Resting Calories from Garmin Connect
I just got my Garmin Forerunner 945 connected to Cronometer today and can see that calories for active time are importing into my diary. Do resting calories from Garmin Connect import in as well? I would like to use those as my BMR value instead of using what cronometer estimates. If not, will this be added? In the meantime would I need to manually add custom BMR value on a daily basis from what Garmin Connect had recorded? Thanks.
Comments
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Hello @Damon ,
We only import Active Calories from Garmin, as importing Resting Calories would only double count your BMR and overestimate your burned calories.
You can set a Custom BMR in the Settings tab > Profile section. You will have to manually update your BMR if when your weight and age change.
Cheers,
Marie-EveMarie-Eve
cronometer.com
As always, any and all postings here are covered by our T&Cs:
https://forums.cronometer.com/discussion/27/governing-terms-and-disclaimer -
Thank you for explaining this Marie-Eve. I will look into setting a custom BMR.
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@Damon and make sure you set your activity level to zero in Cronometer since Garmin accounts for all your active calories with HR and steps in addition to exercise. I love Garmin
Maria H
My story: jumpovertherattlesnake.com/ -
Thank you Maria. This is what I have done and it seems to be working.
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Hi, Marie-Eve. Sorry to resurrect an old thread. However, I just started using Cronometer, and and my experience is that Cronometer does import resting Calories from Garmin, which is causing a problem for me. I posted the details as a response to this thread, which is ~4 years old but didn't get any responses.
Can someone from the Cronometer team comment on this / help?
Thanks!
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Pinging on this. My partner and I both use Garmin and cronometer and we noticed that resting calories are being imported, thus double counting RMR calories, albeit for that activity only. Can someone at Cronometer fix this please? There needs to be an option to ignore resting calories or include all resting calories. I'll also comment on the other thread that Patrick mentioned.
Thanks.
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Hi, @Krakatoa. Thanks for bumping this. If they respond on the forum (which they probably won't because I think @Marie_Eve_Cronometer doesn't work there anymore) they're going to tell you that the solution is to reduce your BMR by your daily Resting calories (looks like 339 kcal).
THE PROBLEM WITH IMPORTING RESTING
The problem with this is that Garmin slowly increases your Resting throughout the day, from 0:00 to 23:99. It makes it difficult to plan meals for the day. Cronometer will tell you the solution is to set your Baseline Activity (BA) equal to your daily Resting figure. If you set your BA to 399 kcal, your Expenditure at the beginning of the day will be BMR + 399 kcal.THE PROBLEM WITH THE BASELINE ACTIVITY "SOLUTION"
The problem with this is that throughout the day, BOTH Active calories AND Resting calories from Garmin will draw down the BA. Your Adjusted Baseline Activity (ABA) will be BA - Active - Resting. Your Expenditure throughout the day will be BMR + ABA + Active + Resting. This makes it so if you have any Active calories at all, at some point in the day your ABA will be 0 kcal while the Resting figure from Garmin has not yet reached 399 kcal. Now you're back to seeing an Expenditure that is lower than what you're actually going to need to eat for the day (save for any surplus or deficit you're going for). This will be the case until 23:99 when Garmin finishes increasing Resting.THE REAL SOLUTION
The real solution, as you suggested initially, is for Cronometer to just code a toggle for users to turn off the Resting import from Garmin. Then you just include Resting in BMR.THINGS WERE BETTER BEFORE
It used to work that way! Cronometer actually used to not import Resting calories, and for good reason, as @Marie_Eve_Cronometer pointed out above. However, in June 2024, it seems like some overly anxious people at Cronometer noticed that technically speaking, Resting isn't part of BMR so having users include Resting in BMR made their brains itch. Cronometer put technical correctness over practicality and then started importing Resting. It's ironic because @Marie_Eve_Cronometer explained above exactly why this is a bad idea but Cronometer did it anyway.I've said it over and over to the staff; things were better before Cronometer made this change. In September 2024 Sara forwarded to the team my request for a simple Resting-import on/off toggle to the team. However, in January 2025, Holly's response to my request for an update on the feature request was
I can see this is in our feature request log however, as we do not have any requests for this currently, I do not have a timeline as to when or if this will be introduced as an option for the Garmin integration with Cronometer.
PLEASE CONTACT CUSTOMER SUPPORT
I highly encourage you and anyone else who this aggravates to ping Cronometer individually by emailing support@cronometer.com so they see there is a need for this fix. If you mention me specifically and my feature request, it may help. I'm surprised that I'm allegedly the only one who is being driven crazy by this. I would love to know what their response is to you.Good luck!
-Patrick
