Charge HR and My Fitness Pal

[AmandaJWilson]

I have a few questions, apologies if these have been asked before, but the wording in the manual is a little confusing.

I recently purchased a charge HR and I am still trying to workout how to track all of my exercise. I have been using My Fitness Pal for years to track my food and exercise, but decided to get the CHarge HR to get a more accurate tracking of my calories in / out.

I am a dancer and I tested out my Charge HR over the weekend at a dance party. I danced a song that was approximately 3.5 mins at about 118 bpm, but after the song was finished and I looked at my steps.. it only register 75 steps. At 118 bpm, I pretty much step on every beat, so to have only 75 registered, I was curious as to how accurate the calories burned would be. Now I know it also looks at my heart rate.. but I am curious, because I dance and do other activities like, Yoga, Body Pump etc, should I also be tracking my exercise in MFP or will I be double dipping? I have read about the "Calorie Adjustment" but the wording in the manual just confuses me.

I have also noticed that when I go to "Track your exercise" in the fitbit app, it doesn't come up with my activities in the calendar, it only registers the MFP activities. 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated 🙂

[SilviaFitbit]

@AmandaJWilson I'll be happy to answer your inquiry! Thanks for the details and for the test. We recommend to log activities that requires more than just steps like yoga, tennis or dance in order to improve the accuracy of this activity's contribution to your caloric burn. So, you can link Fitbit and MFP by doing this after having both accounts linked you just need to log any activity that requires more than just steps in MFP and this will automatically go to Fitbit. 

Regarding the calorie adjustment that you're going to see in MFP will be based in the calories burned that you have in Fitbit and MFP, if you have more in Fitbit than MFP there will be a calorie adjustment but if you have less calories in Fitbit than MFP then you'll see either 0 or if you have Negative adjustments on you'll see a deduction of calories.

When you're using Track your exercise in the app, the calendar will show the days that you used the app to track your exercise if you don't use it then the calendar won't show anything. 

Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with 

[novalea]

I couldn't figure out how to start a new question.  I had a flex and upgraded to a charge HR.  My exercise calories are WAY more than with the flex.  I do NOT believe this is correct.  I didn even get in my 10000 steps yesterday and didn't do anything except lay in bed and play games on my phone and it said that I burned 1437 over and above my basal. Is there a setting I need to change on one end or the other?  Thanks!

[SilviaFitbit]

@novalea It's great to have you here!  Fitbit will calculate your calories burned based in your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), which we calculate using the height, weight, age, and gender information that you provided when you set up your Fitbit account, you can learn more about it here.

So, even though you're not doing anything, you're still burning calories. Also, you can change your Food Plan settings that from personalized to Sedentary. 

Let me know how it goes. 

[sable221]

So when you do something like kick boxing and yoga...i need to add them to my fitntess pal as an activity? and will it track calories burned accurately with the charge hr?

[SilviaFitbit]

@sable221 It's great to have you here! Yes, that's correct. When you're doing any activity that requires more than just steps like kick boxing and yoga you should be logging those activities to improve the accuracy of this activity's contribution to your caloric burn.