Apple Health vs Garmin steps calories

I would assume there's a difference in the number of steps the applications/devices have calculated. If the Apple Health calories are using your iPhone's pedometer for the number of steps your taking and you have that on you for less time than your Vivosmart, then it would logically give you fewer calories.

What do you have your "How would you describe your normal daily activities?" level set to on MFP? Also are you getting the iOS data from an Apple watch, your phone, or is Garmin pushing the steps to apple health?

I highly suspect that the Garmin is correct and counting steps that you didn't realize that you've taken because I'm assuming you wear the Garmin more than you had your phone on you. There was only a 32 calorie difference between them and while yes that will add up over time, it isn't unreasonable to assume that your iPhone wasn't counting all of the steps you were taking.

The calorie adjustment from having 10k+ steps also doesn't sound unreasonable. I would just stick with using only your Garmin, not your iphone and not sending stuff from through the Pacer app (which I would assume would only work to introduce error needlessly).

And yes, I wear a Garmin FR935 and have had no issue with the way that it count steps other than it assuming that I'm walking when I'm rowing on the water (which is not applicable to your issue). If you set your level on MFP to sedentary and are getting 10k steps, you can assume that there will be a large calorie adjustment. There are a number of threads here that address that - I think a recent one was titled something along the lines of, "what do I set my activity level to?". It's something that I wish MFP was more transparent about/had more guidance on as opposed to leaving users to figure it out.

I'm female, and today I earned 2,400 kilojoules (574 kcal) for a 10 km run (12,700 steps).

Males earn nearly twice the amount as females (grrr, not fair ).

I have MFP set to "sedentary".

MFP's steps calorie adjustment changes throughout the day.

I go running first thing in the morning. After that, I get the running activity calories, and a negative steps adjustment if I haven't also done more than about 2-3000 steps, which is the amount a sedentary person would do during a whole day.

As I do more more steps throughout the day, that negative steps adjustment changes and goes into a positive calorie bonus.

I see some mis-information in some of the responses so far.
Just to clear up a few.

The Full Day Projection that MFP does is NOT based on your tracker given info for rest of the day.
From the time stamp until midnight is based on your MFP selected Activity level rate of burn.
And BMR calories is NOT removed from that.

That to end of day is added to your tracker info up to that point. And as the tracker keeps sharing if you are doing more or less than expected, your adjustment goes up or down.

Apple on direct sync does NOT supply what MFP is expecting per API rules, and given by other trackers.
It's expecting Total Daily Calories burned (TDEE) and time stamp - that's it for the math.
Workouts is optional, and if supplied is removed from the daily total since MFP will add them to the eating goal later.
Problem with Apple is it's giving MFP a Daily burned equal to about your Sedentary burn rate.
When workouts are sent, they aren't actually in that figure sent as it should for TDEE, which results in a removal of something never there - so no credit for the workouts actually, but negative.

In addition - daily activity above Sedentary isn't even sent over. So no actual credit for what TDEE means.

You can't sync directly with Apple if you want MFP to deal with actual figures it's coming up with.
The more active you are and the more workouts the worse the wrong adjustments go.

Pacer you used is the method to get around that issue.


Also, steps is merely used to get a distance - distance is how daily level activity calories is calculated.
HR is used if it goes above a certain level to be used for exercise. And sadly the lower part of that exercise range is more inflated for that, besides the regular reasons why HR-based calorie burns can be inaccurate.

I'd leave steps out of your process as they don't really bear on the fact distance can vary decently with same steps.

Also - that process you say of Garmin steps syncing to Apple Health - are you sure it's only a step figure, not the calories and time stamp?

When Pacer is linked to an Apple account (not just the iphone counting steps and estimating distance) - it should be pulling the info from Apple account - correct info compared to direct MFP to Apple health account.

That's why you saw the flakey 109 calories burned as of some 5pm time stamp - doesn't make sense.

And I'd agree with several above - skip the convoluted methods - just sync Garmin to MFP.
It works correctly.

If you don't like the Garmin Connect activity logging and prefer Apple Health - you should be able to sync it to both Apple and MFP, cancel the MFP to Apple health link.

Orphia wrote: »

Yes, it does a daily projection throughout the day, based on your Garmin exercise so far.

Other things to note are:

MFP also has your activity level included (not very active) so that would mean you get some extra calories assumed burnt.

I use a Garmin and have Garmin Activity Class as 0, and MFP activity level set to sedentary so extra exercise I do is added on.

Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR - what you'd burn while in a coma) is being taken out in the MFP calories burned, but it's included in the Garmin daily calories.

For what it's worth, Garmin says they don't use this anymore unless you're using a really old device. The newer ones use the activity history they record for you instead.