confidence check. Fitbit calories burned.

[mccjustin]

Loving my Fitbit, but I just want to ask you experienced users out there.... is the calorie burn accurate?

I ask because I work in an office and haven't yet developed great habits with walking/running.  I've watched the steps tracking and feel its pretty reasonable on tracking for the kind of activities I'm involved in.

So regarding calories, yesterday I did a lot of pacing and small walk breaks to try to increase my daily activity. Even still my intensity wasn't very high and I only had 1 "very active minute" and yet I burned 3200 calories yesterday. Is that in the right ballpark for no running or high intensity?

Honestly, the exact number doesnt matter, but the ballpark does. And I just need a confidence check on calories burned.

Would love you're feedback.

Thanks

[SteveH · Accepted solution]

Generally speaking, it is accurate. It does depend on you having the right settings in your profile though - your weight especially affects your calories. Your burn of 3200 would be far too high for me but I only weigh around 130 pounds. You can check your settings here: https://www.fitbit.com/user/profile/edit

Your fitbit measures 2 types of calorie burn: calories burned through exercise and BMR calories. These are the calories you burn just by being alive and in most cases form the majority of our daily calorie burn. These articles may be useful / interesting:

http://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/How-does-Fitbit-know-how-many-calories-I-ve-burne...

http://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/How-accurate-are-Fitbit-trackers/

[mccjustin]

@SteveHThanks for the links!

I initially weighed 240 when I got the fitbit. I also have the Fitbit aria scale - I'm down to 225 now! So i assume since I use the Fitbit scale and my current 225 weight shows on my dashboard that it is automatically adjusting my atrest calorie burn right?

Also, on the links you sent. One section made me think that wearing the fitbit alone wasnt enough. That when I do running or fast walking, that I should go in and log the activity instead - rather than keeping what fit bit picked up.  Is that true? I thought I didnt have to log the excercise becase Fitbit saw some stuff as "active minutes" vs "very active minutes" on the bar graphs in my dashboard.

[SteveH]

Congratulations on your success so far.

You're right in that the aria will sync to your profile,  update your weight, and that that will recalculate your BMR rate.

Regards walking and running. It's perfectly fine to let your fitbit track these. The only time we need to manually log activities is when they are not predominantly step based, such as cycling, weights...

Fitbit will use its view of the effort you are making to decide whether to assign active minutes or not.

[Maire]

Hello! Typically I try to walk briskly to get 10K steps... However, if by evening, I haven't gotten them in, I will wear the One on my belt area while I use a recumbent bike and it logs steps for both legs as accurately as when I wore it on my shoe then manually calculated the other foot (I cycle with 2 feet, haha!)  I'm not sure how to add just calories per my bike?  Thanks for any recommendation!

[jay03]

Hi Steve you i was wondering the same thing that my calories burned was a bit high today was just over 4000 my job isn't physical but i did weight's for 90 mins but didn't manually put that into fitbit would you say that was a bit high?

[SteveH]

@jay03 It's very difficult to say as the calories are very much down to your profile settings (age, weight etc). If you think your calories might be too high then it's worth checking these settings.

As far as the weights go, then it depends on which fitbit model you have. If you have a Charge HR or Surge then the heart rate monitoring will pick up the effort from weights and calculate additional calories. If you have another model then you will get no calories from your weights unless you manually log the activity.

[jay03]

Thanks Steve all my settings are right and its a charge hr just seems to be giving me some crazy stats today it says ive been up 12 stairsb it yesterday only 2 but i've not been up any stairs at all and 4000 calories burned yesterday from working in a barber shop and only doing 90 minutes of weights it just seem well out would a restart help maybe?

[SteveH]

A restart does no harm and it can sort out all sorts of issues, so worth a try. Note that it doesn't always work though so give it a few tries.

[jay03]

I've tried a restart not sure it's helped tho now it says i've climbed 12 stairs when i haven't been up any stairs at all. I've only had this a week and I'm more confused about how many calories i need than i was before i had this😐

[Raviv]

Fitbits use changes in elevation to track how many flights of stairs you have climbed, but if there hasn't been any change in elevation and you've tried resetting it, I would call customer service.  It's entirely possible that you just got a defective one somehow.  It's rare, but it happens.

[Demaxx1]

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@SteveH wrote:

@jay03 It's very difficult to say as the calories are very much down to your profile settings (age, weight etc). If you think your calories might be too high then it's worth checking these settings.

As far as the weights go, then it depends on which fitbit model you have. If you have a Charge HR or Surge then the heart rate monitoring will pick up the effort from weights and calculate additional calories. If you have another model then you will get no calories from your weights unless you manually log the activity.

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I have found that a lot depends on your weight workout. I have a Blaze, If I am doing upper body workout that will automatically pick up my workout. It has to do with heart rate. However if I am doing a leg day. It doesn't pick up automatically. It also may not give me any active minutes because my heart rate while doing leg weights doesn't get up enough.

