# Calories burned & who to believe. Garmin or MFP?



## r04DiE (10 Feb 2017)

Hello all,

I have always used Garmin or Strava to estimate my burned calories but have recently signed up with My Fitness Pal and there is quite a difference between Garmin and MFP.

Who do I believe, please?


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## Tin Pot (10 Feb 2017)

Both are estimates, I have not found any calories burned estimation to be useful.

Plus, calories are a poor measure of what you are consuming or activity you are doing.


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## screenman (10 Feb 2017)

If dieting I take the lowest and half it, when working out how many calories to consume. Works for me but might not work for anybody else, and of course may not be safe.


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## Milkfloat (10 Feb 2017)

I have a raft of devices and often run then concurrently out of interest. Even using the same device and passing the data to different software gives wildly different values, which is not surprising they all use their own algorithms. For example a 4 hour ride could give (even with Heart rate monitors) anything from a 1000-2000 calorie burn.


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## ianrauk (10 Feb 2017)

They are just arbitrary figures. I agree with Screenman. Lowest figure and then halve it.


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## HarryTheDog (10 Feb 2017)

I have used My fitness Pal to estimate calories to lose wieght before, but the activity calorie calculator was wildly different to Garmin . Fitness pal estimated a lot lot higher and I did not believe it. Note Garmin used with a Heart rate monitor. However using the garmin calories burned figures in conjunction with using my fitness pal to count the calories consumed I got my wieght loss goal of a pound a week to mostly work fairly well. I now have powermeters + a heart rate monitor linked to my garmin to measure work and found garmin calculates roughly 8-10% more calories used then measured with just a heart rate monitor.


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## screenman (10 Feb 2017)

The two closest reading I get is with the 20+ year old turbo readout and the garmin used at the same time.


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## r04DiE (10 Feb 2017)

Thanks for all of your interesting points. In my case, MFP is recording less calories burned than Garmin with HR monitor. We're talking 700 from MFP and 1000 from Garmin. Maybe I'll just go with halving the MFP number but that's not many calories to pig out on for me, now is it? Especially after all that hard work.


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## Bimble (10 Feb 2017)

r04DiE said:


> Thanks for all of your interesting points. In my case, MFP is recording less calories burned than Garmin with HR monitor. We're talking 700 from MFP and 1000 from Garmin. Maybe I'll just go with halving the MFP number but that's not many calories to pig out on for me, now is it? Especially after all that hard work.


Well you know how that famous workout phrase goes ... _Blood, Sweat and Mars Bars!_ (that's right, isn't it?)


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## Tin Pot (10 Feb 2017)

r04DiE said:


> Thanks for all of your interesting points. In my case, MFP is recording less calories burned than Garmin with HR monitor. We're talking 700 from MFP and 1000 from Garmin. Maybe I'll just go with halving the MFP number but that's not many calories to pig out on for me, now is it? Especially after all that hard work.



My approach is to eat a normal diet, and only add energy during exercise longer than 90 mins.

Everyone is different obviously, but I gained weight counting calories in/out. But by eating appropriately, I lost 1/2kg every two weeks for 20 weeks.


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## dfthe1 (10 Feb 2017)

Note that MFP shows a aloeie correction based on your Garmin calculated calories. You've told MFP your average activity level from which is estimates your daily calorie burn and it uses the Garmin calories to correct this.


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## screenman (10 Feb 2017)

Tin Pot said:


> My approach is to eat a normal diet, and only add energy during exercise longer than 90 mins.
> 
> Everyone is different obviously, but I gained weight counting calories in/out. But by eating appropriately, I lost 1/2kg every two weeks for 20 weeks.



Could you not have eaten properly and still counted the calories to end up with the same thing, which is what I do. I only list at the end of each day and have no set meal plans.


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## Tin Pot (10 Feb 2017)

screenman said:


> Could you not have eaten properly and still counted the calories to end up with the same thing, which is what I do. I only list at the end of each day and have no set meal plans.



