Fitbit & MyFitnessPal show DIFFERENT calories goals even though I reset everything

[SunsetRunner]

Hi,

This is seriously starting to piss me off. I've been playing with Fitbit/MyFitnessPal's settings for a good two hours and can't seem to set everything correctly. I've already searched a lot about this and I'm not the only one that has problems figuring this out. Common, this can't be that hard to sell products that are user friendly.

I have manually set goals to 2000 calories manually BOTH in Fitbit/MFP and when they sync, MFP shows I have 1600 calories remaining, and Fitbit shows 1000. What's wrong here??? Why does MFP logs an additional 600 "exercise" calories, taken from Fitbit, when I've been doing absolutely no exercise?

Can someone help me there?

[Rich_Laue]

Could it be related to this post? 

[SunsetRunner]

Yup that's the exact procedure I followed!

Still doesn't work! Now it's 10PM and Fitbit shows 2700 calories burned (which is 700 over what it's supposed to be for my weight/goals - and I haven't exercised at all today) and MFP shows an adjustment of +1100 calories for "exercise" so more than 3000 total!

This is completely ridiculous. I'm starting to think I'll return my Fitbit if the company isn't even able to make decent apps to go with it.

[CardiganWearer]

@SunsetRunneryou have my sympathy. I have been looking at Fitbit calorie charts for a month now and still can't make sense of them.

I added MFP a week or so ago and it is miles ahead of FB for logging food etc.

However, looking at this post

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Third-Party-Apps-Integrations/Third-Party-Apps-Informational-Post/m-p/1447884#M12208

might provide the reason for the cal burn/left numbers?

• from what I understand you log your calories eaten at MFP and they are sent to FB
• weight entries are synced across both apps.
• activity on MFP is sent to FB
• but only Step activity is sent back to MFP - so Calories burned will be different at MFP if you have other activity besides steps at FB. I am guessing this includes the default calories burned FB credit you with for just being alive (based on age/gender/weight etc I think)

I just log calories eaten at MFP and do everything else at FB but even then their dashboard is unfathomable.

[SunsetRunner]

Yeah after I lot of research I've come to the idea that Fitbit just can NOT calculate correctly burned calories. The only solution is to adjust your body weight in the app, making it think that you're burning less calories than expected.

Another example of a poor designed device/app, because we have no control over that (erroneous) calculation.

Still thinking of returning the Fitbit and never buying that again.

[CardiganWearer]

trackers are gadgets not medical devices.

estimates/algorithms will vary in their "accuracy" by individual.

in my case Steps, Stairs etc are a complete nonsense; for me Heart Rate is fairly accurate (tested against medical device) tho I am led to believe not that accurate when intense activity - born out by my own experience.

Calorie Burn is probably another case of good for some, not good for others.

It is the trend that is the main thing. Rate of Weight Change with current diet and activity? Doesn't matter if you are using MFP or FB or something else. But comparing different systems with each other is something that will keep you awake at night.

At the end of the day it is just common sense and trackers don't tell you anything you wouldn't already know if you are even slightly in tune with your body. But my motto has always been any toy that gets/keeps you motivated for a healthy lifestyle is ok by me.

[SunsetRunner]

You're right CardiganWearer. They're not medical devices, I understand. That being said, even today having reduced my weight by a third Fitbit is still 500 calories over. That means I would approximately have to divide by two the weight I enter in the app vs my actual weight. While they're not medical devices, I'd expect them to be at least approximately correct estimating those values (else don't advertise the product as being able to) - but it's not. A factor of two in estimating calories burned is completely off charts. And I'm not the only one that experiences this. Yes, I also understand that YMMV but there should be a way to adjust the calculation without having to resort to sketchy tricks like fiddling with our weight inside the app.

Besides, I also own an Oura Ring and never had to fiddle with anything for it to correctly estimate calories burned. The Ring can't be integrated in MFP nor does it provide real-time HR - thus the reason why I bought a Fitbit HR - but technically speaking the hardware on both is not so far away. I can't understand why one can't do what the other can. It's clearly software related - which shouldn't be that hard to fix if Oura's team did it.

