Fitbit wearer who also jogs and rides

mariemcnamee1
mariemcnamee1 Posts: 2 Member
edited November 21 in Fitness and Exercise
Hello, I'm new to the myfitnesspal forums (was a nutracheck member for years but recently moved over to MFP and loving it).

I wear a fitbit all day every day and it logs my steps and syncs with MFP and awards me extra calories in exercise. I have the negative calories turned on.

If I do other exercise (i.e. horse riding or jogging) do I have to take my fitbit off and manually log? If I ride I think I would earn too many calories by keeping it on BUT when i manually add in that I rode between 5pm and 7pm it takes the number of calories earned doing that exercise from my total.

I'm not really bothered about under estimating when I run, I'm more worried about over earning when I ride!

Any ideas? (Does anyone even follow what I'm asking?)

Thanks

Marie

Replies

  • malibu927
    malibu927 Posts: 17,562 Member
    Don't log the jogging, as that is what your Fitbit is meant for. As for riding (or any other non-step based exercise you may do), many people will log it in Fitbit rather than MFP, as it seems to have a more accurate calorie count. And if you have a higher end model or HR-based one, it should pick the activity up automatically!
  • msjac23
    msjac23 Posts: 140 Member
    I notice Fitbit and apple watch count steps when I ride on a motorcycle or washing my hair. I believe the shaking of your wrist and the wind make it seem as though your are taking steps. Therefore, I do not even count my exercise calories, I just up my daily calories from what MyFitnessPal suggest.
  • MarylandRose
    MarylandRose Posts: 239 Member
    I do count exercise calories, because the 52 steps I got washing my hair evens out the time when my fitbit is on my left hand and I spend ten minutes chopping or stirring with my right, or when it only counts 5 steps when I walk up a flight of stairs.
    In fact, I double-count (but don't get double-credit) for cycling. On my wrist, my fitbit counts an average of 100 steps during a "studio cycling" class. I'm a constant FitBit Challenge participant (even though I'm screwed because I can't wear my fitbit at work, which means I miss out on 10k+ steps during a workweek in the challenge), so that's not a good solution. I put it in my shoelaces for class, which gets me about 4k steps on average. That's fine, because at least I'm getting credit for some 'steps' for the challenge, even though it's much more work than a walk that takes me 4k steps. To get the calorie credit for spin, I enter it in MFP - and then for me, MFP takes away the step calorie credit and gives me the straight exercise credit instead. This is the only way I've found to make sure that I'm getting proper credit for the work put in - steps in FitBit and calories in MFP - and doesn't result in an over-credit in MFP.
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