Calorie difference between MFP and Polar activity

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.