Apple Watch Steps on MFP

simon_pickard wrote: »

You can already buy premium and disable calorie adjustment from trackers and exercise, as you are suggesting.

But if you are doing #1 - why does it matter to do #2 then with calories?

Is MFP that much better than Apple watch as an exercise diary that you'd rather review your movement data here?

Why couldn't Apple just send the data like all the other trackers do - why must it be held to a different standard?
Because it's popular?


I don't follow your logic.
I pay for premium and turn all that crap off. Shame you have to pay to get this "feature".
MFP still doesn't sync correctly though.
Not sure what you mean by "like other trackers do"? I'm not asking for the moon here. I just want 2-3 numbers to sync over...

Resting Cals.
Active Cals / Workouts + extra Active Cals earn't during the day.

Would take a half decent programmer 5mins to add this. Why should they do it? Maybe because a LOAD of people use an Apple Watch and it doesn't work currently.

"Is MFP that much better than Apple watch as an exercise diary that you'd rather review your movement data here?"
Again don't follow, if you're tracking food coming in, why wouldn't you want to see what's being burnt?

As for being "held to a different standard" what do you mean? They are just numbers, different trackers report this in different ways, I'm just asking for one, if not the most, popular devices to have support added. Chill out trying to make this an Apple vs the world debate.

No - all trackers but Apple send MFP a Total Calories Burned figure - that's what the MFP API field is asking for and expecting.

The time of sync, the total calories burned at this point. Steps.

That's it.

Pretty simple.

Apple doesn't do it. Now, do they really NOT have the figure, or did they select the wrong field to send to MFP, and refuse to correct it at this point? I don't know. I only know how Apple appears to like to do things from other experiecne - their way or no way, very infrequently corrections that aren't totally on them.

With those 2 figures - time and calories - MFP does all the other math.

Optional is syncing over workouts and is part of different process. Fitbit and couple others don't. Garmin and Apple and S Health do. Start time, duration, calorie burn, mapping to MFP exercise selection.
That's it.

Your #1 says to turn off MFP math, as it sounds like you've done with premium, so your eating goal isn't changed based on anything that syncs in.

Well, if you've done that, then why would it matter if #2 happens to get all the data over. You aren't using it to adjust the eating goal.
Unless you want to view the Exercise diary on MFP.

Doesn't the food totals sync over to Apple Health, so there is your record of eating and burning amount, with better logging of workouts for that part?

And currently Fitbit has the market on activity trackers against Apple (when used as such, I guess more could have the Apple watch but not used as fitness tracker).
Add in all the other tracking methods that sync in to MFP, which has the API's already in place, and yes, it is about Apple doing it the already standardized way.

Perhaps if all this frustration by many against MFP were properly put on Apple to please correct their method - they would do it. Because except for the Apple apps that seem to deal with the info correctly (no surprise there really), any other app is going to expect data the way the other trackers handle it.
Total daily calories burned.

What seems to happen (incorrectly) is that MFP asks for Step Source and I set it to Apple Watch, but then for the calorie adjustment it looks at iPhone, not Apple Watch from steps (gets the steps correctly).
The adjustment based on iPhone is then ridiculous. When I run, my iPhone is either at home or on the console of the Treadmill, so you get no steps on it basically.

I was happy with how my Apple Watch and MFP were working, but now I've read this I need to check and see.

MOST of my activity is not step-based so it's not a HUGE worry to be honest, but I've run about 30k the past two weeks, would be nice to know if those steps vanished one way or another?!

Just bought an Apple Watch series 4 and MFP is correctly tracking my steps but they do not convert to calories (and do not show up in my exercises). Spent ages trying to find a solution. Very disappointed...

I'm here to say
THIS IS STILL AN ISSUE

I just got an Apple Watch for Christmas. I switched from my Fitbit + MFP flow for calorie counting and exercise tracking to Apple Watch + MFP. The sync is just wrong. In the iPhone Activity App it tells me my total calories burned for the day. In MFP once I add 500 to my goal (since I have a daily defecit of 500) and add the "adjustment" from the Apple Watch, it is still several hundred off. This is not a complicated formula. Something is just not happening right.

It really makes me want to go back to a fitbit. It is something I have used for years and assumed Apple would handle like professionals. This is not difficult. It's 3rd party app integration which they sell as a *feature*.

Absolutely a disappointment.

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Edit after reading more previous comments.

If it is MFP's fault then it's even more unforgivable. Fix it please.

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Second edit: I installed Pacer per @heybales instructions (previous post) and it fixed my problem. I went into the health app and gave it permission to give step and health info to Pacer, and then in MFP changed the step source from Fitbit tracker to Pacer pedometer and now everything works perfectly. Thanks for the tip heybales!

Currently have 2,080 steps on Apple Watch and 2,555 steps on MyFitnessPal. Not sure how this difference works but MyFitnessPal credits me with about 2,000 more steps a day than my Apple Watch.

GingerHammett wrote: »

Thank you to @heybales for offering the PacerApp solution and to @pajkaj13 for reporting it worked well.

I just installed the Pacer app per @pajkaj13 instructions & so far the Pacer app is giving me calories for steps, and still getting calories from exercises done through Apple Watch.

I do have a question/suspicion though - with the Pacer app steps calorie adjustment & Apple Health calorie adjustment for exercises, the total MFP calorie adjustment seems too good to be true or too high, compared to when using only Fitbit & MFP.

Has anyone successfully maintained or lost weight using both Pacer App for steps calorie adjustment & Apple Health for exercise calorie adjustment?

It would have nothing to do with Pacer - that's just the means to get Apple's info to MFP correctly.

Those aren't "step" calories in that adjustment - that's the difference between what Apple said you burned in total, minus what MFP thought you'd burn and any workouts it knows about.

Tap and hold on the Adjustment to get to a deeper screen that says what the total daily burned was at what time.

Does it match what Apple watch said you burned in total?

You can put screen shot in response - prior day is best.

BazookaBeaumont wrote: »

I can't get this to work with Pacer. The calorie adjustment is just too high.

All this does is add the Apple Watch 'Move' calories to the daily estimate from MFP. But if your total calories at that point are already below MFP's estimate, it should be a negative adjustment.

For example, on the days I exercise my daily estimate can be between 2500-3000 calories. But on (very) restful days, I need to eat only about 2000-2200 to maintain my weight. Today my Apple Watch (via the Fitness app) shows total calories at around 1900 at 10PM, which is what I'd expect. But MFP is just adding the Move calories for today to its own estimate, meaning my total calorie balance for today is around 2800.

There must be a way to do this so that you can get adjustments, positive and negative, properly. I don't understand how this hasn't been fixed yet. I had a Fitbit before this and every day it adjusted my calories based on the burn at the point of the last sync.

It hasn't been fixed in general because MFP can't get Apple to fix what they send.
So simple a fix for it to work like all other trackers.
Send daily calories burned and time stamp - that's all that is needed.
But Apple does things their own way, I'm sure they didn't even want to integrate.

Anyway, hard to make out what you are seeing - please tap & hold on the adjustment and get screen shot and post it.
And a screen shot of the Exercise Diary in general.
And comment what the Apple says is daily burn at that point - add your own base, move, and exercise together to get that figure.