Fitbit imports Strava activity and ignores calories

[bbarrera]

I record my bike rides with a Garmin bike computer, and Garmin Connect syncs with:

- Strava

- Endomondo

- a few more fitness platforms

Endomondo is setup to sync with Fitbit, which creates a manual activity in Fitbit. That is working as expected, the Fitbit Activity has start time, duration, miles, and calories. It could be improved, however it works and my Garmin bike computer data is faithfully logged as a Fitbit activity.

Last week I used strava.fitbit.com to authorize Fitbit to sync with Strava. Unfortunately when Fitbit imports the activity, it ignores Strava calories and appears to use a Fitbit algorithm which is wrong. Here are two examples:

Flat ride on January 11, 2018

- 21.5 miles

- 1:28:54 elapsed time

- 1:11:53 moving time (17 minutes stopped at traffic lights and bike shop)

- 200 feet of climbing

Fitness platform	Calories	% diff
Garmin Bike Computer	770	-
Strava	845	+10%
Fitbit sync with Strava	1118	+45%
Fitbit manual logging with time/distance	1131	+47%

Mountain ride on January 13, 2018

- 35.3 miles

- 3:38:15 elapsed time

- 3:11:59 moving time (27 minutes stopped for flat repair, pictures, food)

- 4724 feet of climbing 

Fitness platform	Calories	% difference
Garmin Bike Computer	1859	-
Strava	2066	+11%
Fitbit sync with Strava	1106	-41%
Fitbit manual logging with time/distance	1111	-40%

As you can see, the Fitbit servers are ignoring Strava calorie estimate and instead using a simple and wrong calorie estimate (appears to borrow from manual Fitbit logging).

My request: please update your Strava integration and import Strava estimated calories in addition to miles, duration, and start time.

[RobertoME]

Hi there @bbarrera, good to see you here and thank you for sharing your concern in our Fitbit Community! Indeed, I believe this is related to the data that Strava syncs with Fitbit. Note that exercises recorded in Strava will be synced to Fitbit as manually logged activities, but will not include GPS or heart rate data from Strava. So the the missing data of heart rate might be impacting your calories overall in your total numbers specifically with the integration.

I will forward your comments to our teams as this feedback helps us to improve the Fitbit experience. However with third party integration might be tricky, due to the fact Fitbit doesn't own or maintain third party integrations. It's up to the owner of the third party app to implement or update features for their app.

Thank you again for this and for future updates stay tuned to our Fitbit Community.

[bbarrera]

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@RobertoME wrote:

However with third party integration might be tricky, due to the fact Fitbit doesn't own or maintain third party integrations

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@RobertoME You are confused, because Fitbit is responsible for this integration.

This is clearly stated when authorizing using strava.fitbit.com 

As you can see, Fitbit is reading my Strava activity data.

Therefore Fitbit is creating the manual activity, ignoring Strava calorie data, and adding calorie data using Fitbit algorithm. The Fitbit calorie algorithm appears to be based on average speed, and that algorithm is broken. Instead, Fitbit should just read Strava calorie estimates and use those in the manually logged activity entry.

(It is also clear that Fitbit is responsible, if you understand oauth and follow the authorization process)

[bbarrera]

Yesterday I had two non-GPS rides synced from TrainerRoad to Strava. Fitbit-Strava integration synced the first as manually logged activity, but not the second one.

[lindyhopper]

I have a similar issue.

I bought a charge a month ago and have been manually logging my daily commute by starting a bike activity on my charge using connected GPS. However fitbit's readings using connected GPS are garbage: it regularly drops the connection after a few miles so gives the wrong distance and calories, or when I look at the map shows me taking a totally incorrect route, for example leaving work, cycling up the road, cycling back down the road back to work, and then going home via a different route that I've never used.

So I switched to recording my rides with strava which has a much better reputation for accuracy. However when I sync Fitbit and Strava Fitbit ditches the calorie estimates Strava is giving it and comes up with a calorie estimate about 50% lower than it calculated itself under auto-recognise.

To add insult to injury, because it's imported as a manual activity I can't even correct it.

I'm starting to wonder what the point is of using Fitbit if you cycle regularly. It:

a) counts steps even in bike mode, thus making my step counts garbage

b) works unreliably with connected GPS, making my distance, time and calorie count for the day garbage

c) ignores the accurate data it's importing from Strava, making my calorie counts garbage

d) doesn't allow you to edit the junk data it's coming up with because it counts as a manual activity

So no matter what I do, Fitbit is generating complete garbage. What was the point of paying for a device with connected GPS and multi-sport when it breaks every single metric you might want to measure?  I wouldn't mind if Fitbit said it was just a pedometer and worked accordingly, but it's pretending to be a fully integrated activity tracker while generating complete and utter rubbish

[bbarrera]

@lindyhopper what is working well for me is:

- use iPhone as Fitbit step tracker (Fitbit MobileTrack feature)

- use Garmin GPS bike computer

- Garmin Connect pushes ride to Endomondo

- Endomondo pushes ride to Fitbit

Then I get pretty reliable daily calorie burns in Fitbit. That is the best I've been able to achieve, having tried Flex, Force, Surge, and Blaze.

For cycling fitness-level, I use other platforms (primarily Strava and TrainingPeaks). I've thought about picking up a Garmin multi-sport tracker, because I like to bike/hike/ski/swim, but the original Apple Watch is still working well, really handy throughout the day, and at this point its a better watch at the office than a dedicated Fitbit or Garmin fitness tracker.

All of the claimed benefits of PurePulse really haven't worked out for me, and I'm waiting to see how Ionic evolves before giving it a try.