Fitbit accurate calorie counter

[Tj2008]

Hello, I recently updated to inspire three because I thought my inspire too stopped counting the calories burned correctly from swimming. My inspire three is doing the same thing. Usually when I swim 52 minutes, I burn between 475 and 500+ calories my Fitbit inspire two was telling me I only burn 95 cal and 52 minutes. How can I correct this, please help 

[Julia_G]

Hi, @Tj2008 , Fitbit calculates your calories based on 2 main factors.  First is your BMR calories - basal metabolic rate calories.  These are the calories that every body burns just staying alive and keeping bodily functions (like respiration, circulation, etc) going.  Your brain also actually consumes a lot of calories controlling all these processes and just thinking.  For most people this is the overwhelming majority of the calories you burn.

The other calories come from extra energy used in physical activities.  Your Fitbit estimates these extra calories based on your heart rate - when you heart rate is in the resting zone you will not burn a significant number of calories above your BMR calorie burn, but as your heart rate rises with exertion then your calorie burn will rise.

That is a long way of saying that as long as you are sure that you have correctly entered your vital stats into your app (height, weight, sex, age) then your BMR calories should provide a roughly correct base, and if your Fitbit seems to be giving you the wrong number of activity based calories, the first thing you should check is whether it is reading your heart rate correctly.  If your Fitbit does not detect an elevated heart rate then it will not record additional calorie burn.  

So that is the first question I would ask once you have checked that you have correctly recorded your basic stats.  Please have a look at the recorded heart rate in the Fitbit app during your swimming session and see if the levels it records reflects your personal experience - if you feel like you are swimming at maximum effort and your Fitbit heart rate reading is not reflecting that, then that would explain a lower than expected calorie burn calculation.