Garmin steps taking away from my calories

DaveInFL
DaveInFL Posts: 84 Member
edited November 27 in Fitness and Exercise
I have a Garmin device that is linked to MFP. I've only re-started using MFP recently again and noticed something that looks to be weird. It's add my calories from steps as though it is food. The steps are coming through as exercise but the calories gained from steps/walking is deducting from my goal. I would absolutely expect this to be added to my goal. So, for today I have the following:

Goal: 1,660
Food: 794
Exer: 460

Remaining: 406 (1,660 - 1254)

Surely my remaining should be 1,660 + 460 - 794 = 1326 remaining.

My Garmin app is showing something different, but at least better. My Garmin is showing my calories from exercise as 111 and not the 460 that is in MFP. So, in my Garmin app it is showing 1,660 + 111 - 794 = 977 remaining.

Is there a bug in MFP?

Replies

  • rj0150684
    rj0150684 Posts: 227 Member
    edited June 2018
    Yeah that’s weird. Do you have negative adjustment turned on? How many steps did you do? What’s your activity setting in MFP? If you set yourself to “very active” (for example), but you’re only doing 8k steps or something and negative adjustment is turned on, it’s saying you haven’t done enough to be considered “very active” so it’s taking food calories away. If it isn’t the above scenario, I have no idea.

    ETA: are you logging exercise in MFP in addition to the steps automatically coming over? I’m sure there’s a way to do it correctly, but when I tried to log exercise in addition to steps, it always screwed it up. Now I just let my Fitbit handle the calories and never log exercise in MFP.
  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
    I suspect that a few things are going on. You have negative adjustment turned on on MFP. That in turn means that depending on what you've set your activity level to, you will get a calories deducted from you if you don't take X amount of steps. That is the way it's supposed to work if you have that setting turned on.

    I personally have my activity level set to sedentary given that I'm a student and don't do a whole lot of walking. It's easier, logistically for me to deal with with moderately large workout calories coming from walking than it is large deficits coming from not having taken as many steps as much as MFP expected (never mind that it all evens out in the end).
  • hipari
    hipari Posts: 1,367 Member
    Yeah, sounds like negative exercise adjustment. I also get negative exercise calories from my fitbit sometimes if I have an inactive day. The negative adjustment can be disabled so it only says zero if there’s nothing to adjust, but I personally find it more honest to see the negative adjustment, and it teaches me about my actual activity levels.
  • DaveInFL
    DaveInFL Posts: 84 Member
    Thanks for the information. Now I understand what is going on.
  • fishgutzy
    fishgutzy Posts: 2,807 Member
    I have a Garmin Fenix 5X. But i don't sync it to MFP. I prefer to manually enter only deliberate exercise. I also prefer the more conservative (lower) number MFP calculates for swimming.
    The result is that I have no worries about step count. B)
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