turn off Garmin calorie adjustments?

With apologies, I don't have a solution, but I do question your premise. (I have a Garmin, don't synch it to MFP, but do use its exercise calorie estimates for some types of exercise.)

What is your exercise (what type), and why do you trust MFP's estimate more? For many activities, the Garmin is more likely to be accurate, IMO (generally, but maybe depends a bit on the model).

The MFP exercise estimates are research-based, but so is what Garmin does.

The MFP estimates have IMU an implementation flaw, in that they include BMR/RMR when they should actually be net calories instead, so they're likely to over-estimate (this is not numerically a big deal for most exercises, but if someone has a better alternative . . . ?). The METS method of exercise that MFP uses is very practical to use in a multi-user environment, but in reality some activities' calorie requirements depend more on bodyweight than others (and bodyweight is always a factor in the same way in METS calculations).

The Garmin estimates are more personalized. (For variable-effort things like aerobics or circuits, MFP can be making major implicit assumptions about how hard the person is working.) I believe some of the more current Garmins now use factors other than heart rate to estimate calories for certain exercises (which would be a good thing, assuming the alternative is better . . . and it probably is).

And so forth.

Lietchi wrote: »

Chumpy76 wrote: »

Lietchi wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

The MFP estimates have IMU an implementation flaw, in that they include BMR/RMR when they should actually be net calories instead, so they're likely to over-estimate (this is not numerically a big deal for most exercises, but if someone has a better alternative . . . ?).

In case it's relevant for the OP or any other Garmin users reading:
Garmin also includes BMR/RMR in the calorie burn given for exercise, which can be confusing.
It would be problematic when using those numbers to add exercise burns manually to MFP. But it's not a problem if the device is fully synced with MFP: the 'extra' calories included in the exercise calorie burn, get taken away again via the calorie adjustment, since MFP compares total calorie burns for the day.
When I've been hiking all day, for example, I'll get a huge calorie burn for the hiking, but also a sizeable negative calorie adjustment to avoid double counting BMR calories.

Am I understanding this right, that basically by not using the calorie adjustment, it is kind of double dipping into the calories that you would normally burn by doing nothing?
(sorry, a lot of this conversation is just above my head)

If Garmin says you burned 400 calories during a run, and Garmin isn't synced with MFP, and you add your run to MFP manually and you add 400 as the calorie burn, then yes: that would be double counting BMR calories for the duration of the exercise. Not a big deal if the exercise is short, but the numbers add up for longer durations.
I'm only speaking for Garmin, might be different for other brands.

And if you use the MFP estimate for the run, assuming my understanding is correct, you'd also be double-dipping on the BMR calories.

This last part is subjective judgement: For an exercise that's relatively short, and relatively intense (not super intense, necessarily), IMO this works out arithmetically not to be a major worry. I try to be accurate in my calorie estimates in and out, but my estimated BMR is around 50 calories per hour (RMR would be a little more, of course.

If I do 30 minutes of something that allegedly burns 200 calories (which would be fairly intense at my size), the error amount is likely to be in the vicinity of 25 calories, which is maybe a little over one-tenth of one-percent of my TDEE on an exercise day; it's also probably down not far from the territory of a very sweet apple vs. a less sweet one of the same weight, in terms of error size. Even if I'm losing weight slowly, half a pound a week, it's a small fraction of my calorie deficit (250 calorie deficit, so 10% of the deficit, not gonna stop weight loss). I'm not deeply worried about it.

In an exercise like slow walking for a long time, it's maybe starting to be arithmetically meaningful. If I walk for an hour very slowly (2mph), and do that for 3 hours, MFP would give me 408 calories, of which 150 or so would maybe be a double count, and that's around 7% of my TDEE, and a fair fraction of a 250 calorie daily deficit (half pound a week loss) so I might care.

I hope that makes sense.

ETA: There are A LOT of approximations in the "math" above. I'm really thinking more about orders of magnitude of importance, in real life, not about exact numbers.

What is your MFP activity level set at and how many steps do you do on average? Maybe you're more active than the MFP baseline.

swktg47 wrote: »

Here's my problem: Way back at the beginning, I set MFP to calculate my caloric needs based on a certain level of daily activity.

That baseline level of daily activity went into calculating my daily caloric goals for MFP.
MFP preemptively factors in a certain level of calories being burned as a result of simply being alive and moving around in the world to some degree. That's great. Awesome.

However, then we get my Garmin watch n trying to be helpful, so it comes along and measures all my activity for the day and happily tells MFP to give me credit for calories for my daily level of movement. But wait! MFP already assumed I'd be burning those same calories on any and every given day when I told it how active I was.

So now my fancy Garmin watch is f@%$*#g with my calories by a few hundred every day based on movement that MFP already factored in, making me think I have wiggle (read: snacking) room that I don't really have.

I WANT Garmin to measure my exercises. I have apps for those things, and I can and do specifically tell my watch what and when to measure for them. Then, I want Garmin to tell MFP about those things. But ONLY those things.

I DO NOT WANT double credit for my daily baseline activity level. But the way Garmin synchs, there doesn't appear to be a way to get one without the other.

Incorrect understanding of what is happening. No double credit.
Reread Leichti.
If you want to know why not specifically - provide a screen shot of the MFP app Exercise Diary, and the details screen of the Garmin Adjustment. Make this a prior day that shows midnight sync done.

Also keep in mind the base premise here.
You are guessing from 4 rough levels on MFP that include no exercise and hard setting it.

Garmin is providing maybe 250-750 levels including exercise AND what it sees you move daily.

Unless your workouts are just very long and the type that HR-based calorie burns are very inflated for (intervals) - one is probably better than the other.