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How do calories work?

When logging an activity, is the amount of calories the activity is given the total amount or just active calories?

I figured they were total calories but Garmin Connect adds up all logged calories and syncs them as active calories with MyFitnessPal.
I am keenly aware that the two apps aren't "functionally synchronized" so I used the total amount of calories in the Connect app to make some sense of it all.

I'm confused.

0 AllanOlesen67 over 7 years ago

As far as I can see on my F5X+ and my previous F3, the calories which are logged in an activity are total calories, not just active calories.

It is easy to see by looking at active calories in the Calories widget on the watch before and after a logged activity. My active calories in the widget are always increasing by less than the calories in the logged activity, and the difference between the two per hour is quite close to my hourly BMR.

0 Gooseone over 7 years ago

Thx for the feedback, I thought this was the case.

The widget on my Vivosmart just gives me calories, which is something different again and part of why I was becoming confused.
The more activities I log, the higher the number of calories on the Connect software become vs the tracker. It's my guess there's an additional algorithm
in the external software which calculates some sort of extra "caloric severity" over activities which the tracker doesn't
(The calorie count stays more aligned on days with little activity).

0 Gooseone over 7 years ago

And to further my confusion, if I manually add calories to my logged activities (which I need to do because the heart rate sensor is inaccurate),
they're added to my total active calories....

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

To be honest, the calories burned feature is highly inaccurate for your daily calorie expenditure. If you did a high intensity workout, most of your calories burned will be post-workout and not be accounted for in your calories burned calculation. I wouldn't use this as a measurement of how much nutrition your body needs to recover & refuel. There's numerous articles online that give general guidelines on pre, post workout nutrition.

On another topic, I have a YouTube channel where I post lots of informative & entertaining videos that talk about running, swimming, and cycling. Come check it out and let me know if you found it useful. Cheers! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcdmF3d8eR5VOQQkZjEQr3g