Fitbit and MyFitnessPal calorie discrepancy.

[NikkiLouLoos]

I have my fitbit account and myfitnesspal account linked together. I don't understand how the calories are worked out? I have emailed myfitnesspal and they haven't gotten back to me yet. I was hoping if someone else can help me, and explain to me how it's worked out? 

According to my dashboard I've burned 1528 cals.

 My fitness pal, I have -10 for my exercise. I don't get it.

I have also noticed the more I exercise, the more I seem to have a lower calorie allowance? I don't understand how it works. Help 

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity

[Onewhodiets]

I have linked my MFP and fitbit accounts. I will log my exercise through MFP only, right?  It is easy for me to understand that I log bicycling in MFP as fitbit doesn't 'notice' my cycling as steps are not involved. What about gardening? I did a ton of gardening today and I got a lot of steps in, but it also requires more than stepping. I don't know what to do. If I log all my gardening will MFP give me credit for using up too many calories, because it also notes my steps from fitbit? One person said you should log thinkgs like tennis, but that involves a lot of steps (also arm involvement like gardening). I really would appreciate a detailed answer in plain language.  I find the corporate discussions to be not "plain language" at all.

[jorang]

My understanding is:

Add your gardening i MFP ie. using "gardening, general" as exercise type. Than MFP will "push back" your exercise to Fitbit and override the calorie burn from steps in that same timeslot as your gardening

[Onewhodiets]

Since I posted that question, I did find some links to articles that explained things in a way I could understand, but your answer is very helpful. I suppose if I don't input the gardening on MFP, I'll just be losing out on claiming to have used up a few extra calories, which is fine.This is assuming that when Fitbit just thinks I'm walking around as opposed to gardening, even though it can log my heartrate (which MFP can't), it will credit me with using up fewer calories than I actually am using, as it doesn't 'know' I  am doing more than walking... right?

[jorang]

I don't know if you will be credited with more cals if you enter "gardening" in MFP to replace the ordinary step/ HR registrations from your Fitbit.

Maybe you can find out by noticing the calorie burn you are credited in MFP before and after adding the gardening activity?

[Onewhodiets]

Thanks for your answer. No more being mindless - I really have to think
about this stuff.

[HeliosJim]

This is all just as clear as mud! If I understand this, I can log the activity with FitBit, and then enter it into MFP but I have to tell it the exact time and duration that I did it so that FitBit and MFP can figure it out and not double credit it. Hua? Why not just have FitBit send the data over to MFP? 

Ideally, I think I shold be able to log my activity on FitBit, since that's what it does well. I tell the Surge I am going for a run, the GPS tracks it and the HR monitor helps figure out the calories used. Same with bikink, or eliptical or whatever (GPS used as appropriate of course). Why should we have to go over to MP and enter it again?

And when I enter food consumed in MFP, it should come over to FitBit.

Or, let me determine which is the "master" to which all the data is sent. I set MFP as master, and FitBit then knows to send data to MFP. MFP then knows to collect all the data. 

All this calorie adjusting and double entering is juat too confusing and annoying. I have a lot of eperience with software, I'm not dumb, and I find this confusing...

[SilviaFitbit]

@HeliosJim It's nice to see you around! 1. No, you should just logged the activities that requires more than just steps like tennis or yoga. If you're walking or running, your Fitbit should track all that activity and sync it to MyFitnessPal. You're going to see steps and calories burned in the "check-in" section of MFP. 

2. You don't necessarily need to log activities in MFP, some people decide to log activities through MFP but you don't have to. Also, since you have a Surge it has more features that you can use to not log activities in MFP. 

3. If you log food in MFP, it will automatically sync to Fitbit. Please make sure that you've linked both accounts by doing this linking procedure. 

4. Please check the chart below to know what's going to sync between Fitbit and MFP and you can decide if you want to link them or just use Fitbit. 

What syncs?
Fitbit > Steps > MFP
Fitbit > Calories > MFP
Fitbit > Aria measurements > MFP
MFP > Logged food > Fitbit
MFP > Activities > Fitbit

Hope this helps you take advantage of Fitbit Surge, and MFP.

