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Calories Burned

I have reached my goal! I've walked 10,000 steps. Let's see -- how many calories burned does that mean? According to my Vivosmart at this moment, that's a work out that burns 4,321 calories.

WHAT?!?!?

My weight is the same, my height is the same, I didn't mess with any settings. What happened?

I tried disconnecting and reconnecting MyFitnessPal and got the same results. I checked my settings -- I'm 200 lbs. No customized step length.

Bizarrely, the calories for yesterday and the day before have also suddenly spiked to insane heights. (4,829 calories, 5,221 calories).

Isn't the calculation for calories burned by steps taken a rather simple one? What is going on?

(Edit: by my own rough calculations, I've maybe burned 350 calories walking today.)
  • Im having a similar problem. Excessive calories burning and communicating to My fitness Pal. Ive had to disconnect my connect from MFP and calculate and enter steps manually. Have you heard anything on a fix? they did do an upgrade 3rd of Decmeber on the Connect App, Im not sure if that has anything to do with it. Very annoying
  • Well, I figured out what happened. I've read elsewhere that Garmin Connect and MyFitnessPal are having trouble communicating with each other.

    At one point I started entering my activities on MFP, and not on Garmin Connect. I work out for an hour on an elliptical trainer most mornings, and burn 800 calories. At some point, MFP sent the work out I did to my Garmin Connect account. Only it didn't send it once -- it sent it 10 times.

    Having deleted ALL of those activities off the Garmin Connect account (through the web browser site) my account now says I burned 360 calories walking.

    Until these issues are resolved, I'm keeping Garmin Connect and MFP disconnected.
  • I'm having this issue currently. SInce this post is eight years old, I'm thinking a fix is not to be expected any time soon.

  • I'm having this issue currently. SInce this post is eight years old, I'm thinking a fix is not to be expected any time soon.

    You wrote in the other thread, that your troubles with the Calories only started in January, so it does not look like it could be this 8 years old issue. 

  • The other thread was 8 years old. So, while it's a new issues (since mid-Jan.2022) for me, it would seem it's been around in some form for a long time.

  • Garmin has a complete mess on this on all their gadgets. I have a garmin edge 1030 and a 935 I have had similar problems with, but Garmin is messing things up also. Their calculations is shifting from time to time. So I simply gave up looking at the numbers and make my own estimations.

    When you cycle and you use the power pedals you also get a completely wrong value. It is only calculating the joules it takes to pedal the distance. Not the energy it takes to keep your body alive and then exerting power to the pedals. In reality you use more energy to do the job than just the walk.
    It is not like you exert 1 joule on the pedals and consume 1 joule in food.
    The relationship is more like 3-4x the food energy to generate the energy created on the pedal to generate the energy to create the energy on the pedal.
    The same is valid for moving your feet and walking.

    It is like a lamp. It takes more energy to generate light and overcome the resistance in the cord. If you get 60w on a lamp you likely put 2-3x the energy to make the lamp shine.

    This means there is not a perfect conversion of energy to light for the lamp and any other process. You need to consume some energy to create the energy due to an imperfect world. The same is valid for food and body energy converted to mechanical energy, be it walking or pedaling energy.

    This however is very individual. It depends on your body mass and your ability to create and absorb energy. All is of course similar between all indivuiiduals and should not vary that much.

    You are however likely to produce a lot more than 350 calories to walk 10km

    you can get more about this by reading on the internet about this but you also get a feeling of the levels if you read the ingredients and their energy level on a bottle/package of milk, jam, bread or any other food.
    Then you quickly gain an insight that if you used 350 calories only you would grow overweight rapidly.

    Unit conversion is one of the challenges here and then understanding how much your body consumes to generate energy. To move your legs and walk is the next level of challenge to understand - how much energy do you consume to create the walk, a lot more than 350 cal

    https://caloriesburnedhq.com/calories-burned-walking/

    it is not all correct as it depends on uphill, downhill, rain, dry, heat, cold etc, but gives you a feeling of the amplitude of your energy consumption to do the walk itself.

  • In my case, it's only been a mess since Mid-January 2022. Prior to that, it all came out. Thank You!!