What for? The calorie numbers are meaningless and misguiding.


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## screenman (10 Feb 2017)

Tin Pot said:


> What for? The calorie numbers are meaningless and misguiding.



No real reason other than pure interest.


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## psmiffy (21 Feb 2017)

Ive never been into calorie counting - over the years Ive monitored my weight on a weekly basis - however last month I started calories counting - not so much to lose weight but to install some discipline into what i was eating - I had recently got into a tendency to - see it - eat it - favorite crisps and buns - as a basis I used the calorie count from my Polar V800 as my "daily target" (tests ive read indicate Garmin and Polar despite using different algorithms/methods to calculate calories are probably the best but tend to indicate around a 12% over estimate of Calorie consumption) and the values given for foods off the net and on packaging plus when required my scales - as an Engineer I like data so compiled a spreadsheet to record weekly food consumption and another one to record calorie and weight balance since i started

Ive lost around 3kg in the last month without dieting per.se. - daily estimates of my calorie requirement from the V800 are in the range 2100 to 2900 depending on how much "activity" I undertake - on average 43 minutes a day in the gym (From another spreadsheet ) doing mainly resistance training and average just over 2500 which for a geezer is around the recommended daily intake - calorie consumption has varied a lot more - good days and bad days - but has averaged around a deficit of just 200 calories/day

Doing the arithmetic it would seem that calorie counting for me has attributed to a weight loss of 3kg without much hardship - notwithstanding this there does seem to be a glaring disparity between the amount of weight i've lost and my calorie deficit as calculated by the Polar.


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## MrGrumpy (23 Feb 2017)

I think you need to take these apps as a guide but don`t take them as gospel. Myfitnesspal I thought was good for seeing where your calorie intake is coming from and gives you an idea of where you need to save. Of course weight is just a measurement, 2 years ago I found that weight did not correlate to waist size etc. I was leaner as I could feel it in my clothes but the scales still said i was a fat b....d :-)


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## Dogtrousers (23 Feb 2017)

Like many metrics that you can get from digital devices these days, they give a reassuringly precise figure, but different devices give very different values. The same is true of total elevation climbed, moving average speed, power, and various other things that GPS devices and associated websites offer.

The best thing to do is to _*choose one method and stick with it*_. Ignore the other ones.

The other thing to do is to_* treat it as unitless*_. Elevation climbed is not really in metres, but in "relative climbingness"; Moving average speed is not really mph or km/h but "relative fastness". Power is "relative wattyness". Calories burned is "relative calorificness". Because you're using just one method of measurement you can make comparisons between rides.

Where you now run into problems is because this is unitless, you can't compare it with other measurements. You can't use your moving average speed to do any useful calculations like estimated time for a planned ride, because it isn't really in mph. It's just a number indicating relative fastness. You can't use it to compare with how fast someone else rode if they were using a different device/website because the value is specific to the method of derivation.

Similarly you can't sensibly use the calories burned figure and compare it with the estimated calories on the labels of the food you've eaten because they are both estimates using very different methods.

But you can use it for looking at trends and comparisons in your riding. Like setting yourself a "calorificness" target for next week, or something.


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## Alan O (25 Feb 2017)

Dogtrousers said:


> The other thing to do is to_* treat it as unitless*_. Elevation climbed is not really in metres, but in "relative climbingness"; Moving average speed is not really mph or km/h but "relative fastness". Power is "relative wattyness". Calories burned is "relative calorificness". Because you're using just one method of measurement you can make comparisons between rides.


I think that's an excellent way to look at it.

I use the daily calorie count on my Fitbit, but exactly as you suggest - so I can keep a relative check day by day. It does seem to respond well to the amount and the levels of exercise I do, and that's all I really want.

I have targets for daily and weekly "calorie burn", set at levels that I know require a reasonable amount of exercise without being too demanding. The accuracy in real kcals doesn't really matter, and I think of it more as targets in "arbitrary exercise units".

Alan


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