[zamak13]

So if mfp is saying I ate 1800 calories and I'm literally adding up every calorie that goes into my mouth, but then when I calculate by doing 4x9x4 with my ending total macros it tells me more the 2000 range. Am I actually eating 1800 or 2000 calories a day? I'm looking to slowwwwwwly gain, and that extra 2-300 discrepancy is a lot and I don't want to bulk up that quickly!

Moderator Edit: Promoting External Links

[SunsetRunner]

Can't help you zamak13, personally I've given up - I'm gonna return both the Fitbit Alta HR and the Charge 2 that I had bought this week. Since I bought them it's been disappointment after disappointment : no open API to share heart rate with other apps or voice cues during exercise (ever tried running with you wrist held up?!), requires an internet connection just to sync (which actually should only use bluetooth), and an app that can't estimate caloric expenditure correctly - nope, I've had enough. So long Fitbit! You've failed gaining another customer.

[RobertoME]

Hi there @SunsetRunner, @CardiganWearer, @zamak13. I was reading you are having discrepancies with the calories synced between Fitbit and MyFitnessPal.

I just wanted to clarify that there are two options. Calories eaten and Calories burned; for the first one I recommend to follow the steps kindly suggested by @Rich_Laue in the previous post. This procedure will make that the calories eaten from this integration, shows you the same amount of calories intake. 

Instead, the calorie adjustment will be made based in the calories burned. This adjustment will be made everytime you have more calories burned either from MFP or Fitbit. For example when you have more calories burned in Fitbit an adjustment will be made in MFP to reflect the same amount of calories. You can learn more about this by reviewing the following post of my friend @SilviaFitbit: MyFitnessPal, Fitbit and Calorie Counting.

@zamak13 In your case I believe your concern is more related to the Food plan. Since your goal is set to slowly gain weight so I would like to recommend the following article.

Hope this helps and if the issue persists feel free to share some screenshots.

[CardiganWearer]

---

@RobertoMEwrote:
[snip]

Instead, the calorie adjustment will be made based in the calories burned. This adjustment will be made everytime you have more calories burned either from MFP or Fitbit. For example when you have more calories burned in Fitbit an adjustment will be made in MFP to reflect the same amount of calories. [snip]

---

sry. I don't think that is correct?

MFP makes a calorie burned adjustment based only on Steps recorded in FB.

for instance yesterday my MFP has a calorie adjustment of 531 based on 12,254 steps whereas FB has a total of 2,260 cals burned because of activities other than Steps. As a result FB says I was in Calorie credit by more than 200+ compared to MFP.

[Zira]

I have intergrated Fitbit and MFP, but when I enter calories on MFP on Fitbit it only shows the calories for Breakfast that day and does not break down foods or the percentage of calories in carbs, fats and proteins. Is this the best it can do?

[RobertoME]

Hello @CardiganWearer and welcome aboard to the Fitbit Community @Zira.

@CardiganWearer I saw you have a few questions still about calorie adjustment with MFP. In this instance another user in the community have almost the same concerns, so I elaborated a longer explanation about this topic that perhaps you might found interesting to review for more information, you can find this interaction by going here.

@Zira, in your case if you are not seeing more calories from MFP in your Fitbit Dashboard after the breakfast, might be recommendable to re-link your accounts. Use this post for more details in case you need some extra help to revoke and reconnect the access of MFP.

The food logged in MFP ussually will appear as "uncategorized" calories, since MFP doesn't currently integrate with macronutrients.

See you until the next opportunity.

[CardiganWearer]

@RobertoME

thanks. So, even if profile info is the same on MFP and FB, and mine is, then Calories Burned will be different because FB calculates during the day based on activity.

So, in other words, one shouldn't bother comparing Cals Burned between the two apps. Which I don't by the way since I know it is misleading to do so.

@Zira

you don't need to relink accounts. The problem is the way FB populates the summary data (badly imho).

I have found that if I drill into the FB app on my phone day to the lowest (day) level then FB will populate the MFP data. But if I just go into the summary the data can be several days behind.

I am not sure if this is a problem with FB syncing the data from MFP in a timely manner (maybe) or the way FB populates the summary data you see on the dashboard from the detail data it has in its database (probably).