't been during activities where I've measured my heart rate (i.e. where the watch estimates my calorie burn as being higher than MFP would estimate based on steps alone), but I don't understand how this can be explained on a day like today...
So today I have been on two (not very long!) walks and used the watch HRM for both. The first came up as 168 calories and the second as 78 calories. MFP has then looked at my overall step count (13391) and has taken off 83 calories to give me a total of 163 exercise calories for the day.
How is it possible for MFP to say that I've burned fewer calories throughout all of my steps, than my watch has actually measured using my heart rate? And which should I believe? I'm trying to be in maintenance mode so need to be sure I'm using the right numbers...
Thank you!

Replies

  • Kettle_Belle14
    Kettle_Belle14 Posts: 246 Member
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    I wear the Apple Watch too and all it does it count your steps. You have to manually log your exercise as based on your HR monitor. I really hope Apple changes this, otherwise, I wish I would've just gotten a Fitbit HR. :/
  • torizia
    torizia Posts: 140 Member
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    Mine actually pulls in all of the exercises from my watch automatically - it just then does an adjustment if it disagrees with them!
  • Kettle_Belle14
    Kettle_Belle14 Posts: 246 Member
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    How did you get it to do that? I can only get mine to do the iOS calorie adjustment for my steps, not any of my logged exercises. I just thought they were working on upgrading that .
  • torizia
    torizia Posts: 140 Member
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    I set it all up when I got the watch - I think it involves setting up the MFP app to be linked with the apple health app, and then the health app syncs with your watch activity app!
  • SweetestLibby
    SweetestLibby Posts: 607 Member
    edited May 2016
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    How did you get it to do that? I can only get mine to do the iOS calorie adjustment for my steps, not any of my logged exercises. I just thought they were working on upgrading that .

    In MFP you have to add the Apple Watch as a connected app/device - telling it where to pull information from and in the iPhone health App you have to add MFP as a source.

    As far as the calorie adjustment I was under the impression that here is a number of calories associated with your activity level setting and any adjustments made by MFP to your exercise is because you haven't met that activity threshold for the day....I could be wrong but that's what I thought.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
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    torizia wrote: »
    I can understand this on days where most of my steps haven't been during activities where I've measured my heart rate (i.e. where the watch estimates my calorie burn as being higher than MFP would estimate based on steps alone), but I don't understand how this can be explained on a day like today...

    How much difference do you get (calories per step) when you do or don't measure your heart rate as you walk? And how much does your heart rate change over the course of these walks?
  • Kettle_Belle14
    Kettle_Belle14 Posts: 246 Member
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    How did you get it to do that? I can only get mine to do the iOS calorie adjustment for my steps, not any of my logged exercises. I just thought they were working on upgrading that .

    In MFP you have to add the Apple Watch as a connected app/device - telling it where to pull information from and in the iPhone health App you have to add MFP as a source.

    As far as the calorie adjustment I was under the impression that here is a number of calories associated with your activity level setting and any adjustments made by MFP to your exercise is because you haven't met that activity threshold for the day....I could be wrong but that's what I thought.

    Thank you! I didn't have MFP as a source for everything, just steps. Hopefully now when I do a workout, it'll show. :)
  • Kettle_Belle14
    Kettle_Belle14 Posts: 246 Member
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    torizia wrote: »
    I set it all up when I got the watch - I think it involves setting up the MFP app to be linked with the apple health app, and then the health app syncs with your watch activity app!

    It's all so confusing to me LOL, but I think I got it...hopefully! Thank you so much!