Fitbit calories are way too high.. or are they?

[ChriSyl]

I have been using my fitbit for approximately two and a half months and I've noticed that my calculated calorie burn is quite high, maybe too high?
I have a BMR of 2000 kcal - this is not by any calculation but the result of a test.

Now, I am a consistent regular at the gym with several years of experience behind me so the workouts are quite intense and vary in the ranges of 800-1800 kcal in about one or two hours - maybe more depending on what I am training, legs being in the higher tiers. Yes, its bloody intense.

Note that this is what fitbit is telling me I am burning.
Add 8 hours of work on top of that with around 15000 steps and I'm looking at 4000-5000 kcal burned.

My record being 6100 kcal: Work + leg day
On average a workday with a following workout results in about 4500-5000 kcal burned.
Is this actually accurate??
Id have to be eating around 4800-5300 kcal on workdays and around 3500-3800 kcal otherwise.
Now that is a **ahem**-tonn of food.
I am currently eating around 3600-3800 kcal daily and my weight has for the most part remained steady with small variations - I actually increased by 0.5 kg after a consistent 3800 kcal diet (for two weeks before Christmas **ahem**ed me over) with a macronutrient spread toward bodybuilding. Therefore I have a slight skepticism against this calculated burn, I should have been skin and bones had it been true! You cannot really walk around being in a near 2000 kcal deficit for prolonged periods of time without loosing all your mass. 
So what is going on? Clearly my fitbit is calculating way more calories than what I actually burn.

[WavyDavey]

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@ChriSyl wrote:

I have been using my fitbit for approximately two and a half months and I've noticed that my calculated calorie burn is quite high, maybe too high?
I have a BMR of 2000 kcal - this is not by any calculation but the result of a test.

Now, I am a consistent regular at the gym with several years of experience behind me so the workouts are quite intense and vary in the ranges of 800-1800 kcal in about one or two hours - maybe more depending on what I am training, legs being in the higher tiers. Yes, its bloody intense.

Note that this is what fitbit is telling me I am burning.
Add 8 hours of work on top of that with around 15000 steps and I'm looking at 4000-5000 kcal burned.

My record being 6100 kcal: Work + leg day
On average a workday with a following workout results in about 4500-5000 kcal burned.
Is this actually accurate??
Id have to be eating around 4800-5300 kcal on workdays and around 3500-3800 kcal otherwise.
Now that is a **ahem**-tonn of food.
I am currently eating around 3600-3800 kcal daily and my weight has for the most part remained steady with small variations - I actually increased by 0.5 kg after a consistent 3800 kcal diet (for two weeks before Christmas **ahem**ed me over) with a macronutrient spread toward bodybuilding. Therefore I have a slight skepticism against this calculated burn, I should have been skin and bones had it been true! You cannot really walk around being in a near 2000 kcal deficit for prolonged periods of time without loosing all your mass. 
So what is going on? Clearly my fitbit is calculating way more calories than what I actually burn.

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I agree the calculation sounds off. The scale is always the final decider in these matters. If your weight stays the same at 3800kcals, then that is your maintenance calories. There's really no way around it that I see.

May I ask what kinds of gym workout you are doing? Is it all circuit training or crossfit? 1800 calories is pretty difficult to sustain over two hours. I would look at those numbers cautiously.

The calories burned are somewhat based off of your heart rate. Can you post one of these workouts, esp. the heart rate chart? That would help a lot to answer your question.

[Dominique]

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@ChriSyl wrote:

I am currently eating around 3600-3800 kcal daily and my weight has for the most part remained steady

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I agree with @WavyDavey: if you’re eating xx amount of calories, you’re confident in your logging abilities and your weight is stable, that’s also your total expenditure, it’s as simple as that. That your Fitbit tracker overestimates your expenditure shouldn’t be a problem for you, as you clearly had a good idea of how much you were eating and how much expending prior to getting it (you would’t be eating 5000 calories just because it’s what your Fitbit said you expended). It’s more of a problem for folks who haven’t got the slightest idea about either and are looking to lose a bunch of weight.

[tractorlegs]

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@ChriSyl wrote:

(clipped) 
So what is going on? Clearly my fitbit is calculating way more calories than what I actually burn.

