A bit frustrated!

francescr wrote: »

I have a Garmin Vivofit 2 and when I walk on my treadmill, yes I live in CNY and sometimes it's to cold to walk outside, it tells me the calories I have I burned, which is totally different from what the treadmill tells me and different than what MFP says! Who is telling me the truth? I have decided to not believe any of them, I don't eat the few calories I burn anyway! I have made the right decision correct?

They each user a different method of estimating.

The VivoFit counts steps, make an assumption about pace length to calculate a total distance and applies your bodyweight to that to come up with an estimate.

The dreadmill measure the distance that the belt had traveled, then applies your bodyweight to that.

MFP uses a time and place to estimate a distance and uses your bodyweight, corrected by an equivalence scaling factor.

Inevitably they'll be different. Use one, and stick with it, and correct as required friending on your progress.

As far as eating back is concerned, generally that's how MFP is supposed to support you, you should replenish some of what you expend. If you're walking that's unlikely to be significant, personally I only burn c50 cals/ mile, so it's unlikely to be a significant issue.

I would use the vivofit as that is the one that has access to the most comprehensive dataset about you. Treadmill knows how far you've gone, but doesn't know your weight (unless you tell it) or your stride length. MFP knows your weight and your time spent exercising, but just applies a standard formula based on an approximation of effort.

If you want exacts though, it would need to be an HRM

The Mammal is right. HR works reasonably well only for sustained efforts with significantly elevated HR.