apple watch active calorie difference

drockncrisso
drockncrisso Posts: 49 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
People with Apple watch- what do you do?
Do you manually add your active cals?
My apple watch adds my workouts, but not my other active cals and I wonder if I should manually add them myself.
For example. I run 4 miles and burn 345 active cals, then do strength training and burn 86 active cals, I also did lots of walking and cleaning and carrying stuff around, running around at the park with the kids. My total active cals for the day is 751 - but health app is only reporting 431 (the two workouts) to MFP.
Yesterday, when I had 751 active cals, should I just manually add the extra 320 cals?

Replies

  • collectingblues
    collectingblues Posts: 2,541 Member
    It'll only report the workouts that MFP recognizes -- so the running and strength training. The integration is *awful* with MFP and the Watch, so you'll need to manually add in the remaining 300ish calories to get credit for them.
  • Maxxitt
    Maxxitt Posts: 1,281 Member
    I don't manually add "active" calories. AW ports over the workout/planned walking calories & MFP recognizes them if they exceed what they deem to be my calorie burn based on my activity level, age, etc. I'm losing at the expected rate doing this.
  • drockncrisso
    drockncrisso Posts: 49 Member
    Maxxitt wrote: »
    I don't manually add "active" calories. AW ports over the workout/planned walking calories & MFP recognizes them if they exceed what they deem to be my calorie burn based on my activity level, age, etc. I'm losing at the expected rate doing this.

    Is there usually a big difference between your total active cals and the workout/planned walking cals, or are they about the same?
  • BecomingMoreAwesome
    BecomingMoreAwesome Posts: 151 Member
    For me there’s a big difference, and it seems like mfp doesn’t give me any extra calories for my non-workout Move calories no matter how many there are. My activity and logging have been inconsistent since I got the watch, so I don’t know how accurate the watch’s estimates are for me yet. As an example, my watch says that yesterday I burned 700 active calories for 2,387 total calories. MFP says I burned 2,105 (1,640 base +250 deficit + 215 exercise). I may try bumping up my MFP activity level and turning on negative adjustments for the days that I don’t hit my move goal.
  • nowine4me
    nowine4me Posts: 3,985 Member
    Weird. My AW logs workouts, but also regular activity like walking or whatever. It reports all of that into health kit which then dumps it into MFP as one number. Bear in mid, that if your activity level is set at something other than sedentary, MFP only gives you “credit” for the calories over that. So, if you are adding in ALL your active calories and eating them back. Make sure your set to sedentary, or you’ll be double counting.
  • drockncrisso
    drockncrisso Posts: 49 Member
    My AW health kit doesn’t send anything to MFP except actual workouts where I turn on the workout tracker.
    iPhone sends info to MFP that messes up my cals- iPhone health supposedly tells MFP my projected daily burn is based on 2 calories burned all day.
    Which confuses me because that same day, I’ll check the health app and it’ll show 450 active cals burned.
    Like - here is an example:
    The first image shows my active cals on Wednesday the 13th. I didn’t log a technical workout, but certainly moved a lot. Activity registers my total cals at 1999.
    Then you see the health app has correctly registered the 460 active cals.
    But when you look at the MFP page it says I’ve earned 22 cals.
    I go to the explanation page and it shows how “iPhone” says I burned 22 cals. WHERE is it getting that number??
    Where are the other 440 cals?? inb4k18bilr8.png
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  • Redordeadhead
    Redordeadhead Posts: 1,188 Member
    What activity level did you set in MFP (sedentary, lightly active etc.)?
  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    edited March 2019
    I’ve actually started using another app because of this. My total calorie burned from Apple Watch is similar to what my old Fitbit used to tell me and that was accurate for me. However MFP is not pulling accurate data from Apple and as a result I would be undereating if I just went with what MFP said now (some days by a lot). Activity level setting doesn’t matter. I see exactly what @drockncrisso sees.
    Example:
    Jan 24
    MFP claimed iOS said 133 calories burned for the day for example. It will then add 133 calories to whatever MFP thought I would burn for the day regardless of Activity level setting. Where it’s coming up with the 133 calories is beyond me. Now if I look at Apple for that same day: 956 Active calories for a total burn of 2536.

