Why don't Calories Match when I upload to Strava?

A place for the community to help each other out with getting the most out of the Combine FIT, GPX or TCX files for Strava Upload Tool.
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fulmar2
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Why don't Calories Match when I upload to Strava?

Post by fulmar2 »

Good Question! Strava has it's own way of calculating calories. So, your Garmin may present the number of calories burned in the FIT file (or TCX file), but Strava is going to go ahead and ignore that value. Instead, they will calculate it based on tour activity type, mileage, the body weight you gave them, and your climbing. You're not the first person to notice this either. Starting April 1, 2020, my tool now lets you embed calories in TCX output files. You can also embed calories in FIT exports, and with FIT exports, you can even override the total calories! Strava used to ignore these embedded values, but as of July 2018, they now seem to accept them. If you didn't embed the calorie values, the discrepancy has nothing to do with our tool; it's just a different calculation done by Strava. I recommend that you take the higher number and eat the corresponding number of brownies for dessert!
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