Garmin Fenix 7 Connection

The calorie adjustment isn't just exercise.

It's a reconciliation between what MFP expected you to burn based on your profile settings, and what the device actually estimates you burned, in total. It leaves your deficit in place.

It would be rare for the adjustment to exactly match Garmin's exercise calories or active calories.

If you get a big positive adjustment, it's a strong hint that your device "sees" your activity level as higher than what you told MFP.

Lietchi wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

The calorie adjustment isn't just exercise.

It's a reconciliation between what MFP expected you to burn based on your profile settings, and what the device actually estimates you burned, in total. It leaves your deficit in place.

It would be rare for the adjustment to exactly match Garmin's exercise calories or active calories.

If you get a big positive adjustment, it's a strong hint that your device "sees" your activity level as higher than what you told MFP.

But a calorie adjustment that is much larger than the number of active calories seems... not right?

True. Probably should check not just profile settings in MFP, but also user settings in Garmin.,

JDavidPugh wrote: »

This depends a lot on how you are logging activity. The Garmin calorie adjustment is a reconciliation of the MFP estimate (based on your activity levels in your profile and BMR) and Garmin measured burn for the day.
If you exercise without starting an "Activity" on your watch it sees the extra calories as "normal" calories and adds these to the MFP exercise log as a positive adjustment. This can go positive and negative (if under) if you have negative calorie adjustments enabled. See photo:


If you log a "Garmin Activity" on your watch it will come across as an exercise.
The correction is now reconciled against this and estimated total activity for the day.

Here is a prime example of a negative calorie adjustment basically negating a bike ride I did the other day. I sat around the house all day watching football and then went for a ride. So steps were low and the games were pretty straighforward (low hear rate LOL) so my base calorie burn was very low for the day. Hence, the negative adjustment.


My best results with a tracker come from setting MFP activity levels to Sedentary 0 Exercise and let the tracker reflect all the extras or deficits......

The reason for the negative adjustment is also because Garmin sends over the gross calorie burn, the BMR calories for the duration of the exercise are then subtracted via the calorie adjustment
(Otherwise, they would be counted double)

None of that explains a calorie adjustment double the active calories for that day though. That sounds like possibly an error in the settings or a glitchy sync.

New to this thread but essentially I'm having the same problem as the initial question (using Garmin Fenix 7 Pro SS and Myfitnesspal). As I am fairly elderly and recovering from ill health my active output is low, which seems to compound the problem. Excuse my ignorance but to me it appears to be a problem caused by the interface between the software applications (Myfitnesspal and Garmin Connect). The way I understand it is:

Myfitnesspal
- works on a base calorie burn from your profile (in my case that would be low) as it has no way of tracking you.
- once connected to Garmin Connect it adjusts that profile calorie burn based on actual activity. Example below was an usually active morning for me, but not "active" exercise activity:


Garmin Connect:
- unconnected to Myfitnesspal, would calculate a background calorie burn based on normal activity and only adjusted for "active" calories (based on heart rate etc).
- connected to Myfitnesspal; Garmin Connect replaces the background calories burn with the Myfitnesspal "Goal". Note the difference in the "exercise calories" used to adjust the "Goal" in Myfitnesspal vs the "Active calories" used to adust the "Goal" in Garmin connect.


In my opinion this is where the error is introduced. I would suggest that Garmin Connect keep the ongoing background calorie burn; adjusted by a percentage obtained from the goals of Myfitnesspal and active minutes from the watch; to give a running total of calories burned vs calories consumed.