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Yes it is. My experience echoes yours. When I work an active job, where there are a lot of steps, effort, and a higher heart rate, the Fitbit app always calculates my calorie needs way too high. However, on days when I am sedentary except for a 30 minute workout, it is very accurate. As @Dominique and @WavyDavey have mentioned, however, you seem to be on top of things so it shouldn't be an issue to set your own calorie goals.

For the first 6 or 7 months I used my Blaze, I was unemployed and exercised daily. The Fitbit app was spot on in its calorie estimate. Then I got a job cooking at a hotel - on my feet constantly, always in motion, higher HR, lots of steps, and the app began to overestimate the calories I could eat substantially. I just started estimating my own figure based on the previous period when it seemed to work.

[ChriSyl]

My workouts are focused on weightlifting and the higher tiers of calories are burned when I'm in hypertrophy training. Basically medium to lower weight with a whole lot of sets and reps as well as shocking principles to really tear the muscles down.
Here is a screen of my recent workout. This one being hypertrophy week 1 out of 4, and thus not as intense. Heart rate usually increase with about 10-15 bpm as the weeks progress and the workouts get more intense.


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Now I realize that there is a miscalculation, clearly, or else I'd be pretty much dead by now. 
It does not really affect my progress as I have enough knowledge to manage without the charge 2, its more the fact that I spent money on a device which is not operating as it should be.
You would not be pleased if you'd spend money on a phone only to later realize that its not actually doing what its supposed to do. So I'm not asking for guidance on that regard.
I'm quite a stats-freak, absolutely love stats, and therefore it kinda bums me out that all these stats I receive regarding my calorie burn and workouts are completely useless..

With MFP connected as well I'm being told to consume vast amounts of food. My stats are in a bloody frenzy. Not cool..

So back to the question.
What is making the charge 2 calculate my calories in this way, and how can I fix it? 

To answer my own question, speculation that is. It could be the fact that the charge 2 is made for a different target-group of people. I know I'm not in the average, by far, and that might result in the programming of the C2 being all freaky in regards to its calculations. 
Regardless, shouldn't this be a problem easily fixed by an update? If my speculation is right that is.
Being allowed to manually type inn BMR as well as the ability to choose a tier of experience varying from advanced to beginner should help the programming be more precise. 

[WavyDavey]

@ChriSyl, nice workout routine! How many calories did it say you burned in that workout?

I'm not sure how to advise fixing it. Most of my training is with weights in lower rep ranges, so not as intense cardio-wise. @Dominique would probably be better to comment on how accurate the HR monitoring is under higher volume lifting.

Fitbit actually underestimates my daily calories burned by about 300. I ended up making a +300kcal surplus in the fitbit wight plan to compensate, which you could do also if your numbers are off by a consistent amount.

I would want to verify that the heart rates reported by the Charge 2 under heavy exercise are correct. You could do this by some cardio if you have access to a machine with built-in HR, or just take the pulse manually. Obviously, if the tracker is overestimating HR, it would cause the calories burned to go too high also.

If you haven't already, try a restart of the tracker, in case something is hung up on the hardware side.

If that didn't fix it, I would definitely open a ticket with Fitbit Support, so they can assist. The Charge 2 has been dependable for me, and other than the one-time calorie adjustment I made, very consistent. I would expect yours to perform the same.

Also, I don't think you're outside of what the C2 was made to track. We have all kinds of people here that push cardio to the limit, and I can't recall many reports of this type.

[Dominique]

It sounds like what you really need is a tracker dedicated to/optimized for weight lifting, like the Atlas Wristband2 (see this topic for a related discussion). I don’t think any update to the Charge 2 is ever going to make it understand you’re in week x of your hypertrophy/strength/whatever mesocycle. Or that you’re doing biceps curls, sumo squats, Romanian deadlifts etc.

Another possibility would be to get a Fitbit Ionic and to write your own custom app for energy expenditure during your workouts (or have someone write one for you, or hope a third-party developer will come with an app that suits your purposes). 

[ChriSyl]

The workout posted was around 1100 kcal

Now I also incorporate strength training alternating with hypertrophy. Both calculate wrong.
I also tried to reset the watch on several occasions only to have it return to previous calculations.

Now I bought this with the intention of upping my statistics and thus improving my progress, but I'm basically stuck in the same position as before. 
I was hoping for a better solution than having to get another device..

I'll guess I'll check in with fitbit support, maybe they can help. Could it be some hardware issues with my specific C2 maybe?