    MFP set to Lightly Active estimated 1800 calories burned for the day before exercise.

    MFP is the only app that shorts my calories like this with Apple Watch. It was actually a big shock to see how few calories I was getting for my activity.
  • Maxxitt
    Maxxitt Posts: 1,281 Member
    drockncrisso wrote: »
    Maxxitt wrote: »
    I don't manually add "active" calories. AW ports over the workout/planned walking calories & MFP recognizes them if they exceed what they deem to be my calorie burn based on my activity level, age, etc. I'm losing at the expected rate doing this.

    Is there usually a big difference between your total active cals and the workout/planned walking cals, or are they about the same?

    Yup, there is a difference of a few hundred calories. I don't sweat the numbers (even when I sweat to obtain them hah!) because I am losing at the expected rate.
  • bluesheeponahill
    bluesheeponahill Posts: 169 Member
    I find it a bit annoying it doesn’t use active calories from Apple Watch. However if I were to’track’ my activity it uses them! I don’t get it. Why use the calories from move but use active calories if I track workout?
  • BecomingMoreAwesome
    BecomingMoreAwesome Posts: 151 Member
    Curiouser and curiouser. I upped my MFP activity level to active, but added negative calorie adjustments to account for lazy days. Mfp and the watch now come close to agreeing most days (eg, the Watch says I burned 2,380 calories Saturday, and MFP gave me an allowance of 2,100 for my .5 lb/week goal).

    The weird exception is my first lazy day. I was tired and didn’t do much Sunday. I walked 6,000 steps all day, played maybe 15 minutes of tag with my kids, and otherwise sat on my butt most of the day. Mfp didn’t subtract any calories, and gave me an allowance of 1,936 calories, which is a smidge more than my watch says I burned. (So if the watch is accurate, then mfp had me at maintenance that day. Maybe mfp just knew I was tired and needed a maintenance day.)

    I wouldn’t mind so much if they were off from each other as long as it was consistent.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    edited March 2019
    As referenced above - gotta use another app that sends the correct data MFP is expecting like almost all other trackers.

    Pacer synced to Apple Health will do it - don't do MFP straight to Apple.

    The more active you are above MFP setting or more workouts - the worse the issue.

    It'll never work right unless MFP (or users) convince Apple to correct it.
    Considering MFP was so excited to probably get Apple to do the work in the first place, and didn't make the correct it at the get-go over users wanting it - forget it.
  • BecomingMoreAwesome
    BecomingMoreAwesome Posts: 151 Member
    heybales wrote: »
    As referenced above - gotta use another app that sends the correct data MFP is expecting like almost all other trackers.

    Pacer synced to Apple Health will do it - don't do MFP straight to Apple.

    The more active you are above MFP setting or more workouts - the worse the issue.

    It'll never work right unless MFP (or users) convince Apple to correct it.
    Considering MFP was so excited to probably get Apple to do the work in the first place, and didn't make the correct it at the get-go over users wanting it - forget it.

    Thanks. I’ve seen posts that reference using other apps, but I assumed they meant doing all their tracking in another app like cron. I’ll try adding pacer.
  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 8,667 Member
    I’ve just given up trying to coordinate it all. My “daily average” active calories so far this year, per my watch, is 941. Hardly any register to MFP for whatever reason, maybe an average of 200. So I eat a flat amount of calories with a buffer suggested by the dietician and just stick to that. It’s simple, and it works for me. I do wish it all worked properly, though. I like numbers and find them motivating, and the wonkiness of it all irritates me.
  • yono27
    yono27 Posts: 14 Member
    edited April 2023
    It would be so easy for MyFitnessPal to sync the active calories directly from HealthKit / Apple Watch like many other apps do (including many competitors), but they don't care, they just sync the useless step count and make up a number of calories from that and call it the day. Such a shame.

    The only way to sort of get it to work is to do it manually, you need select the lowest activity level, disable step count and workouts reading permissions from the Health App and then manually add a general workout on the app every day adding the active calories value from your Apple Watch, it works but it is a manual process for something that should be automatically automatic.

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