Apple watch

I’ve used an Apple Watch for 2+ years in conjunction with MFP, haven’t had the coordination problems others report, and haven’t bothered to set up the elaborate work-through a that many say they have had to do.

Go to the health app on your phone. Click the little head silhouette in the upper right corner. Go to >privacy>apps>My fitness pal and toggle all buttons to green to allow MFP to record the data from apple to the MFP app.

It should work fine.

Be sure to choose the correct activity setting within MFP’s Goal tab.

If you choose the correct activity setting, you simply start and end a workout on the watch by clicking the little green running man and selecting the type of workout.

It monitors your steps, magically reads your level of effort, calculates a burn and transfers it automatically to the app.

Remember, while it counts the number of steps, it may or may not allow you a workout calorie burn for those steps based on the activity level you selected within MFP. For example, I selected “highly active”. I could do 20,000 steps and it wouldn’t count towards what I get to eat on my food diary, unless I started a specific walking or running workout.

So when I walk to my gym or yoga studio, those steps don’t apply to my food diary because I don’t consider them “exercise” and haven’t started a workout. I consider those as part of my daily routine, or “highly active” level I chose.

Your watch needs some time to “learn” and adapt to you. Your calorie counts may not be very accurate at the beginning. But I felt very comfortable with its calculations after two or three weeks.

And you will be shocked at what the watch says versus what your gym equipment says. There’s a lot of “feel good” calorie inflation on gym equipment. Go by your watch.

I am really OCD and often count my steps when walking or running and compare them to what the watch is declaring and find it to be pretty accurate.

Otoh if you routinely do something involving a lot of arm or hand movement, you may get phantom steps. I got off an eight hour flight one time having recorded about 40,000 steps. I was flummoxed til I realized I had crocheted a lacy doily on the flight. (Have no use for one but it’s good for the brain and makes the time go by. If doilies ever come back in vogue, I am in the money, baby!)

I love, love, love my watch. Just remember to please silence it during mat classes. Nothing worse than someone’s phone ringing via their watch. Amazing how loud the ringer is on one of these suckers!

Apple will send workouts to MFP.
Apple should send like other trackers a daily burn that contains the calories from that workout, and daily activity calories.
It does not, it sends the base sedentary calorie burn, which about matches MFP's sedentary.
(unless there has been a fix by Apple in the last month. LOL)

MFP to keep from double counting workout calories subtracts the workout calories from the daily burn reported.
Except that's not really what Apple sent.

It means on MFP you get no credit for your workouts, and you get no credit for daily activity over Sedentary.

So other than those 2 glaring issues it works fine.

So indeed you need to select the best Activity level on MFP since you get no credit for being more active than Sedentary from Apple.
Your workouts still don't count towards anything though.

Click on that line for Adjustment to see the details of the math.
Pick a prior day that is complete actually.

It should show like the following:


That 2nd line - MFP Calories Burned
That's your MFP estimated daily burn based on BMR and your selected activity level and workouts it has logged, in my case:
3391 total - 1379 exercise = 2012 base daily burn at sedentary expected.

That 1st line - Garmin (or Apple or Fitbit or Polar) Calories Burned
That's the time stamp and how many total daily calories burned synced from your tracker at that time, plus rest of the day at your selected activity level rate of burn MFP adds, in my case end of day so all tracker:
3173

So MFP expects that daily calories burned from the tracker to contain the exercise calories 1379 already - which it does. Total means total after all, it should contain EVERYTHING you burned that day.

Simply math after that.
Tracker daily burn - MFP expected daily burn = adjustment for that line.
I got a negative, because outside the bike ride I was very sedentary that day, below sedentary actually.

But my eating goal will be + exercise 1379 + adjustment neg 217 = 1162 higher.

I'd love to see if Apple corrected what they send or MFP at least figured out a work around for the exercise part.
Can you get pic of the details screen?
And the reported total calories burned shown on it - do they really match what Apple shows on their side for Total daily burned - not sure if you still have to add base, activity, exercise manually or not.

For instance, Garmin really did.



Maybe it's fixed and the suggested work around can stop being suggested - I'd love it.

I had to switch to a new iPhone. Now my workouts that I record on my Apple Watch do not move over to Myfitnesspal.
The data does appear in the Cardiogram app

heybales wrote: »

M0n1KCR wrote: »

I have an Apple watch series 4, and it DOES send workouts to MFP, and they are credited in the app. It sometimes does not count the steps/calories not included in your workouts, so as not to give you double credit for them. But if the watch sends a daily total which is higher than the "expected" number for your activity level, they are counted. Like this:

Forgot to address prior post to you - was hoping you could provide that 2nd screen shot like I show for more details. If you haven't seen it, have to press and hold for details.
Maybe even the Apple daily total to show how it breaks it out to match what MFP shows.

Would love to know if I can stop giving the extra advice now for getting correct figures if it has changed.

Thanks much.

Here it is:




I think it's similar to what you posted. The first number is the total of calories the apple watch sends to MFP. The second, what MFP expected you to burn, including the workouts indicated by the watch and taking into account your activity level. The last number, in the blue line, is the difference, and MFP "gives" you those extra calories.
Maybe they have managed to get to a similar point, using a different path?

Thanks for your explanation - I had never analysed it like that - in fact, I had never gone to the second screen. Now you've explained, I realise you are right... but whatever the calculations, it works for me, and I'm maintaining. When I tried to sync it using Pacer, it allowed me a lot of calories, it would almost double whatever exercise activities the watch sent.