Question about walking being tracked

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hclay25
hclay25 Posts: 32 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I have my step counter on my phone through the MFP app but I still take my dog on walks almost daily. Should I track that as “exercise” or not because of the step counter tracking the steps? I see some people tracking walks and getting back calories and I feel like I might be doing it wrong. I just don’t want to count steps/walking twice.

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  • MileHigh4Wheeler
    MileHigh4Wheeler Posts: 67 Member
    edited January 2019
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    In my mind a walk is a walk is a walk and movement is not sitting around thus it's exercise. It's not running a marathon but any movement is good and all intentional movement can be tracked. I use an Apple Watch and it knows if my movement is "workout worthy" by my heart rate but it still tracks it just not as "exercise calories". One way or the other you are burning more calories walking your dog than sitting in front of your computer so it all counts.
  • Roobyzooby
    Roobyzooby Posts: 189 Member
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    I track my walks with MapMyWalk, which is part of the MFP family so to speak. It automatically syncs this as exercise on my diary. It also gives info about speed, distance, time etc. It certainly opened my eyes as to the speed I actually walk, much faster than I thought.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    When you set your activity setting did you take your routine/normal/everyday steps into account or not?

    e.g. If you went for "Active" (for example) because you take a lot of steps in your work, home life and dog walks then you wouldn't want to count them again.
  • hclay25
    hclay25 Posts: 32 Member
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    I set it to sedentary.
  • Nokt2018
    Nokt2018 Posts: 49 Member
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    Roobyzooby wrote: »
    I track my walks with MapMyWalk, which is part of the MFP family so to speak. It automatically syncs this as exercise on my diary. It also gives info about speed, distance, time etc. It certainly opened my eyes as to the speed I actually walk, much faster than I thought.

    Same here. It works great!
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    hclay25 wrote: »
    I set it to sedentary.

    Which means mostly seated so yes if your doggy walks are a significant distance then you probably should log them.

    PS for thread readers - please be very cautious about MapMyWalk app estimates as often the numbers quoted on here are hugely inflated and unrealistic. A common formula to estimate normal speed walking net calories is bodyweight in pounds X distance in miles X efficiency ratio of 0.3

    Net calories is the extra calories burned over and above the calories you would have burned anyway just by existing, many apps attempt to estimate gross calories which is a significant over-estimate for low rate of burn but long duration exercise.
  • witchaywoman81
    witchaywoman81 Posts: 280 Member
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    Panini911 wrote: »
    are the steps being uploaded to MFP? if so the steps from the walk are already counted in that.

    Ex: I use a fitbit and linked my fitbit to MyFitnesPal. so i just use that info. i don't re-enter walks as that would double count.

    This is exactly what I was going to say. If your tracker is synced to mfp, there’s no need to log the walk separately.
  • hclay25
    hclay25 Posts: 32 Member
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    I’m using the MFP app as my tracker not a Fitbit or anything.
  • Duck_Puddle
    Duck_Puddle Posts: 3,232 Member
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    hclay25 wrote: »
    I’m using the MFP app as my tracker not a Fitbit or anything.

    Is your phone as a step counter linked to your mfp account? Like do the steps your phone counts show up in your mfp diary?

  • Danp
    Danp Posts: 1,561 Member
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    You should only count movement/activity once.

    If the pedometer in your phone is counting your steps and adding it to MFP then that activity is already counted as there's no difference between steps you take during your normal daily life and steps you take while 'on a walk'. They're all just steps.

    I use Strava to track my runs which adds the activity to MFP automatically so I make sure I remove my watch (which I use to track my steps) before I go. That way I'm not double crediting and can track my daily activity and my 'exercise' activity separately.
  • Lillymoo01
    Lillymoo01 Posts: 2,865 Member
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    hclay25 wrote: »
    I’m using the MFP app as my tracker not a Fitbit or anything.

    I now have a Fitbit linked and just use steps for adding the additional walking calories rather than adding additional exercise. It is simple and works for me. Before that, I used the app Pacer on my phone, which was also synced to MFP. I had my activity level set as sedentary and again only added the calories from steps given to me from Pacer. even with intentional walks.

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