Sudden decrease in "resting calories?"

Dobbsi-

Since you might get more traction than I on this since you have a complaint in:

-They should tell us which formula they are using (unless it's proprietary which it may be.)

-They need to add a graph into GC that is the same as the 24hr Heart Rate graph, only letting us see calories burned over time. It ought to have lines for BMR, tracked activites, and cals burned during an actual step. That leaves a 4th line for any other calories computed where they find we aren't fully at rest but are not taking any steps either.

Then we can each look at what they record and act individually on the results for ourselves since we know what those results are.

"You can't improve using data when the data is as clear as mud."

In my experience getting any sort of constructive response from Garmin is like getting blood from a stone. They are polite but each response takes minimum 48 hours and you always wonder if they fully understand the issue you are describing.

There was one occasion when they actually called me back and I was able to explain better. The nice chap I spoke to went away promising to get it prioritised. This was about 6 months ago and relating to the issues with active calories being buggy. It still isn't fixed.

So I think I will just de-link Garmin and MFP and add adjustments myself at the MFP end. A pain but I don't see any prospect of it working as it should in the foreseeable future.

If only Garmin's software and support sides were half as good as their hardware......

:-(

I am now convinced that everything is "working" correctly and the change that Garmin made was to simply reduce resting calories to BMR and increase the amount of calories earned through daily activity as calculated by your activity tracker. If correct, this should have been communicated somewhere as many users of Garmin devices are data junkies and value the product in part because of the information it provides.

* I believe there was a timing issue, as my "daily steps" calories jumped up unexpectedly a few weeks before my resting calories dropped. This led to about an extra 333 calories being added to MyFitnessPal each day for a few weeks. Looking back at my daily calories, it appears this is the case.
* This was around the same time that Garmin removed the "steps" column from both "Daily Steps" and "timed activities" on the activity summary page.
* I ran a marathon last Saturday and every day since I have done nothing but rest and walk around 10000 steps. Every day my total calories is equal to roughly my BMR * 1.2.
* Garmin's labeling of non-workout daily activity calories as "Daily Steps" is a little misleading. Though when you click on the question mark there is a popup that states "Daily steps includes all of the information from your activity tracker except your timed activities which are listed separately"

As far as MyFitnessPal integration, as long as your "Daily Steps" calories are greater than 25% of your BMR, you will get a positive adjustment. Timed activities are of course added in as well.

Garmin also seems to calculate an "after burn" effect. So say you walk 2000 steps in the morning and only earn 40 "daily steps" calories. You then run 5 miles and earn 510 "timed activity" calories. Finally, you walk back to your car, walk another 200 steps, and then drive home. Your "daily steps" calories may jump to 140 over the next hour even though you do very little walking.

One more point if you managed to stay with me. For the last few weeks, the calories on my watch display were not even close to what showed in Garmin Connect. They were lower (though I cannot recall how much.) Now, they only vary 5-15 calories throughout the day.

But BMR assumes one is at resting heart rate for 24 hours. That isn't going to be the case, and it isn't going to be picked up properly by step tracking.

For example I brush my teeth, or cook, or even stand around, then my heart rate will be higher than my resting. But it won't guarantee me any steps. Don't you need to walk about 12 steps before it starts storing them anyway?

The only way Garmin can theoretically track this using BMR as a base is via 24 hour heart rate readings, yet that only applies to a few newer watches. My 920XT can't do this for example.

By the way, MyFitnessPal sedentary calorie burn is set to roughly BMR+20%. Sedentary is a lot less than 10000 steps. I would say that I was sedentary yesterday in that the most I did was walk 200m to the shop and back, as well as usual daily activities at work eg make tea, toilet etc. I made around 3000 steps, for 99 extra calories. That makes around 1698 calories on Garmin vs around 1900 on MFP. So a -200 calorie adjustment.

It worked fine before when Garmin used BMR+20%. My weight did pretty much what I would expect based on what I ate and the calories coming over from Garmin. Now I would need to eat around 2-300 less per day to meet my MFP target. That is borderline crash diet on top of the sensible 2-300 deficit I already have.

My suspicion is that this is relating to Garmin wanting us all to move over to their wrist based HRM products, where they can monitor our calorie burn using 24 hour HR readings against our resting HR.

All well and good but some of us paid good money for their other products in the last couple of years.

They need to allow us to specify the base calorie formula in either the device or Garmin connect.

And they need to work with MyFitnessPal to realign the two data sets so the link between the two apps is usable again.

I disagree that it's working correctly. As an example yesterday I did two timed walks of 1.95 miles and 1.55 miles that resulted in a total of 351 active calories. These times activities were passed to MFP correctly. I also had a separate 107 active calories from "Daily Steps". However, the calorie adjustment that was also synced to MFP was -351, so my MFP exercise calories were netted out to 0. While this certainly wasn't my most active day ever I did have over 10,000 steps and based on my own observations of my weight changes in the past my calories burned should be higher. My guess is that they didn't raise the active calories to compensate for the change in formula, at least not for everyone.

