Using Google Fit calories as energy goal
Hi everyone, this is my first post. I’d like to request a feature regarding energy expenditure calculation.
At the moment I get different energy consumption estimates from Google Fit and Cronometer when taking into account exercise:
As you can see in Cronometer I get:
BMR + Exercise = (1868 + 914) kcal = 2782 kcal
However in Google Fit the total calories are about 15% lower:
I suspect this could be due to an error in syncing Google Fit energy expenditure from activities. As described in the Google Fit API documentation, calories burned already include BMR, so there may be a partial double counting of Basal Metabolic Rate when syncing with Cronometer, leading to an overestimate of energy expenditure.
My feature request is the following: I’d like to use Google Fit total energy expenditure as energy goal (BMR+Exercise) inside Cronometer, instead of only syncing activity and adding it to Cronometer’s BMR estimate.
Comments
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Don't sweat 15%. The calorie expenditure is just a wild guess anyway. Recording you exercise calories is going to be more than 20% inaccurate and daily expenditure from the formula at least 35% out.
(Calories on food labels can legally be 20% and probably are often more, adding more inaccuracy 🤨)
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Thanks for your reply @jefmcg, I am aware of those quantitative limitations, and tipically adjust my energy intake based on the overall weekly bodyweight trend.
However, my point is about the discrepancy between the two values. Since I activated Google Fit sync I was expecting to get the same (or at least comparable) amount of energy burned in the two apps, but this wasn’t the case.
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They are within the margin of error of each other, so they are comparable.
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I understand your point, but I don’t think they are comparable. They would be if they were two different (independent) measurements, but since they’re the same one synced between the two apps, I think there should be no discrepancy.
By the way, I of course agree with you about the limited accuracy of energy measurement and estimates. My doubt was about the correct usage of the Google Fit API, which returns different values, and a possible solution for that.
