Calorie calculations

Having same issues as others. I'd say for the past 2 months my calorie calculations for both running and cycling activities. I would love to be able to ride my bike for an hour with an average speed of 20mph and only burn through 250 calories but I don't think that's the case. Has anyone tried a factory reset to see if that's the issue? I went into my heart rate zone settings in garmin connect and all looks to be correct. I will have to check my device and see what it says.

I have noticed I continue too loose weight at a slow rate even though a should maintain according to MyFitnessPal. Seems my Garmin Edge 500 with HR-monitor is constantly under-estimating my calory consumption. If I enter the same exercise directly into MyFitnessPal (length & speed of ride/run) I get a lot higher values.

I have noticed I continue too loose weight at a slow rate even though a should maintain according to MyFitnessPal.

Calorie burn calculation is not exact for any device. But on the other hand, how do you know that you are getting the Calories you calculated from the food you eat. Those figures are just estimates based on samples that have a wide range. In addition the way you eat your food may affect the Calories your body absorbs from it as well as just individual differences between you and other people.

So as Calorie burn, Calorie content of food, and absorption of Calories by your body cannot be accurately determined, then you must figure out where you want to apply your own "Correction".

I guess the best way to get it right would be to not exercise at all for a while and see if the food estimates are correct. Not an experiment I'm very keen on as race season is coming up :-)

But the numbers from the Garmin seems unrealistic. I weigh 84kg and did a 30k TT this saturday with a mean velocity of 40.2km/h. I had 172bmp as mean HR and 187 as max. My maximum HR is about 189 and my anaerobic threshold 175. For that the Garmin gave me 611kCal! I used to get about 1000kCal before the latest updates. My guess would be around 900 (which is what Strava calculates). 611kCal would mean something like 225W of output. I doubt I could go 40km/h with that no matter how aero I am. 900kCal->about 330W much more realistic.

Even if you quit exercising there would still be too many variables that would still leave you with inaccurate results. Essentially if you are loosing weight and want to maintain it, add more Calories to your diet. Meaningful weight loss isn't instantaneous either. Water in your body can be easily gained and lost which will throw off the calculations that you do with weight. When I started my dieting to loose weight, I could easily gain or loose 10 pounds.... but it was only water. Fat is the thing you want to loose and that takes time and patience.

Agreed just maintain the running and cycling for a long period of time and ensure that you mix up your training sessions with long slow runs/rides and higher intensity efforts with recovery in between. Also rather than watching food calorie content so closely just consciously increase the fruit and vegetable content of your diet and cut out any uneccessary refined sugars. Avoid processed foods and make sure you eat breakfast - all standard stuff I know but it does work long term rather than going for bigger short term gains