[HeliosJim]

@SilviaFitbit Hi Silvia and thanks for that, it actually is a big help. I tend to overthink too many things, so perhaps that's causing some of my confusion. As I think about this more (again - maybe too much thinking) it occures to me that perhaps much of this was designed before the Surge or at least before the Surge had an ability to track activities from my wrist. 

I am not clear on a few things in your post. Sorry to be a pain 😞

You wrote:

"1. No, you should just logged the activities that requires more than just steps like tennis or yoga. If you're walking or running, your Fitbit should track all that activity and sync it to MyFitnessPal."

Do you mean not to log it on the FitBit Surge itself, in the FitBit dashboard or on MFP? 

For example, when I used my eliptical machine, the behavior I observe is:

1 - I tell the FitBit Surge on my wrist that I have begun my eliptical activity.

2 - I complete the activity and tell the Surge I'm done by pushing the pause button then the finish button.

3 - The record of this activity is saved on the FitBit Android app and also on the dashboard on your web site.

4 - It does not go to MFP

5 - I go to MFP and I log that activity by telling MFP the type, start time and duration. 

6 - It now appears twice on my FitBit dashboard, once marked as from MFP and the other time marked as from FitBit.

In this use case, it seems that MFP is able to understand that those calories I just told it about overlap calories recorded by the FitBit and therefore does not credit them twice to my daily calorie consumption. I think - I'm not sure. MFP is not all that clear either.

If it does this fine, however, I find it annoying that the FitBit dashboard is displaying it twice.

Setting the dashboard issue aside, it seems from what you wrote that a step activity like eliptical should have synched from FitBit over to MFP. However, you cited two activities that are GPS tracked. So does an activity need to be step based to sync over, or GPS tracked to sync over? If the former it seems that my eliptical activities should be synching.

If that's not going to work, I guess I could just not bother tracking my non-synched activities in MFP, although I would like to have them tracked there. 

I broke the link last night, I'll put it back today and try this all again.

Thanks!

[SilviaFitbit]

@HeliosJim I'll be more than happy to explain this to you and make it easier to understand. 

1. Since you have a Fitbit Surge, you should use it to track activities that are already set in the tracker, such as workout, bike, hike, weights, elliptical and spinning. If you find any activity that's not in your Surge, you should log it using MyFitnessPal or the online Dashboard. 

2. That's totally fine, your whole activity won't sync directly to the Dashboard just the steps and calories. So, you have two options here: Just use your tracker when doing elliptical and have the steps and calories synced to MFP or not use Surge and log the activity in MyFitnessPal. 

3. The calories burned in Fitbit and MFP should be the same because there will be a calorie adjustment made in MFP to make sure they are both showing the same information. 

Hope this clarifies your questions . I'll be around. 

[HeliosJim]

@SilviaFitbit Thanks! I have a handle on this now, it's very well explained here:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10098937/faq-syncing-logging-food-exercise-calorie-a...

That thread is long but worth reading completely. Based on the information there, I'll be tracking my food using MFP and my activity using FitBit. 

I think the key concept is that the FitBit system tracks the raw data during the day and this data is never edited or changed or deleted. That raw data is used in different ways to create final reports we all see. For example, if I use the activity button on the tracker, it marks the recorded data for the time period covered as an activity. I can then create a new record manually, for the same time period, and the calorie consumption I list in this manually created record will the the number that contributes to my daily total, and the data used to send over to MFP. This is useful if I feel the calorie consumption calculated by FitBit is inaccurate, which can happen for various reasons.

If I log an activity over at MFP, that's essentially creating a manual record, just as if I did it here on FitBit. That being the case, I see no advantage to logging activity there, except maybe that it gets posted for my friends to see. Since I have no "MFP friends," well, that's just fine by me.

Now that I understand it (or at least understand it better) I like it. It offers users the easy of doing nothing and having FitBit do the calculations, while also allowing other users to see the raw data but also interperate it as they see fit (okay - bad pun).

