Manually logged exercise calories burned different on dashboard

[umtirigane]

 

 I was wondering if anyone else had this issue. It’s been happening to me for months! 
when I manually enter an exercise, it shows me calories burned on that screen - in this case almost 600- but then once I tap add and it posts to my dashboard, the calories burned drops to 190. Why?

if I click on the exercise to edit it, the 563 calories shows up again. What’s going on? Why such a huge discrepancy?
I know the 563 is closer to being accurate because I also have a HR monitor on a chest strap. 

[Julia_G]

Hi, @umtirigane , when you manually add an exercise, rather than allowing your Fitbit to track it automatically (using SmartTrack) or by tracking it manually using the exercise app on the Fitbit, the Fitbit assumes for all manual logs that you prefer to overwrite whatever it detected during the time.  That is, manual logs always take precedence.  The Fitbit assumes you know best!

For a manual log you always have the option to enter your own calorie value, and then it will save the information you have added.  I think what is happening here is that as you did not fill in the calorie field when you made the manual log, once you save it, the calculation has reverted to your BMR calories - i.e. calories your body burns just keeping you alive, calories you would have burned if you had been in a comma (Fitbit uses a standard calculation based on height, weight, and sex to make this calculation).  If you manually write in the calorie field it will save whatever number you write in.  

So you really have 3 options.  For best results I would recommend starting your exercise using the Fitbit exercise app on the Inspire 3 itself.  When the exercise app is launched the Fitbit is alerted to sample your heart rate more frequently in order to deliver a more accurate calorie assessment.

Your second option is to allow your Fitbit to detect your activity automatically.  This can sometimes create some errors (for example you might be cutting the grass and the Fitbit might think you are on an outdoor bike ride) - but over all the “SmartTrack” feature works pretty well, in my opinion.  Although SmartTrack won’t give you all the features of the exercise app, it is a pretty good compromise and should give a reasonably good guess of calorie consumption, based on your personal details (height, weight, sex, age) but the heart rate graph will still be somewhat smoothed.

The other option is to launch the exercise app yourself.  As I mentioned, this will give you the most accurate results.

Following some recent updates to the Inspire 3 (and other trackers), for some of the exercises you can tell the Fitbit to launch the exercise app automatically (the autostart option).  This is available for walk, run, and bike activities, but crucially it is not available for Bootcamp.

Short answer (tldr):  Your manual log overwrites what your Fitbit detected during the same time period.  If you do not manually enter a calorie number your manual log will automatically revert to BMR calories.  You can add the calories yourself and they will be saved.  Alternatively you can use one of the other methods Fitbit has for tracking your activity (SmartTrack or using the exercise app) and the Fitbit will calculate the calories for you (exercise app will give most accurate results).

I hope this is all clear and makes sense!  Welcome to the Community Forums.