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Calories

DickVH
over 2 years ago

For the last 8 or 10 years my Garmins, (an 810 and two 1030s) have consistently shown my Calories and my KJs to be nearly exactly the same number.  On June 26, they were exactly the same. My next ride was July 6 and the Calories number it substantially higher than the KJs number.  I use a Shimano power meter. The new numbers are wrong.  I know enough to know why the Calories and KJs should be nearly the same.  What do I have to do to get back to having accurate data?

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to DickVH

    I just checked a ride today, exercise calories in GC 3200, total calories in GC 3900, calories from exercise in MyFitnessPal (transferred automatically) 3900. MFP should get 3200 and not 3900. This screws-up the integration between the two. Have you found a solution ? Thanks

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Martin868

    I have sent feature requests/tech queries to MFP multiple times telling them if kJ is available, use that instead of calories. They refuse to.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to cycleanalyze

    I don't think you ait aim at the right problem. The calories they used to report were those burned during the activity. Now they report those burned plus the metabolic calories as well (what you burn by doing nothing), which adds some. Their kj number is still the burned energy. But they could push the burned calories to 3rd party (as Calories, not kj) if they wanted to since they still compute it and save it in the FIT file (both are in the Activity Summary). Apps such as Strava and MyFitnessPal expected burned calories and any metabolic calories included in the number they get, Garmin probably want them to extract the other number from the FIT file since it is there, and those 3rd won't bother because it is Garmin that changed something that was working just fine. Anyhow the issue is not one of unit (kj vs Cal) but what is being included in the measure.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Martin868

    Are you using a power meter? I ask because without one the calorie number is just a guess.

    I would think it would take very little programing on Garmin's part to what you want.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Martin868

    I totally get the problem. the best fix is using kj, the second best fix is to use what they did before, the calorie guess. The worst is what they're doing now, the calorie guess + the metabolic calorie guess.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to mcinner1

    Its getting clearer.....any clues on why Garmin report 894 in kJ ('work') and Strava (using the same data) report it as 894 Cal?

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Benny_ob

    Mine sometimes are close but rarely match. 

    Strava displays a “total work” number. That’s the garmin kj

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Benny_ob

    I haven't seen that Garmin use kilojoules anywhere. When I search the forum there are lots of requests to support kilojoules instead of calories.

    If Garmin support kilojoules then it is strange that it says the same value in Strava but with the unit Calories. Are you sure Garmin actually shows kilojoules? Do you have a screenshot?

    Edit: I see it now. It is a value in the Power section.

    My ride today.

    Garmin Connect:
    Work: 558 kJ
    Total Calories Burned: 643

    Strava:
    Total work: 560 kJ
    Calories: 643

    What does it look like in Strava? Here is from my ride:

    My values looks correct.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to e7andy

    you can also derive your own kj if you have average power and time spent

    It’s useful when people say “I was in zoomba for an hour and burned 1300 calories” or whatever 

    www.unitconversion.org/.../watts-to-kilojoules-per-hour-conversion.html