How MFP logs exercise

Options
SoulOfRusalka
SoulOfRusalka Posts: 1,201 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Just a weird inconsistency I noticed. I set my activity level to "sedentary" so that any walking I did would just get factored in. However, when you input it as exercise, if I walked 3 miles in an hour it would tell me I burned something like 180 cals. But when it's just counting my steps and distance walked, I walk at a fairly brisk pace (3.5-4mph) and today I walked 10 miles and MFP only subtracted just over 200.
I'm just wondering why the calorie estimates are so different? I'm going with the lower one because I assume it's correct, but I was curious if this happened to other people or if you know why.

Replies

  • GummiMundi
    GummiMundi Posts: 396 Member
    Options
    When you pick "walking" on the exercise tab, it shows different speeds for you to choose, and each has a different burning rate. If your walk was a brisk one, then you should choose that one (I'm imagining perhaps you didn't notice the different speeds on the menu?).
  • SoulOfRusalka
    SoulOfRusalka Posts: 1,201 Member
    Options
    GummiMundi wrote: »
    When you pick "walking" on the exercise tab, it shows different speeds for you to choose, and each has a different burning rate. If your walk was a brisk one, then you should choose that one (I'm imagining perhaps you didn't notice the different speeds on the menu?).

    No, I mean that those-- the ones you enter in manually in the "added exercise"-- don't match the calories that MFP factors in automatically by syncing with my phone and counting my steps. Does that make sense? Thanks for responding.
  • GummiMundi
    GummiMundi Posts: 396 Member
    Options
    SoulOfRusalka wrote: »
    GummiMundi wrote: »
    When you pick "walking" on the exercise tab, it shows different speeds for you to choose, and each has a different burning rate. If your walk was a brisk one, then you should choose that one (I'm imagining perhaps you didn't notice the different speeds on the menu?).

    No, I mean that those-- the ones you enter in manually in the "added exercise"-- don't match the calories that MFP factors in automatically by syncing with my phone and counting my steps. Does that make sense? Thanks for responding.

    Ah, now I understand your question! You didn't mention a phone or some sort of activity tracker in your initial post, so I didn't consider that scenario - my bad, sorry. :)
    I don't use activity trackers, but I would imagine that different devices have different ways to calculate the burned calories, some of which may or may not be more accurate than others. Walking is my main exercise, I go by MFP's indications, and so far I'm losing according to what I expected, so I suppose it's accurate enough.

    Perhaps someone more tech-savvy than me can provide you with a more insightful explanation regarding those differences.
  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    edited May 2019
    Options
    SoulOfRusalka wrote: »
    Just a weird inconsistency I noticed. I set my activity level to "sedentary" so that any walking I did would just get factored in. However, when you input it as exercise, if I walked 3 miles in an hour it would tell me I burned something like 180 cals. But when it's just counting my steps and distance walked, I walk at a fairly brisk pace (3.5-4mph) and today I walked 10 miles and MFP only subtracted just over 200.
    I'm just wondering why the calorie estimates are so different? I'm going with the lower one because I assume it's correct, but I was curious if this happened to other people or if you know why.

    Most activity trackers are not giving calories on MFP based on steps walked. It’s a calorie burn comparison instead.

    MFP estimates a certain number of calories burned in a day based on your activity level setting. With an activity tracker linked you start to see additional calories when you are exceeding what MFP originally estimated you would burn for the day.

    I have to wonder though if you are using an iPhone or Apple Watch to count steps. If this the case, the sync doesn’t work the way they intended because of incorrect information being received. This tends to result in lower than expected adjustments. I switched from Fitbit to Apple and was really shocked with the adjustment. Knowing that the two devices give me similar estimates of calories burned I was surprised to see a several hundred calorie difference in my adjustments.

Categories