Calorie estimates seem wildly random

[AnnieMDM]

How the heck does this happen?

Day 1:  17,640 steps + 3 hour bike ride (857 calories for bike ride) = 2,474 calories

Day 2:  17,284 steps + hip hop class (267 calories for hip hop class) = 2,507 calories

Day 1 has more walking steps, 590 more calories burned from exercise, but fewer total calories burned at end of day???

[JohnnyRow]

There can also be big difference in calories burned during times you are not doing an "exercise session".  For instance, imagine spending an hour watching TV vs. an hour cooking, vacuuming, and cleaning.  It could be you didn't get an "exercise session" for the latter but certainly burned many more calories than when watching TV.

On phone app, tap the calories circle, then the day in question to see calories burned throughout the day, and you can see when you were burning the calories.

[AnnieMDM]

I was working both days so spent most of the remaining time sitting at the computer. 

[AnnieMDM]

I found the problem.  Fitbit recorded me as doing 9248 steps over the 3 hours when it also recorded me as being on a bike ride.  So I didn't do 17,640 steps + 3 hour bike ride, I did 8,392 steps + 3 hour bike ride.  Some of the steps are legit since I had to push my bike up a couple of sets of stairs, but for the most part I was riding so the problem isn't with the calorie estimate, it's with the step count.

[Heybales]

Glad you found the issue.

I'll mention too, even for steps that have an actual distance to them - you could have same steps between days but very different distance.

And distance, time, and mass moved walking/running are very accurate calculation for calories burned, hence the reason it's used for your daily activity outside workouts where HR-based calorie burn is used.

So like if you didn't record a bike ride, "steps" or likely road vibrations would have been seen, given a minor distance, and calorie burn.

I just did a hard 2 hr bike ride where accurate power meter had me at 1578 calories burned.

But without the workout specific stats, the 8486 "steps" for the day (don't know how many just for the workout but most of them) amount to estimated 3.21 miles, and the minor calories that would go along with that being done in 2 hrs. 1.5 mph is pretty minor calorie burn.

Some people actually prefer to NOT have their steps from exercise counted in the daily total - they want to know how active they are outside exercise being done.

Not really a way to accomplish it though.