Do you think the calories burned is accurate?

[Colinm39]

I have a BMR of 1584 and your 393-400 is about what I  get for a brisk walk over about an hour and that agrees with my HRM.   Also about 40% of that is VAM.

[Polariser]

Dear Colin

Many thanks for your reply. It's most helpful!

I try and meet all of my goals every day ... and feel demotivated when I don't.

In addition, I use MyFitnessPal for wight loss and to make sure I am getting the proper nutritional intake every day so having an accurate analysis of calories burned is really important. I'm pushing for 2lb weight loss per week so dont want to screw my health by not eating sufficient nutrients (protein etc as well as just calories).

[Mary]

Everything is an approximation, including the calories output from a heart rate monitor.  

Your Fitbit distance estimate is just your stride length times steps so it's crude compared to an app with a GPS. 

It's nice to have a reasonable estimate of how much you burn day to day but you really don't need much detail at all to avoid undereating or not getting enough protein, etc.  If you're eating over 1200 on average and meeting your personal protein goals, you're fine.  MFP forums are full of myths about how you have to eat enough while losing weight or else you'll mess up your body.  

[Mary]

That Runtastic GPS calorie estimation looks way too high.  

[LilBudyWizer]

I have little faith in HRM's for calorie estimation. The problem isn't what's possible using an HRM in combination with other data, but what apps actually do. The primary determinent of calories burned is weight and distance. Everything else qualifies that. Many apps just you heart rate if it's available which makes it meaningless. My Garmin can estimate as high as 600 calories walking just 3 miles due to an abnormally high heart rate.

One problem is most apps using heart rate are performance tracking apps. Most of the users never weigh themselves and may not even own a scales. Calories is trivia for them and simply bigger is better. They couldn't care less about accuracy. It doesn't matter because they aren't trying to control their weight. All they know is the calories they burned during one hour of each day with the majority of users completely ignoring it.

Somewhere like FitBit could give highly accurate estimate without an HRM. If you accurately and consistently record your intake, activity and weight for 90 days they have enough data to estimate how many calories you burn rather than a typical person of your age, gender, weight and height. Regrettably they don't actually do that. Instead they act as though their some website providing a calculator where it would too cumbersome to have you enter all the data you actually already entered.

Apps lag way behind the technology. What they can do with the data they have is a far cry short of what they actually do. It isn't a failing of FitBit, it's failing of the entire industry. They act as though it's still 1980. They only do what  would have been practical for you to do by hand in 1980 keeping a manual log. Whee, they total it and draw pretty little charts. Linear regression? What's that? That's too complicated for the average consumer. No, how you made it more accurate is too complicated for most to understand and that it is more accurate is perfectly within the capability of the vast majority to understand.

[Dominique]

---

@Polariser wrote:

I tried a comparison today with Runtastic, Runtastic Pedometer and Fitbit - the results all vary but especially the Runtastic App (working on GPS) versus the Fitbit Flex and Runtastic Pedometer (which gave quite close results). 

---

Don't pay too much attention to calories reported by Runtastic: it's a great app, but it doesn't take into account changes in elevation (when walking/running outdoors), nor your heart rate (even if you are using a HRM). OK, Fitbit doesn't take elevation into consideration for calories either, even when using a model that has an altimeter (which is only used for counting "floors"). As you guessed, a HRM would probably give you the most accurate calorie count (for activities like walking and running, especially on non-flat ground).

[OpalMagnus]

For daily movement stuff, I think it's pretty accurate. Maybe off by like 50 calories. For heavy exercise, I find it's not accurate, but it IS consistent meaning if I subtract about 1/3 of the calories it says I did, it's pretty spot on. Honestly, I'm fine with that. The way I've been using it is looking at the estimated calorie burn for the day on MyFitnessPal and dividing it in half. So if it says I burned 500 extra calories, I assume it's actually 250. I think it's been working okay. Hard to tell because I've put on some female-related water weight so I won't know until two weeks from now if I actually lost any weight. 

[Dominique]

@OpalMagnus: That was an old thread (last activity 3 years ago) you managed to revive! Back then, everybody had a Fitbit One, Flex or Ultra, the first HR-enabled Fitbits only came in late 2014. You didn’t mention what model you’re using: some Fitbits tend to inflate calories more than others.

[OpalMagnus]

Yeah, I'm really bad when it cones to reviving dead posts. I'm using a Charge 2 right now.