Double counting fitness??

[Jammallnyte73]

I fear I am double counting my calorie burning.  I have my fitbit and yesterday linked my Runkeeper to both Fitbit and MFP.  Just finished my morning walk and I see both on my dairy.  Have I double counted?  Should I unlink runkeeper?

[SLS]

I'm wondering the same thing.....I will be watching for an answer 

[slysam]

You don't want to link Runkeeper to both Fitbit and MFP or you will have double counting. You should be fine to link to one or the other. If what you are seeing in your Fitbit diary is your "activity record" (from using the timer) and the Runkeeper log, that is fine. The activity record using the timer just shows what fitbit estiamtes in that time based on the movement data, it doesn't change anything. The logged activity overwrites what fitbit had estimated. If it is logged twice--once by Runkeeper and once by MFP then you have a problem. If so, just disconnect Runkeeper from either MFP or Fitbit.

[sasa]

i usually use MFP and I manually add whatever it is I do; whether it's running or boot camp, etc. Since I just recieved my fitbit force, I'm only slightly confused.. I see that MFP syncs w/fitbit so my food is recorded. Do I have to record my activities with MFP or do it thru fitbit or does it matter??  I don't want to double count.

[sparklie78]

I am confused on this as well.  I did about 30 minutes of weights this morning which I logged as "circuit training" in MFP (I work with a trainer and do plyometrics in between reps, so this seemed the best choice.)  I started and stopped my FitBit appropriately and it logged steps for that 30 minute section.  I put "weight training" into my Fitbit app, and it took off yet another 101 calories.  I KNOW I didn't burn that many!  I am simply trying to figure out where I need to log the activity!  It didn't seem to "overwrite" the activity log when I put it in...  Thank you for the help! 

[Jammallnyte73]

So in general, we are all still confused

[slysam]

For exercise you feel you need to log, if you have Fitbit and MFP linked... You can log to either place but not both unless you want double counting.

I personally prefer to log to Fitbit because I have better control. I actually only log activities Fitbit doesn't track well. I make an activity record using the timer and compare the stats to the stats on my Heart rate monitor. Before I used an app that logged to Fitbit for me, I just logged the activity if the calorie burn was much different than my HRM then i entered the HRM calorie burn. That works well for me, the downside is that my specific activity is not listed on MFP. My extra calories burned whether they are from exercise or general activity show on MFP in my fitbit adjustment. MFP recommends that you log any exercise that you feel a need to log on MFP. Then, MFP later logs it to Fitbit for you. The advantage is the activity appears in both places. The downside for me, was that since the Fitbit Adjustment excludes MFP logged exercise it was a little confusing to keep track of. Also when I didn't have negative adjustments enabled sometimes my MFP allowance would be too high. Also sometimes there were syncing issues between the two sites (rare but often enough) and when I logged to MFP I didn't know my total calorie burn since my exercise was on the MFP site but hadn't logged to Fitbit. The way I do it, all my activity was on Fitbit and my food was on MFP so if the two stopped talking--I could easily figure it out on my own. Either way can work, you just do not want to log the same activity twice. I should note in your Fitbit activity log there are potentially two different things. There is: 1-A logged activity generated when you log an activity on Fitbit or MFP or use a connecting app like Runkeeper or Digifit. These are all the same thing whether you create the entry or another site does it for you. The "logged activity" or "manually logged activity" replaces whatever Fitbit estimated in that time. So you will only want to log if your alternate source is at least the same accuracy or more than Fitbit. 2--An Activity Record that is generated by using the timer on your device (same as for sleep tracking, but if you are moving Fitbit classes it as activity rather than sleep). This only shows what Fitbit tracked in that time for your reference, it doesn't alter anything. You can have both a logged activity and an activity record for the same activity in your Fitbit activity diary with no issue at all. It may be confusing as often they will say different things, but some people like to see what Fitbit tracked. I use to use that information to determine whether I want to log an activity. In my case I really don't need to log most step based aerobic exercise. You just do not want more than one logged activity covering the same time period. You probably would not do this if manually entering, but it does happen if people use more than one app that logs to Fitbit and doesn't realize how they work together. It can also happen if you have an app log to both Fitbit and MFP--because MFP will then relog the same activity to Fitbit again. If this happens it is easily fixed, you can always delete the extra log and alter your connections so this stops happening. But the other stuff is mostly personal preference. If you like to use Runkeeper that is fine--just link it to either MFP or Fitbit but not both.

[sparklie78]

It makes perfect sense to log activity on Fitbit and food on MFP, although MFP seems to have a much larger selection for activities.

I'm now going to ask a fairly dumb question... My HRM was a gift from my parents and it just shows HR in real time. Is there a good way to estimate average heart rate and calories burned? Perhaps a website that I could use to determine this? I originally started using the HRM because I was having some heart fib issues and my doctor recommended that I wear it to make sure I wasn't exceeding my maximum HR when training.

[slysam]

I use the Digifit app with a blue tooth strap for my main hrm. It does factor in more than just average heart rate, you may notice. I am mainly posting it because it is one of the few HRM apps/devices that publish which formula they use. Different HRM's have their own formulas so they can vary device to device or app to app. Here is a link to a post on the Digifit blog about how they estimate calories burned; http://blog.digifit.com/2013/03/counting-calories-digifit/

[slysam]

Sparkly, just one other thing. My first HRM estimated just on weight, gender and average heart rate per workout. There was a weird bug with this method... If I turned on my HRM at the start of a workout that varied: warmup, some cardio, some strength, and stretching, I would get weird results. The average heart rate would be low because my heart rate is low during some of the segments. I learned from trial and error that I would get a higher calorie burn estimate if I just tracked the cardio without the others--even though that was much shorter time. It was like the warmup and cooldown burned neative calories--or like I was eating cookies as my warmup and cool down. I think this method works okay if you keep your HRM recordings separate for each activity. For example, if you warm up, do the elliptical, then row then stretch. Start and stop your hrm recording for each of these segments of your workout (maybe not the stretching as it isn't a big calorie burner anyway). If you are using it for steady state cardio, that shouldn't be an issue but it can be with some of the hybrid workouts that mix cardio, strength and flexibility into one workout.