Tracked Fitbit excersises are shared to MFP and then resend back to Fitbit

[MisterMarcoo]

Hello all,

I am using MyFitnessPal and Fitbit for years now, but only got a FItbit Charge 5 since two weeks now, which is my first. I'm really glad with it and it makes it all so much more accurate. It really motivates me more. 

Anyway, I was already logging food and water since years and they always show up nicely in Fitbit. (There is no Fitbit food database for The Netherlands..). 
But since I have the tracker I noticed I start an activity on the tracker and that will log the excercise in my Fitbit Account. Since I have my FB account connected to my MFP account, my excercise shows up in my MFP account as well, which is great of course for the calorie calculation in MFP. 

However, I noticed that once my activity is logged in Fitbit and then shared to MFP, MFP will resend it back to Fitbit as well. 
The difference is that Fitbit might say 15 minutes of running (with walking in between), while MFP might say 3x 5 minutes of running (making it 3 different smaller excercises). Those 3 excercises are then being pushed back to Fitbit, making my total excercises in Fitbit that day 4. 
Example Fitbit Activity 'a' > MyFitnessPal activity 'x', 'y', 'z' > Fitbit Activity 'a', 'x', 'y', 'z'.

One might: "just don't look too much into that detail", but I noticed that those tiny excercises also get awarded active zone minutes and calorie burn. So to me it's completely unclear if my calculations are correct right now. 
And as I said before: I must use another app then Fitbit for food logging, since Fitbit still doesn't offer food logging here. 

Hope my explaination is clear and that somebody can tell me if I should change something. 🙂

[MisterMarcoo]

Just to add: I just noticed that the excercises in MyFitnessPal were synced from Google Fit. 

So basically I have two trackers: Google Fit and Fitbit.

1. Fitbit is tracking my excercise and puts it in the Fitbit app.
2. Google Fit is automatically tracking my excercise (when I have my phone with me)
3. Google Fit syncs that data to MyFitnessPal.
4. MyFitnessPal sends the Google Fit data over to Fitbit, which does make sense btw. 
5. Fitbit counts them both as seperate excercises. 

So what I did now was remove the connection between Google Fit and MyFitnessPal, since there is no use for it anymore. That tracker should be obsolete since I have the Fitbit Charge 5 now. 

I will probably also turn off activity tracking in Google Fit since there is no use for it anymore. (I can use the 3rd party app FitToFit to sync Fitbit data to Google Fit). Might be wise right?

[EdsonFitbit]

It's great to see you in the Fitbit Community, @MisterMarcoo.

Thank you for letting us know the workaround you performed to resolve the issue with duplicates.

If you continue experiencing difficulties, try to revoke access between your Fitbit and MyFitnessPal accounts and connect them once again. For instructions please visit this article.

Have a nice day.

[MisterMarcoo]

Hi @EdsonFitbit ,

Unfortunately, this workaround is not sufficient. Fitbit does not share your excercises to MyFitnessPal, so you calorie burn is not correct. Fitbit only shares your steps towards MFP, not your excercises.This means you are missing out on a lot. 

I'd rather have the option to sync my food and water from MFP to FB, but don't sync my training from MFP to FB, but that doesn't seem to be working. 

I also tried a workaround with Strava. 
Fitbit activity > Strava > MFP, but then again your MFP activity by Strava is being pushed back to Fitbit as well, creating duplicates again. 

So what should be the best approach to get my activity correctly synced with MFP? Or should I just wait on the Dutch food database (which is already taking years and probably never coming)?

[EdsonFitbit]

Thanks for the update, @MisterMarcoo.

For information about what data is transferred between Fitbit and MyFitnessPal, please visit this post.

If you are having difficulties with this integration, I would recommend getting in touch with MFP customer support. They should let you know how to proceed.

Have a nice day.

[MisterMarcoo]

Hi @EdsonFitbit thanks for your reply, really helpful. Just one question and then I'll let it go ;).

I noticed that today I did a short workout for around 15 minutes and went swimming for 45 minutes. Looking at both excercises in Fitbit I see I burned a total of 411 calories during these excercises. I am awake now for 4 hours and have 2526 steps. Unfortunately, you cannot see how many calories you burned with those steps in Fitbit.

Looking at MyFitnessPal I see 1 training called "adjustments of calories via Fitbit" (it's all in Dutch, so my English translation might be a bit off). This one training shows indeed 2526 steps and burned calories is 361. 

So: the calories in MFP are not the same as my two excercises combined. Does this mean the 361 calories in MFP is based on my steps? So I have actually burned 361 cal (steps) + 411 cal (excercises) = 772 calories? This is kinda important to know for my food consumption.

About my total steps: Looking at my steps in the Fitbit app I see I also have steps counted during my swimming. So I'm not sure if those 2526 steps with 361 calories are my total burned calories or if I should count more. It's really confusing if you ask me. A shame the seperate excercises don't get synced to MFP for a clearer view on your calories.

MFP negative calorie adjustment: it might be MFP is lowering my calories burned because I have turned on negative calorie adjustment, but I'm not sure if that is correct? I still would like to know if Fitbit only syncs my burned calories by steps or steps+training. Since the numbers never add up I'm really confused.

[thatsmssmith]

Hey, MisterMarcoo, you're blessed that you get ANY SYNCING AT ALL between Fitbit and MFP!!     My Fitbit only syncs steps, not exercise calories, and I've spent 3 days with MFP now with no resolution in sight.