The thread I linked above, although being on the MFP community, recomends doing things this way and discusses why the FitBit system is prefereble for activity tracking in certain circumstances.  It also explains how to understand when the FitBit data is right or may need correcting and why. You guys should send that thread author a nice thank you gift!  🙂

[Electricia]

Hi there, I was wondering if you ever got any clarity on this? I've been scouring the forums and following the links on how the calories are calculated, and I still have no idea 1)Why my calories left for the day are wildly different on FitBit and on MFP, and 2)which number I should be following.

As far as I can tell, in MFP I start off with 1200 cal/day, and throughout the day as it recieves info from FitBit, it adjusts based on the number of calories I've burned through activity. That is straightforward enough, and is how MFP has always worked, except that I used to log my activity manually instead.

It's the FitBit part that I'm super confused about, and none of the moderator answers have cleared it up for me. If I take the FitBit numbers - calories eaten plus calories left, minus calories added through activity - it adds up to 890 calories for the whole day. I don't understand why both starting numbers don't match. Shouldn't FitBit also start with 1200 calories and go from there? I am so confused!

All I really want to know is - should I be going by the number of calories left on FitBit, or the number of calories left on MFP? I really don't care about the mechanics of how it's all calculated, just a straightforward answer! I'm hoping that you discovered it and can help me out. 🙂

My default plan is to continue using the calorie tracker in MFP as I always have, let it take my activity from FitBit, and use the calories left that MFP tells me. The only thing I'm doing differently in that case is getting the activity info from FitBit as opposed to inputting it myself. I don't know if any of this makes sense to anyone but me!

Thanks!

[Electricia]

Hm, I thought it would show the message I was replying to. Here's the question I'm referring to from Jo_S:

"

Hi guys!  I'm also pretty confused... I've synched MFP and FitBit, logging food into MFP and letting FitBit track activity.

Here is an example of what is happening?

Both dashboards show that I have consumed, say 1300 calories.

Both also agree that I have burned 800 calories from exercise.

MFP has a calorie goal of 1200/day to lose 1kg/week.

FitBit is also set to 1kg/week.

MFP calculates that my "allowance" is my goal (1200) + those burned (800) - those consumed (1300)=700, meaning that I can still eat 700 calories and meet my goal.

FitBit tells me I've got 90 calories left to consume.

Now can somebody please explain this?  And what I should do?  I'm really confused, and I neither want to eat 600 calories more than my goal (hello, weight gain), nor do I want to eat 600 less (goodbye, metabolism).  Help!"

[Jo_S]

Hi!

So I never got a clear answer for this, but my guess as to the explanation is the following:

When you're entering your activity manually on MFP, you only enter actual conscious exercise (e.g. a game of football); the walking around you naturally do during the day is calculated by the setting you choose - 'Sedetary Life' or 'Really Active Job' (I don't remember what they were called, but I think you get the idea) - and factores in those calories as exercise from the beginning of the day.

FB on the other hand counts everything you do in the day as exercise, and sends it all to MFP as exercise.

This means that MFP counts your regular activity and calorie burn (apart from exercise) twice, and thus ends up with a bigger allowance that it should have.

I think it's really kind of idiotic that MFP and FB haven't figured this out yet and provided a solution for it, but the bottom line is, based on the above guess (which may be wrong), follow FitBit.

Good luck.

[LeoKing92]

Okay this is quite difficult to explain but I'll do my best not to convolute the question. Basically the calorie adjustment that Fitbit is sending MyFitnessPal does not reflect the projected calorie burn in Fitbit, so I don't understand where the number is coming from.

I bought a Fitbit Blaze a few days ago and I have synchronised it with MFP (MyFitnessPal), all good so far, the food I log in MFP transfers into the Fitbit app, and the exercise calories (which I allow Fitbit to log automatically and have stopped entering in MFP) are transferring from Fitbit to MFP.

