Calorie difference between MFP and Polar activity

I'm having this same issue, it used to work just fine.

All of this is relative and none of it is accurate. MFP is notoriously high when it comes to calorie burns; I believe the food tracking is fairly good. I run on a TM with a Garmin 220 w/chest strap HR monitor, an iPhone with Nike+Run Club app, and the TM stats. None of them gives me the same distance, pace, or calorie burn. If I were you I would take the lower number and go with it for a bit. Once you see how your body is reacting (gaining/losing weight) you can make some adjustments to fine tune the numbers if you so choose.

Hopefully MFP will fix it soon

@Bookworm1860

That's right - Polar actually syncs over a workout with attached calorie burn already.

If MFP was smart, they would subtract from that figure how many calories they already expected you to burn that your eating goal is based on - so they would only add what you truly did above and beyond accounted for.

So 2 hrs with 69 cal diff per hour.

If you selected Sedentary on MFP, that would mean base burn of 55 cal/hr, or 1325 daily.

Is 1325 about your Mifflin BMR shown on MFP Tools - BMR calculator?


@frenchbabe5 - you have a difference of 227 cal on that workout - how long was it for?

Frankly, if they did it on imported workouts - they sure better have done it on the database logged workouts - which could have been corrected years ago per that suggestion I made.

I'll have to see if it appears they did. Tad harder to prove after the fact though, without knowing what the original database amount might have been.

And yeah - they really should have announced it for any device users that sync in workouts - Polar, Garmin, some apps. (Fitbit doesn't though).

Can't use the MFP database entries for outside cycling speeds that expect wind resistance on an indoor bike that is giving you speed readings.

It should be wrong, much more effort to hit those speeds with air resistance, and much higher calorie burn.

Also, you shouldn't be re-entering a workout on MFP if you already have one syncing in.
You can start an entry just to see, but why create a double entry if Garmin workout came in.

Just make a wall post about the workout with much more interesting info.

So you are receiving in synced workouts from Polar, but Polar says you burned X, and MFP says you burned X-Y?

Always some amount less?

Because I don't believe MFP is adjusting anything, that would be more likely Polar adjusting what it sends for some reason.

And this is an actual workout you are comparing, not the Adjustment that happens to be in the Exercise Diary, right?

The MFP API's are pretty simple, though some options are available.

For workouts - the sender has time stamp, duration, and calories burned - and then the description to pick from MFP database is up to them.

What does your line in the MFP Exercise Diary say about the workout?

And for the line that is for the Adjustment, when you go into more details on that one, can you include screen shot?

I think this is working as intended. When Pilar pushes the workout to MFP, calories are being subtracted based to prevent double counting. MFP gives you credit for being alive.

A 60 minute workout may yield 600 calories burned but sitting on the couch could also burn 60. So the net difference would be 540. Interestingly, Garmin doesn’t do this. Just my polar.

My polar and MPF numbers are never in sync. I go with MPF so I can eat more. Maybe that’s not optimal...

MFP isn't doing any special math with those syncs concerning gross or net - it's pretty simple.

Tracker daily burn (say 2500) - MFP expected burn (say 2000) - listed workouts (say 400) = adjustment (so 100, though more math there for midday)

Base eating goal (say 500 deficit from that MFP 2000 so 1500) + workouts (400) + adjustment (100) = new eating goal (2500)

So you burned 2500, ate 2000, had your 500 deficit still.

That's it.

Some trackers don't send workouts, so above example for Fitbit say would still end with 500 adjustment and same end result.

So from the way it's handled - gross should always be what's involved.

For Polar - does the workout they send to MFP have calories that match their own list workout?

Really should, and hopefully that's a gross value, since strictly speaking it's about how many calories did you burn in this chunk of time.
Frankly, being awake burns more than BMR. That's why it's actually difficult to find sources of NET calories, machines, databases, trackers - almost all give gross.

Power meters, bike or rower or other, are glaring example of NET.

And on Polar, when you click on the entry for the Polar Adjustment (tap and hold) the extra details says time of last sync, and daily burn at that point.
Does that match what Polar has on their side?

Hello guys. Polar user here as well. Thankfully googling led me to this thread, so apparently it's not just me!

I've also tried doing the syncing "manually", i.e., overwriting the lower provided calorie value in MFP.

There's a workaround though, if you don't mind installing another app!

Prior to buying my Polar Vantage, I was already logging workouts / runs / etc using the Endomondo App. So when I got my Polar, I just synced Polar's data into Endomondo. I only started MFP recently, so when I did, I let it sync the Endomondo data into MFP.

I only learned that I can sync Polar directly into MFP this week, and this was when I noticed that there's a discrepancy in the calorie logs.

That's why today, I'm reverting to my original setup: Workout with Polar -> Endomondo -> MFP. You might want to try this option so you won't have to manually change it (which you might miss doing so on some days), or you're just lazy like me. :P

IgboMeso wrote: »

Hello all, Polar flow is sending the net calories burned during that activity. If you are increasing your total calories with the gross amount you will end up overeating. I have a Garmin and a polar, and I'm actually grateful that polar does this, for my garmin connect activities i would always subtract BMR/exercise duration from my gross calories burned.

Is the Polar also sending a total daily calorie burn over like Garmin does?

In which case Garmin is correct and MFP does the math correctly.
MFP cancels out the workouts it knows about - so you are left with total daily calorie burn.
Minus a deficit to get eating goal.
Bam - weight loss at expected rate.
If everything was accurate - which it's not.

If Polar is only sending workouts over to MFP, then NET is a little closer to correct. Still not totally correct though.
If Polar is sending a daily burn, then it really doesn't matter since it's cancelled out anyway.

In other words you can stop wasting time correcting the Garmin calorie burn, you are actually introducing an error.