Exercise calorie adjustments

mickeyt1982
mickeyt1982 Posts: 2 Member
edited December 2019 in Fitness and Exercise
Hi. Can anyone explain to me how calorie adjustments for exercise are calculated, please? I’ve gone back to the app after a period away and updated my goals and settings to current weight, target weight and level of exercise, which I’ve said is Lightly Active. Today I ran 9 miles and, as usual, my Apple Watch says I burned over 1,000 calories. The app has only given me back about 250 calories, however. I have read that an element of this difference can be accounted for because I need to account for my “lightly active” exercise I’ve said I do, but getting a quarter of the calories back for that run seems wrong. If I had carried on and done a half marathon that means I’d have gotten back about 375 calories, which seems ridiculous.

Replies

  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    edited December 2019
    Apple and MyFitnessPal do not work well together.

    Your activity setting on MyFitnessPal is absolutely nothing to do with purposeful exercise, they are completely separate things.

    ETA
    If using MFP without a linked tracker it estimates your BMR from the personal stats you enter, then applies an activity setting multiplier from the setting you pick, you then select a desired weight loss/gain/maintain goal and you get a non-exercise day goal to achieve that rate of loss.
    Exercise is estimated after the event to try to keep to your chosen calorie deficit/surplus/balance.
  • Claireyummymummy
    Claireyummymummy Posts: 1 Member
    I’m finding the same. Used to get so many more calories back from my Fitbit versa!
  • emilysusana
    emilysusana Posts: 416 Member
    edited January 2020
    I use the pacer app and make it so my Apple Watch calories show up in that app, and that app (not apple) syncs to MFP. It’s proven to be accurate.
    There was a thread about this last spring (I’m back here after a long hiatus so there may have been more recent threads), but if you can possibly find it that has a lot of trouble shooting tips,

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