Have you lost weight since you got your Fitbit?

[Rnda]

I am the exact same weight as I was when I got my Flex 3 1/2 months ago!

How about you?

I'm hoping with Spring here and Summer around the corner, that my walking will increase. 

Moderator edit: title

[aljoyner56]

I pray for you and your family.  I recently experienced a bit of your recent journey with my dad last year, with hospital and hospice.  Yes emotions will get in the way just know I support you.

[Gimpycat]

I'm in weight maintenance mode -- have been for several years months.
Focusing less on steps and more on the intensity of my exercise. And you?

[aljoyner56]

I still have a ways to go, so I'm still focusing on steps, and food.  I lost 15 lbs in April and about 40 lbs last year so, I'm not doing bad.  Just staying the course

[Chasinghealth35]

I am doing well. I hope you are too.

[84camo]

The scale is not very good.

[84camo]

The scale is not very good

[hovdeo]

just to add my 2c worth here. yes, i have lost weight, from 195lbs to 160lbs and i use Weightings scale to track weight and bodyfat% (9%, not perfect accuracy but a trendline) i combine calorie counting on intake with ionic calorie burn, making sure my intake is 5-700 below my burn, not eating after 7pm, eating "clean" and about 1.8-2g protein/kg bodyweight (which at this point is 145g/day). i do understand the calorie burn count isn't perfect. eating a lot of grilled fish, lean meats with lots of veggies, very little of starchy/high calorie items like rice, pasta and potatoes. 

note on the calorie burn accuracy - i have noticed that, say at 6am, i have burned 450 calories. i go for a 2 hr bike ride, which ionic says burns ~1200 calories. in my simple mind, 450+1200=1650 calories at end of the ride but no - i often see 1200-1300-1400 calories in total at that point, what is going on????? 

all the best!

[Dominique]

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@hovdeo wrote:

note on the calorie burn accuracy - i have noticed that, say at 6am, i have burned 450 calories. i go for a 2 hr bike ride, which ionic says burns ~1200 calories. in my simple mind, 450+1200=1650 calories at end of the ride but no - i often see 1200-1300-1400 calories in total at that point, what is going on????? 

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There is a graph in your Dashboard that displays calories across the day in five minutes slices:

For instance, it says above I burned 36 calories between 9:15 and 9:20. Use it to track any calories that are "missing in action" (according to your calculations).

[Heybales]

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@hovdeo wrote:

note on the calorie burn accuracy - i have noticed that, say at 6am, i have burned 450 calories. i go for a 2 hr bike ride, which ionic says burns ~1200 calories. in my simple mind, 450+1200=1650 calories at end of the ride but no - i often see 1200-1300-1400 calories in total at that point, what is going on????? 

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Is there an actual workout record that says a 1200 calorie burn for the bike ride?

That could be possible - though it would be a rather vigorous workout to obtain 600 cal/hr.

But if that is actually the total daily burn at the end of the ride, that means you burned 750 for the 2 hrs - which seems more reasonable.

What does the list of activities show?

[hovdeo]

yes, i do exercise rather vigerously for most 50+. example, tuesday at 5.39am, 2hr07min, 1,144 calories, 124 avg HR (40 miles). this was mostly z2 ride with 3x7' z3-4 intervals. wahoo/strava/trainingpeaks using 1,625 calories and 137avg HR

i find these under "Exercise, x out of 7 days" icon where sessions are recorded either 1) auto-registering (run, walk, bike) or 2) manually started. 

most of the time, i do find them to be under-registering calories bc HR is not correct compared to chest straps. 

[hovdeo]

i am familiar with that one and it doesn't show any blank spots. 

[Heybales]

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@hovdeo wrote:

yes, i do exercise rather vigerously for most 50+. example, tuesday at 5.39am, 2hr07min, 1,144 calories, 124 avg HR (40 miles). this was mostly z2 ride with 3x7' z3-4 intervals. wahoo/strava/trainingpeaks using 1,625 calories and 137avg HR

i find these under "Exercise, x out of 7 days" icon where sessions are recorded either 1) auto-registering (run, walk, bike) or 2) manually started. 

most of the time, i do find them to be under-registering calories bc HR is not correct compared to chest straps. 

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Strava will actually have a better estimate of calories than HR-based.

