Blaze and / or Fitbit app calories too high.

[rynplm]

Hello Fit Bit Community,

I've recently been having issues with my FitBit over estimating the amount of calories burned in a day. I understand that this is based on my BMR but I have a hard time believing that by 10 am I would have burned through 3,360 calories.

My Fit Bit week begins on Sundays and is usually accurate for the first couple of days in the week, but startes to overestimate calories burned around Tuesday or Wednesday. 40 lbs and 4 months ago I was having the same issue but it would only happen maybe one day a week. Since then it has gotten progressively worse.

You can see my rather bizzare calories burned chart below:

I'm a fairly active person and average around 13-14k steps a day, but nothing to justify such a large calorie burn. I'd like to get this issue resolved as quickly as possible as tracking my calories in vs out is becoming increasingly difficult.

Thanks to everyone for the help!

-Ryan

[bbarrera]

@rynplm do you sleep between midnight and 4am? Have you reset the Blaze?

[AngelaMa]

Welcome to the Forums @rynplm! This is an odd situation, I haven't heard of any issue related to what you mentioned. I would like to ask if you wear your tracker at all times? If you take it off for some time have you noticed if the heart rate tracking stops when you are not wearing it? Did you try the restart advised by @bbarrera? 

Looking forward to your new comments! 

[rynplm]

Hi @AngelaMa and @bbarrera!

Thanks for your comments and help with this. I do wear my tracker at all times with the exception being when I got to sleep. Typically when I've been going to bed I haven't been turning it off but maybe that would be helpful? There seems to be a spike in calories burned when it's off, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Last night I decided to wear my fitbit so I could see what would happen overnight. I didn't experience the same calorie spikes from midnight to 4am and I now have the usual calories in vs out number. Hope this additional info is useful.

Thanks!

[bbarrera]

@rynplm have you restarted the Blaze? Instructions here:

http://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1186/

Also, you posted the calorie graph, but not step graph. Are you seeing steps when the problem occurs? Or just calories?

Definitely want to restart the Blaze.

[SunsetRunner]

I found the blaze to over measure on calories burnt.

I would say take off around 20 percent and use that as your basis.

It does however do a great job at keeping everything relative, so you be able to count on it day to day, once you've made your adjustments

[rynplm]

@bbarrera

It looks like it's only overcounting calories. The step counter stays at zero when it's off my arm, but maybe its overcalculating heart rate and mixing that with the BMR?

I restarted the blaze over the weekend and tried to not wear it last night but I ended up running into the same issue.

Thanks again for your help!

[bbarrera]

@rynplm yes it would be interesting for you to post calorie and HR graphs on a night when Blaze is not worn, and you see high calorie count. 

[Angiemickey72]

@rynplm, also keep in mind even when you're sleeping you burn some calories just for normal bodily function so wearing at night may help keep it consistent. Just a thought.

[Angiemickey72]

Keep in mind that even when at rest or sleeping your body still burns calories, just not as fast. So some calorie burn will happen during sleep times or times at rest like watching a movie. Normal body functions, breathing, heart beating ect. all burn calories.

[bbarrera]

Yes, the short red tick marks in the graph above are basal metabolic rate (BMR) calories. I would expect those tick marks to be 5-8 calories every 5 minutes (single tick Mark) in that graph. There are tick marks almost 20x the BMR after midnight. Something is wrong.

[Erobatx]

I also noticed this morning that my calorie count for overnight was extremely high. I woke up and put it on and I stated I'd already burned over 900 calories! I tried resetting but it didn't do anything so hopefully tonight it will go back to normal 😕

[rynplm]

I agree. I think that it's possible that there is a bug somewhere in the app, or (more likely) in the watch itself. I would assume that this isn't a system wide issue or they would have already fixed it.

On the positive side, I've been wearing it at night to get a more accurate calories out count and I started using the sleep tracker which has made me start thinking about that.

[FerdinandFitbit]

Hi there guys! Good to see you in the Community! 🙂

For those who haven't tried it yet, can you please restart your trackers? Anything not working could be fixed by doing this. For restarting your tracker, press and hold the left and lower right buttons for about 10-12 seconds and this will make your tracker to reboot. After that, sync your tracker and keep using it as you would normally do and see if this makes any difference.

Also, make sure that all your personal information as height, weight, age and gender are entered properly as this could also cause your calories  burned to be calculated differently if the information entered is not correct.

Let me know how it goes!