MFP and Samsung Galaxy Active 2 Watch

So MFP is estimating daily burn with no exercise as 2446 (that's the 2886-440 included exercise).

It knows you got 266 calories from steps (very rough estimate to that math) above your expected based on activity level at 7:05 pm and any exercise it knows about.

With known exercise being 440 cal, and only 266 more than expected, your daily burn at that point was actually 266-440 = neg 174 below expected for activity level.

So you might say your activity level was less than expected if you left the workout out of it so far.
With the workout burning 440, you have now come above your expected level by 266 calories.

But since MFP would be taking your base eating goal and adding on exercise and the adjustment, it can't add it back in first or it would be double counting.
Your base eating goal is 2460 - I'm guessing you haven't had your eating goal adjusted for losing weight. It should be the 2446 for eating at maintenance you appear to be set for.
And since set for maintenance, it's not going below your desired figure.

base goal 2460 - 174 adj + 440 workout = 2726

But you don't have negative calorie adjustments enabled - so you get the full 440.
2460 + 440 = 2900

So here's the problem with using MFP app and selecting a phone as a step source.
It doesn't know when those steps took place (it also doesn't know distance and therefore not a good estimate of calorie burn either), and if those steps were actually a part of the logged workout.
So if you had steps getting you above the activity level and then a workout logged - you lose them.

In this case though - your steps didn't seem to indicate you even had reached the set activity level yet, you needed 174 more calories worth of steps to reach it.
You didn't have negative adj enabled.
And I think with maintenance setting - it was going to remove any anyway.

patriotdavid wrote: »

Thanks heybales.....after reading your reply a few times ( i think?!) i'm starting to understand how this all works. Yesterday was a low day for steps for sure as I've consistently been reaching about 10 000 steps per day over the past few weeks up until then. I do have MFP set to maintenance now as over the past 3 months i've lost quite a bit of weight due to eating clean, yoga, walks n runs (up until last week i had it set to lose weight). I've always been confused with all this negative calorie adjustment stuff so i didn't have it enabled (I now switched and have neg calorie adjustments enabled)...but at least i know now its not a software bug with either MFP or Samsung Health.

Anyways, I appreciate the explanation. Sounds like you have a PhD in Mathematics! Eventho its a bit over my head I'm still glad that I have MFP to track my food intake and workouts.

All negative adj allows to happen is keeping the deficit the same even if you happen to go below your activity level calories.
Unless - this causes going below 1200 women and 1500 men - then the size of the negative is reduced so end eating goal stays above those numbers.

Some people though know they better be eating say 1800 or it messes up their day, so even if they are less active - they'd rather have less deficit and still eat the 1800.
They would disable neg adj.

If you could go back to one of your completed more active days and get the same 2 screen shots, I'm curious now with proj_shan comments if SH changed their methodology, or perhaps there is a bug screwing up the numbers currently. At first glance what you showed is what I was expecting (with the extra confusion of neg adj being disabled and at maintenance - don't see that often).

That setting for prior days doesn't work anyway - so no loss there.

But that effect you show is a known bug I believe - multiple workouts logged.
Interesting if you found out what kicks the bug off.

The neg adj setting is purely for math - actually no settings are sent back to a 3rd party device unless they ask for for the few stats that are available - Garmin asks for the eating goal, but it doesn't get the adjusted goal after math is done, only the base eating goal.

So when you changed the setting - did the other workouts disappear or did you have to delete them?

Even with a working Garmin and prior Fitbit under most situations - it was possible to get the right combo of changes to leave MFP screwed up.

Like right now a corrected workout on Garmin for calorie change won't come across and update the workout already synced to MFP.
Not sure if Garmin even sends that info, or only new workouts.
Garmin also takes awhile to update it's only daily calorie burn when you change that workout - so it may not come over to MFP as updated, leaving the math wrong again.

So there are some basics for the way stuff is supposed to happen.
There are known bugs.
And then there are strange things depending on the 3rd party method of working.

Appears like the steps changed to if that is a matching day.