Methods for entering workouts and calorie differences?

[318Robin]

Hi all, I'm a new Fitbit user and still trying to figure out all the nuances.  I have an Alta HR and wanted to manually add a Yoga workout.  First, from the website, I entered 'Yoga' in the search bar in Log Activities and filled in the info and it gave me 231 calories.  Then I was curious to see what the difference was between doing it that way or instead by clicking the Stopwatch icon in Log Activities and filling in the info there where I instead was given 111 calories.  

I entered my stats and average heart rate for the time period into a different calculator and got 227 calories. Is one method step based versus heart rate based?

[RobertoME]

Hello @318Robin, it's nice to see you again in the Fitbit Community. Indeed, my recommendation is to use always the Log activity option since the difference here is that you are entering the duration of your exercise and this will make your calories more accurate.

Additionally, the calorie rate is not based on your Heart rate when you are entering a manual activity.

See you around and hope this helps.

[318Robin]

I'm wondering though if I take my average HR given by my Fitbit and enter it into a calculator for the duration, wouldn't that be the most accurate?

[RobertoME]

Hello @318Robin thank you for keep me posted.

I like to recommend the use of a calculator when the exercise is entirely based only in average and there is no data from your tracker. To give you an example: Swimming; during this exercise is not possible to wear the tracker. So all the information logged in your Dashboard is going to be only an estimation of the calories you have burned.

Now with other exercises where you can wear your tracker, I don't think it will be more accurate in my opinion if you use a calculator. Note that your tracker is reading every motion pattern along with your heart rate, so the calories rate will take in account all your information from that period of time. Not necessarily will be based only in your heart rate. Your calories will depend on different factors like the intensity of the exercise, if the exercise is step-based, active minutes along with your demographic information and other data.

When you are manually logging your exercise and you were wearing your tracker, all steps, calories, and other information recorded by your tracker are overridden for the duration of a manually logged activity by the activity's entered values.

Nonetheless you can give it a try if you feel this is going to improve your calories. I can recommend to use the following calories calculator: http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/calories_burned_list.asp

See you around. If you have more questions, you can find me here.

[318Robin]

I was thinking more of a calculator like this: http://www.calories-calculator.net/Calories_Burned_By_Heart_Rate.html where I'm taking the average heart rate for duration from my Fitbit and entering there to get estimated burn.  

For now, I'm just keeping what Fitbit gives me.  I'm keeping a spreadsheet with my calories in and weight loss to figure out my actual TDEE and in a month I will compare actual calories burned (based on TDEE and weight loss) to what Fitbit says so I can figure a margin of error.  

[RobertoME]

Hello @318Robin, thank you for sharing this information in the Fitbit Community.

I was looking into this calculator and it seems interesting as it based the calories burned on your heart rate and demographic information. as you mentioned before. It would be a great tool for exercise that are not step based

For any additional question, let me know!