[repcosy]

I have had the exact same question today. I was a very inactive person before I got my fitbit. For the last week I have been doing more exercise than I have ever done in my life! Admittedly my diet wasn't perfect but for 5 days out of the week i stuck to the recommended calorie count or under. I was rather disappointed when I weighed myself yesterday (after a week) to find out ive put on 4lbs!  

I am aiming to up my activty and steps this week, and knuckle down on the healthy eating, but for someone who was always inactive i thought I might see some loss, not a gain! It got me questioning the calorie count. Especially tonight when I had one of the healthiest dinners ever, yet it was still 400 calories! That was for a chicken salad! 

I'm not sure if I can trust it or whether I should go with my own gut instinct. I have checked my stats and they are all correct. 

[GershonSurge]

@repcosy,

I've found the Surge overestimates the calories burned by 10-15%. The lower the activity, the lower the error is. The Zip underestimates the burn by about the same amount. The Charge 2 is closer.

I suggest you log all your food on the Fitbit food log, and either weigh or measure all servings. This includes nibbles during the day.

The two days of going off diet may have affected your weight more than you think. Be sure and log those calories too. Usually, people attribute the gain to salt and water retention. 

Anyway, it's only the first week. You may have to experiment for a month or so to discover what works for you.

[Dominique]

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@Demaxx1 wrote:

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I have found that a lot depends on your weight workout. I have a Blaze, If I am doing upper body workout that will automatically pick up my workout. It has to do with heart rate. However if I am doing a leg day. It doesn't pick up automatically. It also may not give me any active minutes because my heart rate while doing leg weights doesn't get up enough.

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Most weight-lifting is anaerobic exercise, so HR will not play a big role. Anyway, in the grand scheme of things (total calories burned 24 hours x 7 days), 3 or even 4 weekly weight-lifting sessions of one hour each won’t make a big difference: even if your Fitbit under- or overestimate them by 100 calories, we’re only talking about 300-400 calories out of a weekly total of perhaps 14,000 or more. The main reason for lifting weight is to gain muscle or (more likely in a weight loss) avoid losing too much of it, not burning calories. You will typically burn far more calories via cardio and NEAT (often underrated).

[Haywire]

Its way out for me, about 180 Cal's over on a 2 mile brisk walk, way way out during weight session's, yesterday for example it thought i had burned 1035 Cal's, i wouldn't need to do cardio or cut my cals if that were right.

Set at 1000 cal deficit most days it wants me to eat 2500-3200 Cal's, i bulk at 3000-3500.

I hate to say it but the only thing remotely accurate for me is the HR.

[Dominique]

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@Haywire wrote:

Its way out for me, about 180 Cal's over on a 2 mile brisk walk, way way out during weight session's

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It would be interesting to hear how you know for a fact what your energy expenditure is during a 2-mile brisk walk or a weight lifting session. OTOH, if you already know it, why would you need a Fitbit in the first place?

I’d be willing to do the math for the walk, since it’s relatively easy with METs from the Compendium of physical activities.

[Haywire]

40 mins walk for me is about 220 Cal's on just about any calculator you use and i have always used them to cut, fit bit is always 400+ Cal's burnt when I'm done

For the weight lifting no chance, my maintenance is around 2500 irl in other words i can sit at this weight training the way i always do minus the cardio and hold my weight it's so far out it's not even funny, 1035 cals i could literally eat maintenance skip cardio and just hit the weights for nearly 2lb a week loss.

I'm sedentary outside of training doubt that will change anything in regards to it's tracking though, and the fitbit was bought recently to monitor sleep due to parasomnia.

[GershonSurge]

@Haywire

40 mins walk for me is about 220 Cal's on just about any calculator you use and i have always used them to cut, fit bit is always 400+ Cal's burnt when I'm done

For the weight lifting no chance, my maintenance is around 2500 irl in other words i can sit at this weight training the way i always do minus the cardio and hold my weight it's so far out it's not even funny, 1035 cals i could literally eat maintenance skip cardio and just hit the weights for nearly 2lb a week loss.

I'm sedentary outside of training doubt that will change anything in regards to it's tracking though, and the fitbit was bought recently to monitor sleep due to parasomnia.

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There is something I can almost guarantee about Fitbit's calorie estimates. They are wrong. It seems like the farther a person is away from the center of their normal weight range, the wronger they are. The good news is the error is consistent, so you can calibrate it.

To do so, you will need to meticulously track your calories consumed. No guessing. Weigh and measure each ingredient and enter them into Fitbit's food log. (Some people use My Fitness Pal and other logs.) You can use this information to calibrate your Fitbit. After you get the data for a month, ask for help on doing this.

Some calorie calculators for exercise only give the additional calories burned above the Basal Metabolic Rate. Others include the BMR. Fitbits are the second type.

It would help if you showed your calories burned, active minutes, weight, etc. on your profile. Many of us can look at these charts and give better answers to your questions.

[Haywire]

Thanks for the offer i don't need help though i been tracking for years just not through an app, only came to see if anyone else was this far out as i would be gaining if i ate like it wanted me to.

Yeah I'm heavy for my height have, only a few lbs from summer ready though.