Suggested calories for tracking exercise too low?

[Daloje]

I have a spin bike and tend to try and use it every evening. Obviously this isn't tracked on flex 2 so I have to manually add it. I couldn't find stationary cycling on the search, but did find spinning. I presumed this meant the kind of spinning I was thinking of? But the calorie count was only 38 calories per 10 minutes whereas my bike measures calories and comes up as 120 calories for 10 minutes? I know this doesn't take into account my BMR and fitbit does, but it does take into account the resistance and how fast I'm going, so surely it's more accurate?

Also, I had a zumba class which was automatically recorded but only as 353 calories whereas I read online it should be around 500 plus? Should I assume the fitbit recording is accurate?

Thanks if you can help on either query I just want everything to be as accurate as possible

[MakMak · Accepted solution]

Hi, @Daloje! It's really hard to say for you specifically what the correct calorie burn is. There are calculators you can dig into on the internet where you can plug in your gender, height, weight, the activity you're doing, etc and get a theoretically better estimate of what you're doing.

However, I will say this... if you're using this as a weight loss tool, it's always better to err on the side of underestimation, rather than overestimation. It's better to assume you burned 38 calories than 120 calories and just have a bank of "extra" calories than to assume you're burning more than you are and find out you're not losing any weight.

Also, you are correct, spinning is the same as stationary bike. Best of luck with everything and let us know if you have any further questions!