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
Kilometre nibbler
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.
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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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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