Garmin Connect and workouts

Theoretically, you shouldn't delete anything and just let the sync do its work. But that adjustment looks huge.
Check your total calorie burn for the day in Garmin.
And then compare it to the number MFP received for that day: tap on the adjustement in your diaary and in the screen that appears, tap on the adjustment again and you'll see what the number is that MFP received from Garmin for the whole day.
If those two numbers are the same, then the sync is working as it should.

AmunahSki wrote: »

Hi, I have Garmin connected to MFP. I have set MFP to ‘lightly active’, so Garmin doesn’t allocate any extra calories until I reach a threshold. I do not have ‘negative calories’ on my settings.

I use ‘Hiking’ as an activity each week, but I am actually teaching at a dry ski slope, so I do a LOT of walking uphill and only a bit of skiing. My activity gets logged like this (heart rate also shown, for clarity):




When I forget to set my Fenix, it will just record the steps I have walked instead of the Hiking as exercise. So I don’t think Garmin is ‘double counting’ your running steps.

(I only eat back a small portion of these calories, mind - I think the calorie burn it is showing vastly overestimated - I would be interested in the thoughts of other Garmin/MFP users, hence why I included a screenshot of my heart rate timeline too.)

I would activate negative calories in your situation for a safer calorie adjustment - you should be getting negative calorie adjustments from those long durations of exercise (BMR calories are more than likely being double counted in your current setup). Especially if you are not active outside of your exercise and even more so with your activity level set at lightly active.
The 0 adjustment is a dead giveaway that your actual total adjustment would be lower (more reasonable) with negative adjustments activated.

OP (@mountainstretch), I'm going to ask your indulgence as I digress from your specific question to try to answer the below-bolded question from @AmunahSki. While it's not what you asked, it is some more perspective on Garmin estimates, loosely related. Apologies.

AmunahSki wrote: »

Hi, I have Garmin connected to MFP. I have set MFP to ‘lightly active’, so Garmin doesn’t allocate any extra calories until I reach a threshold. I do not have ‘negative calories’ on my settings.

I use ‘Hiking’ as an activity each week, but I am actually teaching at a dry ski slope, so I do a LOT of walking uphill and only a bit of skiing. My activity gets logged like this (heart rate also shown, for clarity):




When I forget to set my Fenix, it will just record the steps I have walked instead of the Hiking as exercise. So I don’t think Garmin is ‘double counting’ your running steps.

(I only eat back a small portion of these calories, mind - I think the calorie burn it is showing vastly overestimated - I would be interested in the thoughts of other Garmin/MFP users, hence why I included a screenshot of my heart rate timeline too.)

There are lots of things that can affect the accuracy of a fitness tracker's activity estimates.

I'm assuming that if you're teaching in that context, you're conditioned to it, i.e., it's not new or particularly challenging. But activity that's newer or more challenging can be over-estimated because our fitness level means that our heart's beating extra-hard, making the device think we're working harder than we are.

A second factor is that maximum heart rate is estimated based on age, unless we've input a tested HRmax into the device's setup. (Not all devices let a person do that, but I know the Fenix is a higher-end device, so I assume it does allow such entry.)

Have you ever tested maximum heart rate in a sports-oriented test (not a medical stress test)? If so, have you told the Fenix your tested max? A fairly large minority of people have a HRmax that differs significantly from age estimates. (This is more about genetics than conditioning.) That can affect calorie estimate for any exercise that uses heart rate in the algorithm.

I have a tested max from a few years back, so reality may be a bit lower by now, but I'm still using that tested value. I'm certain it's more accurate than the age estimate. My age-estimated max, to which Garmin would default, is 152 bpm (IOW, I'm 68). My tested max is around 180 bpm. I exceed 152bpm pretty frequently, and it feels (RPE-wise) to be about what I'd expect at 85% of HRmax, which is where the 180bpm HRmax puts it.