But BMR assumes one is at resting heart rate for 24 hours. That isn't going to be the case, and it isn't going to be picked up properly by step tracking.

For example I brush my teeth, or cook, or even stand around, then my heart rate will be higher than my resting. But it won't guarantee me any steps. Don't you need to walk about 12 steps before it starts storing them anyway?

The only way Garmin can theoretically track this using BMR as a base is via 24 hour heart rate readings, yet that only applies to a few newer watches. My 920XT can't do this for example.

By the way, MyFitnessPal sedentary calorie burn is set to roughly BMR+20%. Sedentary is a lot less than 10000 steps. I would say that I was sedentary yesterday in that the most I did was walk 200m to the shop and back, as well as usual daily activities at work eg make tea, toilet etc. I made around 3000 steps, for 99 extra calories. That makes around 1698 calories on Garmin vs around 1900 on MFP. So a -200 calorie adjustment.

It worked fine before when Garmin used BMR+20%. My weight did pretty much what I would expect based on what I ate and the calories coming over from Garmin. Now I would need to eat around 2-300 less per day to meet my MFP target. That is borderline crash diet on top of the sensible 2-300 deficit I already have.

My suspicion is that this is relating to Garmin wanting us all to move over to their wrist based HRM products, where they can monitor our calorie burn using 24 hour HR readings against our resting HR.

All well and good but some of us paid good money for their other products in the last couple of years.

They need to allow us to specify the base calorie formula in either the device or Garmin connect.

And they need to work with MyFitnessPal to realign the two data sets so the link between the two apps is usable again.

Even with the OHR we are still getting very low numbers for calories burned. Garmin's logic right now is seriously flawed for calories.

I'm 6 foot, 155 lbs. I did an easy 1 mile recovery run today and walked about 4 miles. At the end of the day, Garmin will have said that I burned a total of 2363 calories. 1666 BMR, 102 for the run, and 595 for my "daily steps" That is a very realistic total number.

For the last few months I have wondered why "daily steps" calories were so high. There are actually quite a few threads in the forums devoted to the problem. 595 calories for 4 miles is high, but 595 calories is reasonable when you look at it as a sum total of "moving" for the day. The 595 is the "point two" that was removed when Garmin switched from 1.2 to 1.0 for base calories.

Prior to the change, Garmin would have told MFP that I burned a total of 2696 calories. If you subtract out my BMR (1666) and my short run (102) that leaves 928 calories. There is no way that casualy walking 4 miles and sitting at a desk most of the day resulted in 928 calories burned. If every day was like today and I ate 2696 calories, I would gain weight.

I don't want to argue with anyone, but let me say that for ME I belive everything is working correctly (within reason.) I think that essentialy having a Garmin activity tracker integrated with Garmin Connect was previously double counting calories burned above accepted base BMR (excluding timed activities.)

But the fact that Garmin is dinking around with things as important as this without communicating the change to its customers or customer service reps is unacceptible. All it would take would be for someone at Garmin to spend 5 minutes posting here how it all works to clear up the confusion.

On Tuesday I got 99 active calories for 3.2km steps.

I am 173cm and 75kg.

That is not even remotely close to your numbers and even more worrying.

I have a 920xt what do you have?

I have a Forerunner 235.

Let me clarify my statement again... When it works, I belive it is working correctly for me.

I still have runs where my calories are unexpectedly high or low and days where my walking calories are insanely low. My resting heart rate has went from the 40s to the low 30s to now the 60s due to numerous changes to the way Garmin calculates the value.

Prior to the change, Garmin would have told MFP that I burned a total of 2696 calories. If you subtract out my BMR (1666) and my short run (102) that leaves 928 calories. There is no way that casualy walking 4 miles and sitting at a desk most of the day resulted in 928 calories burned. If every day was like today and I ate 2696 calories, I would gain weight.

I don't want to argue with anyone, but let me say that for ME I belive everything is working correctly (within reason.)

So previously your daily resting value would've been 1999 calories per day just being sedentary. For most people this formula is the typical one and you wouldn't gain weight eating this amount just doing a very sedentary daily routine.

how many total steps did you do that day outside of the run and 4mile walk?

I find the new formula severely flawed. I would be in a daily deficit of 350 calories each day if I followed the new formula.

BMR (Mifflin St. Jeor) *1.2(sedentary multiplier) or BMR*1.25 needs to be there as the initial resting calorie equation as a baseline (or even better let us set it for those who know their BF% and use the Katch Mcardle formula).

Then any recorded runs/walks/significant amount of daily steps etc should go ontop of this equation.

Any step calories currently added by the watch during general day to day routine is really insignificant (usually equates to 50-150/day for me). So there is currently a huge gap in calories. I track things quite diligently in MFP and Garmin so it's really important they resolve this.

Here is an example I have for it showing low active calories for just normal walking activities. So I only netted an extra 78 calories from walking through out that day, this seems way to low for me. By the way for this day Garmin connect tells me I had a total burn of 2058.