FitBit - Double counting?

cfrancis1287
cfrancis1287 Posts: 7 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hi, not sure if this is a stupid question or not. Today I have walked over 17,000 steps which includes an hour on the treadmill at the gym. MFP have allocated me calories based on my steps, however if I add it as exercise it has given me more calories on top. So my question is should I be tracking my exercise too? I don't want my exercise to double count, if that makes any sense at all.

Thanks, Christine

Replies

  • PilSung25
    PilSung25 Posts: 1 Member
    I have noticed that myself, and what I have been doing is track my exercise on MapMyRun, which will then show on MFP without issues, but if I track on Fitbit it will double up and end up deleting the Fitbit session in Fitbit and re-sync, which seems to always fix the problem for me. I have also noticed a similar issue when tracking water consumption where if I put it in MFP it will show accurately in Fitbit but if I put it in in Fitbit, when MFP updates with it, it will then get added to Fitbit as me having had another glass or whatever the case may be.
  • melodyvegan
    melodyvegan Posts: 59 Member
    cfrancis1287 wrote: »
    Hi, not sure if this is a stupid question or not. Today I have walked over 17,000 steps which includes an hour on the treadmill at the gym. MFP have allocated me calories based on my steps, however if I add it as exercise it has given me more calories on top. So my question is should I be tracking my exercise too? I don't want my exercise to double count, if that makes any sense at all.

    Thanks, Christine

    It sounds like you are double counting by adding in the exercise as well as tracking with the Fitbit. Steps are steps whether you're doing intentional exercise or just going about your day. You can keep your Fitbit on while you're on the treadmill and then have it sync to MFP (meaning you DON'T manually add the intentional exercise into MFP or Fitbit afterwards and rely solely on the Fitbit to track and then sync to MFP) OR you can take your Fitbit off while you do intentional exercise and add the exercise manually in MFP.

    If you do add any exercises manually, you should only be doing it in one place every time (MFP or Fitbit, not both). Personally, I track steps (including intentional step-reoated exercise) with Fitbit and all food and other exercise in MFP.

    If I do non-walking exercise (like cycling) I take the Fitbit off and enter the exercise manually (I wear a Fitbit One because I hate wristwatches and don't want non-step related hip activity to force a miscount). If I do yoga, I keep it on and enter it in MyFitnessPal with the correct time I started activity so that MFP can adjust steps accordingly. If I'm just walking or jogging whether throughout my day or on a treadmill, I let the Fitbit do all the counting.

    If your intentional exercise is step related, just let your Fitbit do the tracking and sync to MFP.
  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    cfrancis1287 wrote: »
    Hi, not sure if this is a stupid question or not. Today I have walked over 17,000 steps which includes an hour on the treadmill at the gym. MFP have allocated me calories based on my steps, however if I add it as exercise it has given me more calories on top. So my question is should I be tracking my exercise too? I don't want my exercise to double count, if that makes any sense at all.

    Thanks, Christine

    Actually this is not true. The calorie adjustment on Fitbit is NOT related to step count at all. It’s a calorie burn comparison. The math is:

    Fitbit estimated TDEE - MFP Burn = Adjustment

    So for example:

    My tracker says I burned 2242. MFP set to Active estimated I burn 2140.

    2242 - 2140 = 102

    So my adjustment would be 102. If my activity level was set lower to say Sedentary my adjustment would be even more, because MFP estimates about 1670 for me before exercise if I set it to Sedentary.

    Now if you log exercise on MFP there are a couple things that are important to note:

    1) Use the correct start time and duration if you don’t want it to be counted twice.

    2) What you log on MFP will replace what Fitbit thought you burned for that same time. So for example I could log I burned 1 calorie for 1 hr on MFP and when I look at the calorie burn chart on Fitbit’s side it will have replaced any BMR calories as well as activity calories for that hour with the 1 calorie I told MFP I burned.

    3) The adjustment math changes slightly:

    Tracker TDEE - MFP TDEE (Activity level + logged exercise) = +/- adjustment

    4) With logging exercise on MFP, the Fitbit adjustment might start subtracting calories instead of adding. Why? This is a sign that too many exercise calories were added to MFP making MFP’s TDEE estimate exceed what your tracker estimated and it’s correcting the difference.

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