If I relied on age-estimated values, I'd significantly under-train, and probably get higher calorie estimates because the device would think I was working much harder than I actually am. FWIW, this is a day with a short but somewhat more intense workout looks like HR-wise:



I don't know how old you are, but it looks like you're being estimated in Z4 (orange) at lower heart rates than I am. I'm not saying that's wrong. I don't know. But it could be wrong.

I don't know what exactly goes into Garmin's hiking estimation algorithm. If it in part uses altitude changes to gauge work, I've found my Garmin's altitude change estimates to be very unreliable. I wonder what altitude changes your Garmin saw during those class sessions, and whether they seem realistic to you. But this is a purely speculative question. (I have a different, lower-end Garmin, the Vivoactive 4, which may make a difference, I don't know.)

I agree with Lietchi that if I were you, I'd turn negative adjustments on and see what happens.

AmunahSki wrote: »

I have been doing it most Saturdays for years but I’d say it’s still pretty challenging! Walking, sometimes running, up and down slopes in full ski gear, still able to hold conversation - only very rare bursts when fully out of breath.

I’m 52 in a couple of months, and it’s using Garmin’s age-related assumptions of heart rate zones - I have never had a max test, so they could very well be wrong. Good point! But then I think it would be even more important to get that right before setting negative adjustments on (rather than relying on my own data over the last 99 days)?

Apologies to OP for the slight digression!

Your experiential data is really important. Paramount, even.

I still would personally try the negative adjustment setting and see what happens. That's doing a conceptually very different thing. By end of day, the negative adjustment is essentially reconciling MFP's assumptions about your all-day calorie burn (based on demographics and activity level setting) with the all-day calorie burn Garmin estimated based on all the movement it saw. Not allowing negative adjustments is potentially making that reconciliation inaccurate (high).

To me, it would make more sense to compare your experiential calorie burn (logged calories/averaged weight changes over the 99 days) to an more complete consensus reconciliation of MFP and Garmin, rather than comparing it to a maybe-inaccurate reconciliation.

But I'm just some random idiot on the internet, y'know?

AnnPT77 wrote: »

But I'm just some random idiot on the internet, y'know?

@AnnPT77, NOT random (I think you have about 8 years of maintenance experience?) and clearly NOT an idiot. I am very much grateful to you and @Lietchi for the advice - no use having a posh watch if the data from it is meaningless!!

Lietchi wrote: »

Look at the total calorie burn per day in Garmin.

For yesterday, it gives 1588 RMR and 1455 active (3043), on a really inactive desk day 1596 RMR + 27 (1623), and on a ‘leisurely walk’ day 1595 RMR + 276 (1871) - that’s walking 2.78 miles at a pace of 25:43/mile.

Lietchi wrote: »

I'm seconding Ann above: for true calorie needs, compare your actually consumed calories with your total calories burned according to Garmin and your weight evolution.

Looks like I need to do some number crunching for the whole 99 days!

I haven't checked the actual calculations, but the reasoning looks good to me.

Obviously, this doesn't really allow you to know if specifically your active days are overestimated, but if they are, it's pretty much compensated by the rest of the week.
My personal experience with Garmin is: overestimates for walking/hiking, underestimates for running (based on a calculator specifically for running and walking) and underestimates total burn (potentially because of the running, my most frequent exercise). But as you can see, each person is different 🙂

The calories from the treadmill will likely be the least accurate, but they are estimates you can use.

When I get on the Dreadmill, and I do so often, if I want to log it as an activity, I log it as Treadmill. It transfers to MFP just fine. It's important that your Garmin account is synced with your current weight in order to estimate calories. I wish there was an activity "Treadmill Walk," because Garmin always wants us to RUN.

I also use the treadmill to warm up and cool down from strength training. For that I just let Garmin track my steps and don't count it as an activity. That works fine for my purposes. I know my stride length so I can convert to miles, but even better, the mileage on the treadmill IS accurate because it's a belt and it knows how many times it goes around and around. But then I don't log it as an activity - I just let it be steps.