Question about calories on Android Dashboard

[Mizmelzy]

I'm new to fitbit and  I'm noticing something that doesn't seem right to me and I get conflicting information.

When I open the app and I sync everything it says that I have calories left in my calorie budget.  But when I tap on that and I get the detailed report it tells me I'm over. So which is it? Am I over or Under my caloric intake?

Not sure how I'm over? I'm also at a loss as to how the app calculates your allotted number of Calories a day.  I was always told if you wanted to weigh let say 120 lbs eat 1200 calories.  What the fitbit app I think does is take what you want to weight figures out the calories you need to eat, and then for the easy setting reduces your caloric intake by 250 Calories.  So this is what does not make sense to me.  If through out the day I exercise and I burn let say 500 calories, is that not more than a -250 deficit from being active? Why reduce your calories from your allotted amount?  Why not just take the calories you burned and that be the deficit?  

Also I've had more than one person say that the amount of calories that I burn and my step count are off.  One day I took 18000 some steps, but only burned like barely over 1000 calories.  I've seen where others have had 13000 steps and burn like 2000 calories.  So not sure why others burn more than me?  I'm on a treadmill for an hour to 1.5 hours with a 3% incline at 3.5 miles per hour and I only seem to burn like 500 calories something doesn't seem right there.  Do I have a setting off or something?? 

I'm coming from a Jawbone Up3 and I was allotted 1400 calories a day and if I exercised that went up. So most days I was allotted about 1700 calories.  I still only ate 1400 anyways but with my fitbit app I feel like I'm being starved and my daily allowance of intake bounces around some days more some less.  So you can see my confusion with everything.

Thanks!

Mel

Moderator Edit: Updated Subject For Clarity.

[RobertoME]

Hello @Mizmelzy, good to see you are visiting the Fitbit Community! I'm an Android user so I would like to step in and help you. There are a few inquiries to dig in, so I'm going to address separately each one of your concerns.

Difference of calorie budget:

The first issue you have mentioned, is a glitch affecting this section of the app. As a workaround I recommend to use your online-Dashboard while this get a fix in the future.

Calorie deficit:

The way your Dashboard will give your calorie allowance to be on target and loose weight depends on the Food plan intensity you have choose. The Food Plan also allows you to set a weight goal and estimates the date you will reach that goal by based on the selected plan intensity. The Food Plan's tools update based on your foods logged and activities recorded by your tracker. Your Fitbit tracker is always watching, so the more you exercise throughout the day, the greater your calorie allowance will be since the deficit of each plan will be deducted automatically from your budget. For a complete guide on how the food plan works review this post from @SebringDon: Fitbit's Food Plan Demystified.

Calories burned accuracy:

Note that each body is different and perhaps the rate which I burned calories is different from yours, but you know this already. So in other words this will depend of your demographic settings on your Fitbit's profile. However the amount of calories you burn is not limited to your settings, since it will account other factors like the amount of steps you can achieve in a certain period of time, but also the intensity you invest on your activity. In addition it's important to consider the nature of the activity itself; as not all the exercise are step based. So keep a close eye to the intensity of your exercise and make sure to accumulate active minutes, this will increase the rate you will burn calories. For more details about active minutes take a look at this post.

Hope this give you an additional help and for more questions, just keep me posted.

[baisdent]

This had been a known glitch for 9 mos... I can't believe it's still an issue and hasn't been addressed..it is frustrating and a real disservice to your customers who are using your product and only asking Fitbit to follow through on what they advertise..the calories matched on both screens prior to the upgrade last May.. I was considering moving up to the ionic but imI not going to spend the $ until this issue is fixed.. and again my friends with Apple phones are not having this issue, only Android users... 😡