Garmin Connect sync questions

grumpygamer
grumpygamer Posts: 4 Member
edited November 17 in Getting Started
A 60 minute brisk walk according to MFP burns around 450 calories for me, GC says 1400. I presume GC is including BMR calories...and I know that MFP makes adjustments...in the end, MFP indicates I have around 6000 or so calories a day available...which seems way way off to me (I'm not an athlete by even generous definition.)

I suspect I have a setting somewhere between the Vivofit HR, Garmin Connect, and MyFitnessPal wrong. What is the recommended set up?

Replies

  • jonchew
    jonchew Posts: 239 Member
    After being satisfied with it for over a month, suddenly things have gone quite wrong with syncing for me also. I've disconnected from GC - yesterday it gave me a whopping 1900 calories for walking 8900 steps. Something's definitely wonky with it, for sure.
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
    grumpygamer wrote: »
    A 60 minute brisk walk according to MFP burns around 450 calories for me, GC says 1400. I presume GC is including BMR calories...and I know that MFP makes adjustments...in the end, MFP indicates I have around 6000 or so calories a day available...which seems way way off to me (I'm not an athlete by even generous definition.)

    I suspect I have a setting somewhere between the Vivofit HR, Garmin Connect, and MyFitnessPal wrong. What is the recommended set up?

    Do you have negative adjustments turned on in MFP?

    What is your activity level set at in both MFP and GC?

    Are you sure your weight is getting updated in GC? It should be by default.
  • grumpygamer
    grumpygamer Posts: 4 Member
    I have activity level set to not very active in mfp and 3 in gc (if I go with lower num it gives me 10000 Cal /day).

    There is a neg Cal adjust from gc

    I have my Cal goal in mfp as 1980. Today I did 450 Cal in aerobic exercise consumed 1930 in Cal and had around 5500 steps. It say I have 2500 cal left.

    Should I set my Cal goal to 0. It seems like that might be at least in the ballpark then
  • tinkerbellang83
    tinkerbellang83 Posts: 9,129 Member
    grumpygamer wrote: »
    I have activity level set to not very active in mfp and 3 in gc (if I go with lower num it gives me 10000 Cal /day).

    There is a neg Cal adjust from gc

    I have my Cal goal in mfp as 1980. Today I did 450 Cal in aerobic exercise consumed 1930 in Cal and had around 5500 steps. It say I have 2500 cal left.

    Should I set my Cal goal to 0. It seems like that might be at least in the ballpark then

    Do you have your user settings set up correctly in Garmin Connect (Height, Weight, Gender etc?)
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
    I'm thinking you need to break the link and reset it. Something does not sound right at all.

    But go through your settings in both and make sure everything is correct. GC and MFP normally work well together, so something is fubar.
  • grumpygamer
    grumpygamer Posts: 4 Member
    I have the user setting sthe same in both, I have broke the connection. From what I can see, MFP is fine, it's the Garmin Vivofit HR is calculating my activity calories really high, and I can't figure out why. Guess I'll have to go poke them, maybe my device is defective...
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
    You could ask here

    https://forums.garmin.com/forumdisplay.php?459-vivofit

    It's their user forum.
  • Running_and_Coffee
    Running_and_Coffee Posts: 811 Member
    Hmmm, mine has been perfect as long as I've had it...the bulk of the calories I burn come from exercise but if I hit 10k steps I usually get an extra 80 to hundred or so calories added in as an adjustment, which sounds correct for someone who is "sedentary."

    I wish it was less accurate--I had the worst run this morning and it cruelly informed me that my pace was slower and my heart rate was higher than usual. :-(
  • ritzvin
    ritzvin Posts: 2,860 Member
    Are you maybe just anxious and wearing it 24/7? It could possibly be reading stress-related heart rate increases as aerobic activity? (Is it possible to check the timeline data on garmin and see if you have weird activity/HR spikes where they shouldn't be?).
  • grumpygamer
    grumpygamer Posts: 4 Member
    HR doesn't look unusual, but the sleep monitoring is way off sometimes recording me sleeping 14 hours...at the same time as recording a "run" or steps.

