Pacer calories wrong

Pacer is showing your total calories burned for the day, not just your activity related calories

My calories in Pacer match my move calories in Apple Watch. I didn’t workout today and didn’t log a workout. Just from steps. If you log a workout in Apple Watch then sync via Pacer, you get two adjustments. One from Pacer, one from Apple Health. I delete the Apple Health bc it’s a double entry. Your “move calories” on the watch will be your adjustment in MFP.

Yes, it shows just the active/move calories - which is exactly what I want. Pacer tracks the active calories and sends them to MFP as exercise.

I will wait for @heybales to discuss; but, if PACER is only transmitting the move / active calories as opposed to ALL the calories this would NOT be the correct value.

Well, it would be the correct value if we accept a "bastardization" of the apple values where instead of transmitting to MFP the Total Calories as detected by the apple watch (which apparently are available by opening the "activity app" on the iPhone and swiping from right to left on the graph in the move section, or by tapping the days or month at the top of the screen https://9to5mac.com/2018/05/17/apple-watch-how-to-check-your-passive-and-total-calories-burned/) what we are getting instead is the PACER BMR calories incremented by the Apple Move Calories.

If the value is not incremented at all by resting calories and all we're getting is the move calories... then we are underestimating by 1xBMR.

Now that I think about it a bit more, pacer used to start with the same BMR as MFP (Mifflin). So I guess that move+pacer base would be ok ... just not the exact values the watch detected.

With Apple Watch, you don’t need MFP app on the actual watch for things to work. Only if you want to use the watch to enter data into the app.
I took two screenshots from Sunday since it was an active day. I have MFP set to not very active since my entire move calories come over to MFP as an adjustment. You’ll see that my TDEE in MFP and Apple Watch are roughly the same. If I set my activity level to something higher in MFP, then the numbers would have more of a variance.

You see where underneath the move calories it says in red total calories 2178?

That is the total number of your calories for the day according to your watch.

The elusive TDEE figure we are trying to extract from Apple.

I.e., THAT is the number that mfp expects and requires.

You see where Pacer sent in 2179 over to MFP?

(this 1 Cal difference could be either a rounding error between Apple and Pacer, or an indication that they're actually not calculating things in the exact same fashion and you should keep an eye to verify this down the road by looking at subsequent days)

Now mfp takes that 2179 (your total burn for the day according to the external tracker) and subtracts the calories that were assigned to you based on your originally chosen activity level.

And then adjusts that originally chosen activity level with an accounting adjustment which in this case equals 726 calories and equalizes the two figures (MFP+adjustments=tracker)

I think that the MOVE calories being the same as the adjustment is just a coincidence.

If it's not a coincidence it would ndicate that PACER/Apple? also start everyone at BMR*1.25 for the day before any "MOVE" Calories come in. This would be different than for example Fitbit which assigns 1*BMR when not detecting movement.

As a double check of whether MFP is operating as expected, your 1453 calories burned every day with zero exercise logged, should stay constant from day to day unless your weight changes in mfp or your activity level changes in MFP.

If that number changes from 1453 absent a weight change (or activity level change) this would be an indication that there's a feedback loop somewhere on MFP's side changing a number which is not expected to change (this is a nod of concern to the second adjustment you keep deleting and a double-check that it's not potentially causing any issues)

heybales wrote: »

So that appears it is still doing it the same way.
Total calorie burn coming over to MFP, adjustment for the difference.

If a workout happened to show up from Apple Health, I'd assume like other trackers MFP would add it to the MFP calories burned for the day, and it would also show up under the Pacer total for the day, negating itself from the math at that point.

But you mentioned there is usually a 2nd adjustment based on Apple Health sending something?

And you don't use the MFP watch app?

I don’t use MFP on my watch. I use the app on my phone. It’s only needed on the watch if I wanted to plan meals using the app on the watch. It’s too small and not easy like the app.

If I were to track a workout, run, walk, weights, I would have two adjustments. Pacer will show my move calories up to that time as an adjustment, then Apple Health would log an adjustment.
Each activity would be a separate adjustment. The Apple Health is a double since my watch is connected to Apple Health and already gave me credit for the activity.

I went back and re read my post. I had a typo when talking about the sync and the calories matching. I wrote move but meant to say TDEE.
I’m only calling the exercise calories move calories, the 726.