My spouses MFP is showing 0 calories burned from steps tracked by Apple Watch

dsgallentine
dsgallentine Posts: 1 Member
edited November 2023 in MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions
I want to preface this by saying this issue is causing anxiety, stress, and demotivation for my wife who struggles with OCD and wanting to use MFP as a way to hold herself accountable for her daily food intake/calories burned while in her journey to get healthy and lose weight.

She had a Fitbit which tracked steps and reported to MFP and it made sense the calories burned. She has an Apple Watch now that is reporting steps to MFP and it's saying 0 calories burned no matter how many steps she takes in a day.

She had the negative calorie adjustment on and it was reporting negative calories throughout the entire day even though she walked 10,000 steps and did a 45 minute Zumba workout. When she turned the negative calorie adjustment off, it now just reads 0 all day even if she does a lot of exercise, steps, and limits calorie intake.

This is obviously very confusing to her and it makes her feel like she's making no progress. Why can't MFP just report the calories burned by steps directly to MFP without using their own algorithms to tell her what MFP thinks her calories burned are?

She has her height, weight, and daily step goal all accurate. All Apple health permissions are enabled on MFP. Can someone please help make this right? My wife is about to give up altogether because she can't see how many calories shes burning by steps because it just says 0 no matter what. If she wants to calorie count, including step calories is important. I've seen numerous discussions on this topic but no one ever provides a good answer. How do we fix this?

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Answers

  • durden
    durden Posts: 3,540 MFP Staff
    Please accept our apologies for any confusion surrounding your adjustment. If you are seeing a step count and a 0 for the adjustment, then you have not yet earned an adjustment.

    The adjustment is actually not based on your step count, but instead based on your entire activity for the day. The step count is there as an incentive and though it does contribute to part of your activity level, it's not the sole contributor.

    Therefore x amount of steps does not mean you will receive x amount of extra calories.

    The way the adjustment is derived is by comparing your total calories burned from your tracker against the total calories already provided by MyFitnessPal.

    When you have earned more calories than MyFitnessPal has already provided, you will then see the difference as your adjustment.

    ** You can view a breakdown of this calculation by either tapping on the adjustment line in the app, or by clicking the "i" next to the adjustment line in the Cardiovascular section online at www.MyFitnessPal.com **

    Please also note: the total calories from MyFitnessPal will include any calories instantly provided by adding separate exercises (outside of your partner adjustment) to MyFitnessPal, along with the calories needed to reach the goals you set when joining the program.

    The following article may also help: https://myfitnesspal.zendesk.com/hc/articles/360032623871-What-is-the-Calorie-Adjustment-in-my-Exercise-Diary-


  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,839 Member
    For the theory, see the post above.

    But in practice: Apple is known not to play well with other platforms (including MFP, where it would seem Apple sends over the wrong numbers for the adjustment to work correctly) so I'm not sure it can be fixed.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    edited May 2022
    When a device is linked to MFP, the additional calories you get aren't for a specific number of steps or exercise...the adjustment you get is a reconciling adjustment to the actual activity per the device vs the activity level selected on MFP. The activity level in MFP already includes some baseline activity, even for a sedentary setting. 1,457 steps isn't enough movement to warrant an adjustment...she would be double dipping as a sedentary activity level in MFP accounts for up to either 3,000 or 5,000 steps in a day...I can't quite remember the exact figure. If your wife's activity level per her device does not exceed the activity level selected in MFP, there will be no adjustment. The calories she's burning are already included in her calorie allotment per her activity level setting. In this regard, there's nothing to fix.

    That said, as has been mentioned, Apple tends to not play well with other platforms...because Apple. I can't comment with any personal experience, but I've seen other posts where others are in fact far exceeding their activity level set in MFP but don't get an adjustment...or get a very small adjustment that doesn't make sense...that's an Apple issue. But in this specific case, 1,457 steps isn't enough activity to make any kind of reconciling adjustment for activity level.



  • SilverSage1
    SilverSage1 Posts: 54 Member
    edited May 2022
    @dsgallentine I was having the same question - How does my Apple Watch translate into MFP exercise calories? After reading the answer above, I checked how many calories I earned for an hour in the gym this afternoon - 51. Then I went in to my settings, and changed my normal activity from "active" to "lightly active". My 'earned' calories changed immediately to 215.

    Now that I understand how it works, I can set my activity level as appropriate. Your wife might want to test that out on her account.
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