I have told both applications that I want to create a deficit of 500 calories per day (thus lose 1lb a week). I have entered all the same data into both apps, so my BMR will be the same in both. My understanding is that Fitbit assesses how many calories you have burned so far during the day, predicts how many you will have burned by the END of the day, subtracts 500 calories (for the deficit) and tells you to eat the balance. Example:

According to Fitbit, I have BURNED 1181kcal so far (09:45). I have been to the gym so this seems pretty accurate, given that this number also includes calories burned based on my BMR. Because of the integration with MFP, Fitbit knows I have EATEN 567kcal. Fitbit is telling me I have 1,637kcal LEFT TO EAT. If I eat that figure throughout the day, I will have eaten a total of 2204kcal. Fitbit is creating a 500kcal deficit for me, so it is safe to assume it thinks by the end of the day I will have burned 2704kcal (the hypothetical food allowance plus the deficit). Based on yesterdays figures this figure of 2704kcal burned by midnight is a realistic guess. No issues here, well done Fitbit.

Now...

My understanding is that MyFitnessPal trawls the Fitbit app for this prediction, and gives you a "Fitbit calories adjustment" (found in the exercise section of the MFP app). This adjustment allegedly increases your 'food-budget' in-line with what Fitbit is predicting.

I have told MFP to give me a 500kcal daily deficit so it has provided me with a daily 1510kcal allowance. So, given that we have now deduced that Fitbit is letting me eat 2204kcal (because it is predicting I will burn 2704kcal by the end of the day), you would expect the "Fitbit calories adjustment" to increase my allowance in MyFitnessPal accordingly. To bring 1510kcal (MFP) up to the 2204kcal figure (Fitbit) the "Fitbit calories adjustment" would need to say "694". THAT would mean BOTH APPS are giving me the same allowance, based on what they think I will have burned by the end of the day.

BUT it doesn't. The "Fitbit calories adjustment" in MyFitnessPal reads "379". This means MyFitnessPal is allowing me 315 less calories for the day than Fitbit.

Now, I appreciate this number changes throughout the day, that is not an issue, it makes sense that it would because your activity changes throughout the day. BUT, why are both apps not giving the same target? Have I misunderstood what they are doing? Please advise.

[Rich_Laue]

Hello @LeoKing92 2 thoughts i have, glance through the thread that i moved your post to. And take a look at the main thread on correcting calorie discrepancy with MFP, this thread is also pointed to the top.

[rasmikumak]

Hi Silvia, I'm hoping you can help me too.  I have my fitbit  blaze account and my fitnesspal linked.  Everything I enter into MFP (food and exercise) does get picked up by my fitbit account, but MFP does not show the calorie adjustment from fitbit.  On the days I'm just wearing my fitbit, and not logging any other type of exercise, MFP just says 0 for calories burned, even if I've been on my feet walking all day and burned over 1000 calories.  For other types of exercise (yoga) I will wear a heart rate monitor and not my fitbit, which I log directly into MFP and then my fitbit account will pick it up as well.  I used to be able to get MFP to show the fitbit calorie adjustment by unlinking and then relinking the accounts every day, but now not even that is working.  I need help please, because I would like it if everything worked as it is supposed to.  Thank you!

[SilviaFitbit]

@rasmikumak A warm welcome to the Community! Thank you for the troubleshooting that you've done. I would like you to try unlinking and relinking both accounts but this time make sure you do the procedure from MyFitnessPal.

Hope this helps.

[Shambler101]

Hi Electrica

I have been scratching my head aswell, i found this to be useful:

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Third-Party-Integrations/MyFitnessPal-How-to-correct-calorie-discrep...

Once you have set it the dashboard should show you your daily target as set in MFP and how much you are under or over. 

From now on you let the fitbit send your exercise information over to MFP and let MFP send daily intake over to fitbit. 

hope this helps.

[rasmikumak]

Hi, thank you for your response.  I continually link and unlink from myfitnesspal.  It does not help.  Any other suggestions?

[rasmikumak]

Hi, unfortunately this does not help. All I want, is for MFP to display the
calorie adjustment from my fitbit that I'm wearing all day, and that is
recording my steps and calories burned. It used to do this when I'd
disconnect and reconnect my fitbit to MFP. I'd have to do it everyday, but
at least they communicated. Now MFP doesn't display the calorie adjustment
at all. If I make the adjustments you suggested, my fitbit no longer
adjust for the calories I've burned. Thanks for trying to help.





Rashmi