    I adjusted my heart rate zones based off my resting heart rate (as calculated by the vivofit HR). The number of calories has reduced, but today, my job kept me pretty much inactive so far, just over 1000 steps, and it's recorded 1800 active calories.

    I'm thinking if I can just sync the recorded activities (run, walk, cardio, other), I'll be better off. So far I'm disappointed in my unit. I walked around the grocery store and it recorded 30 flights of stairs, I've had it say I have 10K active calories, and now the HR is probably flaky.
  • ritzvin
    ritzvin Posts: 2,860 Member
    grumpygamer wrote: »
    I'm thinking if I can just sync the recorded activities (run, walk, cardio, other), I'll be better off. So far I'm disappointed in my unit. I walked around the grocery store and it recorded 30 flights of stairs, I've had it say I have 10K active calories, and now the HR is probably flaky.

    At least on the 920XT, you can turn off the step tracking. And I think you can disable step adjustments on MFP as well (while still syncing actual activities).
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
    grumpygamer wrote: »
    HR doesn't look unusual, but the sleep monitoring is way off sometimes recording me sleeping 14 hours...at the same time as recording a "run" or steps.

    I adjusted my heart rate zones based off my resting heart rate (as calculated by the vivofit HR). The number of calories has reduced, but today, my job kept me pretty much inactive so far, just over 1000 steps, and it's recorded 1800 active calories.

    I'm thinking if I can just sync the recorded activities (run, walk, cardio, other), I'll be better off. So far I'm disappointed in my unit. I walked around the grocery store and it recorded 30 flights of stairs, I've had it say I have 10K active calories, and now the HR is probably flaky.

    If your getting 1800 active calories for 1000 steps, your unit is broken and I would look at returning it or getting it replaced. How long have you had it?
  • RDahling
    RDahling Posts: 27 Member
    edited May 2017
    I have a Garmin Vivosmart and I've had some issues with it myself including:

    - climbing stairs when I walk flat (don't know why, but one day it had me down as climbing 49 flights of stairs after walking to a concert venue 5km away ... not an ounce of uphill to it, either)
    - changing my calorie impact at the end of each day - it will point out I have burned off 500 - 1000 kcal in my morning exercise when I sync after the gym (to get the calorie differential for meal planning for the day), then when I sync at the end of the day, it sometimes winds up giving me a negative count on calories even though my "calorie meter" will show that my calorie expenditure on the day is much higher than my MFP adjusted calorie intake.

    That said, I was going through my settings today and I discovered the "Activity Level" setting - apparently this should be adjusted to reflect your activity levels, and if it isn't reasonably accurate, it can throw off the readings.

    You can see the chart below; when I checked my settings, I was at Activity Level 2, but I workout everyday of the week in some form or other for 90 minutes at a go, which would put me at Activity Level 8/9. I've adjusted it as of today, so we'll see how the readings compute over the next few days, but you may want to look into that.

    Activity_class_Time1459959091819.png
  • Healthyhenk
    Healthyhenk Posts: 33 Member
    RDahling wrote: »
    I have a Garmin Vivosmart and I've had some issues with it myself including:

    - climbing stairs when I walk flat (don't know why, but one day it had me down as climbing 49 flights of stairs after walking to a concert venue 5km away ... not an ounce of uphill to it, either)


    Did you fix the problem above?? I have the same problem :smiley:
    It's weird when you are in the kitchen en making lunch my garmin says i broke my stair record :smiley:
  • misscola
    misscola Posts: 40 Member
    just got my vivosmart hr+ hopefully it works well!

    my garmin profile is misscola , feel free to add me(:
  • kirsty3989
    kirsty3989 Posts: 1 Member
    I can't enable negative adjustment on mfp so it's reading my steps but not my calories
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