Fitbit’s Calorie Calculation Seems Way Too High – Any Way to Adjust?

[Chuengel]

Hey everyone,

I recently bought the Charge 6 to help track my fitness progress. Before using Fitbit, I manually logged everything into various apps and synced some of that data with Google Fit to keep everything aligned.

According to Google Fit, on a non-training workday (I have a desk job, so I am mostly just sitting), I usually burn around 1800 to 1900 calories, depending on how much walking I do. On similar days when I do weight training AN maybe a little cardio, my calorie burn is about 2200 to 2300. I found Google Fit much more accurate and realistic because I track my calories an macros almost religiously during both bulk and cut phases, so I know exactly how my weight fluctuates based on my calorie intake.

However, Fitbit is calculating my daily calorie burn at 2500 to 3000 calories, which is extremely unrealistic. For example, during a chill one-hour walk, Fitbit thinks I burn around 600 calories, which is almost double what I’d expect. I’m not sweating at all, and I can carry a conversation easily during these walks, so I know that’s way too high.

If I ate according to Fitbit's recommendations, I’d probably gain a lot of weight in just a few months. For example, I was eating around 2500 calories a day for 2-3 months during a bulk phase and gained about 5 kg in that time. But Fitbit is suggesting I eat 2500 to 3000 calories daily, which would clearly make me morbidly obese very quickly.

Honestly, with this kind of overestimation, Fitbit and the watch are pretty much unusable for me. I’m seriously considering returning it unless there’s a way to adjust settings to get more accurate calorie estimates. Has anyone else experienced this or found a solution?

Thanks!

[Chuengel]

I did some experimenting and connected Google Fit with Health Connect. Now, Fitbit also syncs with Google Fit, and my burned calories for today immediately dropped from 2600 to 1900 (2:30pm), which is much more accurate!

While Fitbit still counts a one hour walk as 600 calories (which is definitely off), and the overall estimates are still around 200 to 300 calories too high, it’s a huge improvement compared to before.

I’m not entirely sure why syncing Fitbit with Google Fit via Health Connect helped give me a more accurate estimate, but it’s working a lot better now!

[JerryHam]

Yes, FitBit is always way off on the high side for most people. For example, I tried a one month cut phase using just FitBit as the guide. I was shooting for a 500 calorie deficit but ended up averaging 600 by FitBit's calculations. Everything I ate was religiously tracked via FitBit - I weighed a lot of food, for others it was just the serving info on the label (like for a flour tortilla, etc.). All the way down to a shot of rum in a rum and diet coke was tracked. Again, 30 days at an average deficit of 600 calories per day. Should come out to (600 X 30) / 3500 = approximately 5 pounds. Real result? Gained 2 pounds. In general you cannot use the calories calculated by FitBit to compare against anything but other activities on FitBit. Like say, on Sunday it said I burned 3,000 on Monday it said I burned 2,500 so I did more exercise on Sunday. They probably should label them as something other than calories since they just are so far off.

[RiekoC]

Hello @Chuengel 

I know there's an issue with calorie tracking on the Fitbit side. The team is aware of the problem and is working on a fix.

That said, I'm not sure why you see a more accurate calorie tracking estimate when you connected with Google Fit via Health Connect.

BTW, in case you didn't know, Google deprecated Google Fit support in late 2022 and will be discontinuing Google Fit entirely at the end of 2024, to be replaced by Health Connect.