Tracking vs. logging my walks--calorie differences

[casimps]

When I log a walk (59 minutes at 3.0mph), I get many more calories burned than when I tracked my walk (which actually was 59m:56s at 3.0mph). Why is there a dramatic difference between tracking (302 calories using my FitBit and the iPhone app tracking) vs. logging the activity (514 calories using the FitBit app's "log exercise" feature).

Which should I be using?

My stats: height 5'4", weight 247.8, age 26, sex F.

[Heybales]

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@casimps wrote:
When I log a walk (59 minutes at 3.0mph), I get many more calories burned than when I tracked my walk (which actually was 59m:56s at 3.0mph). Why is there a dramatic difference between tracking (302 calories using my FitBit and the iPhone app tracking) vs. logging the activity (514 calories using the FitBit app's "log exercise" feature).

Which should I be using?

My stats: height 5'4", weight 247.8, age 26, sex F.

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Are you sure the distance was the same?

You state 3mph for what you entered manually, but you didn't state the distance that Fitbit saw, though you say 3 mph, which is not a stat it would give.

What was exact distance it used?

And I'm showing 390 calories.

http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs.html

Which makes me wonder about that manual logging, because they use the same formula for walking/running calorie burn, it's just they would have taken your resting calorie burn per min x 3.3 METS x 59 min.

You can find your resting calorie burn in the daily graph of steps and calorie burn in 5 min blocks, divided by 5 to get per min burn during sleep or non-moving time.

[TandemWalker]

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@casimps wrote:
When I log a walk (59 minutes at 3.0mph), I get many more calories burned than when I tracked my walk (which actually was 59m:56s at 3.0mph). Why is there a dramatic difference between tracking (302 calories using my FitBit and the iPhone app tracking) vs. logging the activity (514 calories using the FitBit app's "log exercise" feature).

Which should I be using?

My stats: height 5'4", weight 247.8, age 26, sex F.

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Because the tracking functionality of your Phone app/gps does not compute the same way as the Fitbit algorithm. Your tracker calculates your energy expenditure by assessing the intensity of your walk minute-by-minute; and, together with your profile characteristics, will generate your caloric burn. The step count reported by the GPS/Phone app will likely also be quite different than what your tracker computed. The other point I would like to make is that you should never have to log a walk if you're wearing your tracker - a simple sync will log automatically log your steps for you. Moreover, if you use the timer functionality of your tracker to capture a specific walk/jog, that event will appear separately on your activity log. Hope this helps. Have a nice day.

    TW     

(If this tip solved the problem for you, please mark this post solved, as this will be helpful to other users experiencing similar issues.)

[josephz2va]

Generally I track my workouts via the watch. The thing is Log Your Workout overrides the data your watch represents more accurately.

Log Your Workout - You did 15 calories every single minute, no slowdowns or speedups.

Track My Workout via watch - More accurate picture with slowdowns and speedups.

After you track your workout, you can categorize the Workout as what your workout is and keep the accuracy.

[casimps]

It was 3.14 miles in 59min 56sec according to FitBit's tracking iPhone app.

[BurdsNest]

Yes Casimps, just use the timer on your FitBit especially if you want to see information on a specific workout like calories burned....fat burning, peak, cardio etc.  It's a great tool, and I suspect (no expert) not all trackers and apps are created equal!!  🙂

Sincerely,

Lovin my Fit!!!