Inspire 3 very low calorie burn- below BMR

[Cate333]

I've been utilizing my Inspire 3 to track calories burned per day. I am not using it to diet and I don't track food. However, I noticed that my daily calories burned are below my normal BMR. I know Fitbit includes BMR in your daily calorie burn. My BMR for my age/height/weight is 1059 - 1270 calories per day. Most of the time Fitbit shows my calorie burn to be about 1000 or less for all my activities and BMR included. How can this be?? I've tried soft reset. I've tried updating my info in settings. I just did a hard reset and starting all over again. I spent a lot of money on this device and can't believe my BMR would be so low (like 500 ) and my activities only averaging another 500 calories burned - I average 10,000 steps a day, I'm active, and produce moderate active zones throughout the day as well. Is there anything else I can do, or should I just purchase a different model.

[JohnnyRow]

Check the weight you have entered.  That is the biggest factor in Fitbit's BMR calculation; also your other physical data such as age, height, sex.

[Cate333]

Thank you for replying - Everything I entered is my correct height, current weight, and age and sex. But when I use BMR calculator, it shows my BMR burns about 1,000- 1,300 calories a day. 

[JohnnyRow]

Are you getting heart rate readings?  That is, are you in 'clip mode' without meaning to be?

[Cate333]

Yes. I am seeing heart rate notifications. 

[JohnnyRow]

You can verify what Fitbit is using for your daily BMR calorie burn by looking at your lowest hourly calorie burn overnight and multiply by 24, or if you are a fairly new Fitbit user, scroll back to before you started using, and it will still show the BMR calorie burn the same every day in the past.

[Cate333]

It's showing that I am only burning 44 calories (BMR) an hour. 44 x 24 =  1,056 calories.  This is the number i am basically getting every day as energy burned total! It's not recording any other calorie burning activities. See below. 

 

[Cate333]

Here is Calories burned year to date for me. You see my average is 1077 daily. Isn't Fitbit supposed to also factor in exercise, steps, etc to get energy burned or is this tool "Energy Burned" only suppose to show your BMR and nothing else?

[JohnnyRow]

You're wearing it on your wrist, rather on in clip, right?  If so, calorie, besides BMR, is based on on heart rate, though BMR is generally more than half of daily calorie burn.  Do you see heart rate rise when you exercise?

You are right.  Your charts are definitely wrong.  We are missing something that I can't (yet) figure out.

For comparison, here's my calorie burn today, going up when I was doing yard work, and raising my heart rate, during the day

[Cate333]

Yes, wearing on non dominant wrist. And my heartrate does go up and down based on activity. I usually get anywhere from 15- 60 zone minutes a day. but calories burned is not reflected.

I even did a hard reset and deleted all information to start new thinking that might help but none of my activities are being taken into consideration.

Only when I manually log an exercise like gardening, cleaning or walking-  it records it and gives me credit for calories burned. that is it. 

I really appreciate all your help!!! 

[Cate333]

I think I FINALLY got it to work. As of about 2:00 pm today, I am showing calories burned in addition to set BMR. I am not sure what I did (enabled/disabled) but it's working. Not sure if it's because I did a hard reset. Thank you JohnnyRow for all your patience and help.  

[JohnnyRow]

That's great, Cate !   Check in tomorrow, or when you get a chance, to let me know if it's still working.  I can't imagine what the issue was but I guess as long as it seems to be working now, we should settle for that.