Fitbit calorie count seems very high, linked my fitness pal and it is saying I am under eating

[htowen97]

Hi everyone!

I just received a fitbit Charge 3 for Christmas and as a product i am loving it so far but am slightly concerned about its accuracy.

To gauge an understanding of my current health I am 14 stone 4 lbs currently and aged 23 male.

5 foot 7

I decided to download my fitness pal primarily for food tracking as I was recommended it by friends stating it is better for calorie counting and tracking food, but wanted to link it to Fitbit because that's the whole point of having one.

My fitbit today bear in mind I am a student and spent the majority of the day sat down studying and then going to the gym for 1 hour according to fit bit currently I have burned just over 3000 calories.

I understand this includes sleep from 12 am onwards etc.

At the gym I did 22 minutes light jogging/ fast walking switching it up depending how i felt and then did a 15 minute bike session which the fitbit couldn't track  easily 😞 due to the gps not working correctly?

The treadmill machine said I burned only 100 calories in that time but my fitbit said I burned 300! Which is quite a big difference.

Anyways, upon logging my food today which did include a whole packet of biscuits! I apparently had a spare 1500 calories left to eat??? it had synced my step count which was around 6000 including the gym and had stated that I was currently under eating?

I guess my question to everyone is do i just unsync the apps use fitbit for exercise and sleep etc and use fitness pal for food diaries and inputting the calories my fitbit counts manually on treadmills etc but forget putting in steps for walking in general?

My resting heart rate is 55 on average but that is when I am asleep, typing this now its sitting at 80 but usually when watching tv laid down it goes to around 65.

Sorry for the long post just want to use this awesome device but know it is accurate etc and wondered what everyone else could suggest or help with?

Thanks everyone!

[SunsetRunner]

For most people, the calories burned from Fitbit is not even close to accurate. I think where the problem lies in the watch can’t differentiate between when you are actually active and when you are doing something that is causing vibration to the watch but you aren’t actually being active or less active than what the watch is reading. For example, my Fitbit showed I burned something like 300 calories in a span of maybe 30 minutes when I was using a gas-powered weed eater. For the most part, I was just standing and I know I was nowhere near burning 300 calories during that time. Personally, I just use it as a watch now. There’s a lot of variables the watch doesn’t know about you that would affect how many calories you actually burn such as how much muscle mass you have or what type of foods you eat. Thermodynamics of specific foods can change how many calories it requires to digest the food. I wouldn’t rely on the calories it says to eat. You can use it to gauge your activity but don’t assume the calories are accurate. The best way to determine the calories you need to eat is to track how much you are currently eating for a week and then adjust from there.

[moriahcat]

I really think a lot of the issue is that Fitbit uses only your current weight, age, gender, and height to calculate your basal metabolic rate (which it then uses as its base to calculate burn based on activity via measuring heart rate).  That type of equation can be very out-of-whack for people with lower or higher percentages of body fat than the average.

I have requested that Fitbit beta a feature to include the option of using the Katch-McArdle equation to determine BMR for people who link a smart scale to the application that gives a body fat percentage here, but unless people vote for trying it out it won't get into the beta phase.

I've made Fitbit give me a pretty accurate burn rate by giving it a false number for how much I actually weigh, the weight that made it give me a number close to what the Katch-McArdle equation gives me.  Yeah, it defeats using the Fitbit app itself as a weight tracker, but I had been using Samsung Health before as my food logger and had made it connect to my smart scale before with Google Fit/Healthsync as the bridge apps.  

Adding FittoFit as a third bridge app (because Healthsync claims to sync between Fitbit and Samsung Health correctly, but really doesn't on sleep and a few other things) and disabling the "weight" tab on the mobile app for Fitbit allows me to continue to log my food and track my weight in Samsung Health as I've been used to doing, and see my real weight there.  I don't see a weight at all when I open Fitbit, but it's giving me a far more accurate burn estimate and has taken my calories from Samsung Health so says how much more I can eat for how much I've been active that day.

Yes, it's a very confusing way to do it and doesn't help Fitbit beta this feature, but it's working for me.  Lol.