The interval nature of outside riding anyway, and purposeful intervals - makes the HR formula for calorie burn invalid - which is only a decent estimate for steady-state aerobic, same HR for 3-5 min at any time in the aerobic zone.

Intervals by nature or going anaerobic, and moving HR all over the place - inflated calorie burn is result.

But 20 mph outside riding is massive intensity, in which case I'd think it was more.

But indeed, if a workout says 1200, and you started day at 450, the total daily burn after workout should be 1650.

Now Fitbit is a replace only system - the last Activity or Workout Record that hits is the data put into the daily totals.

So if Fitbit estimated by HR a ride was 1600 calories, but then a workout synced in from Strava for 1200 calories, both records will be there to see and look at stats on - but the daily total went up by the 1200 of last Record.

So be aware of that caveat.

And then some people do the foolish thing when synced with MFP of entering a workout there for 1 calorie just so it shows on their friends update feed. Well, that syncs back to Fitbit and replaces chunk of time with 1 calories - talk about screwed up numbers now.

[hovdeo]

thank you. average speed just a tad below 20mph, intervals at 20 to 35mph with undulating terrain and 320w but pushing it hard/steady effort on the small 2-3% downhills and 3-5% uphills. 

but, not sure what you meant. if i were to sync fitbit with strava, would the strava data overwrite the fitbit data for that period? what i do now is that i manually take the delta between the two and add to the daily calorie burn for a better (?) count (FB always lower than strava/TP/wahoo). regardless, i don't assume that FB is accurate as such; averages are good across a large pool of people but fairly inaccurate on an individual basis. 

MFP / maximum fitness performance? are you saying that if i just enter 1 calorie for my say 90 min workout which may have been 750-900 calories, then i would miss out on 749-899 calories from my count? brilliant 

i see what you say on calorie burns being calculated around fairly steady state and i would thought when you do hard intervals, the burn is likely to move up in some exponential fashion (unknown factor, at least for me) and not in a linear one. when you doing 5+ mins intervals, you have time to see HR move up and stabilize somewhat before dropping. compared to anaerobic/neuromuscular intervals, where HR never really catches up with effort before interval is over. and in my case, when i complete a hard, longer interval i can see a drop of 50-55bpm in the first 60" following the interval, meaning that the calorie based burn should "normalize" fairly quickly..... 

[JimC_99]

MFP is "My Fitness Pal" - a food and exercise tracking app that will sync to Fitbit....Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

[Heybales]

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@hovdeo wrote:

thank you. average speed just a tad below 20mph, intervals at 20 to 35mph with undulating terrain and 320w but pushing it hard/steady effort on the small 2-3% downhills and 3-5% uphills. 

but, not sure what you meant. if i were to sync fitbit with strava, would the strava data overwrite the fitbit data for that period? what i do now is that i manually take the delta between the two and add to the daily calorie burn for a better (?) count (FB always lower than strava/TP/wahoo). regardless, i don't assume that FB is accurate as such; averages are good across a large pool of people but fairly inaccurate on an individual basis. 

MFP / maximum fitness performance? are you saying that if i just enter 1 calorie for my say 90 min workout which may have been 750-900 calories, then i would miss out on 749-899 calories from my count? brilliant 

i see what you say on calorie burns being calculated around fairly steady state and i would thought when you do hard intervals, the burn is likely to move up in some exponential fashion (unknown factor, at least for me) and not in a linear one. when you doing 5+ mins intervals, you have time to see HR move up and stabilize somewhat before dropping. compared to anaerobic/neuromuscular intervals, where HR never really catches up with effort before interval is over. and in my case, when i complete a hard, longer interval i can see a drop of 50-55bpm in the first 60" following the interval, meaning that the calorie based burn should "normalize" fairly quickly..... 

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Well - if you have watts, you already have best calorie burn estimate available - it would be missing your base burn which should be included in a replace type system like Fitbit. Just add 80 cal/hr to the calorie burn if manually entering.

If you did sync with Strava, and Strava is getting calories from device with watts - then it's figure is good for syncing to Fitbit to indeed replace whatever Fitbit came up with using HR.

What you describe with HR is exactly why you get inflated calorie burn - fitter you are then the effect isn't as bad like you say with HR dropping. But whole time it's dropping it's inflated, and by intervals later on almost always higher during rest period than starting intervals.

MFP is MyFitnessPal - external site for syncing to Fitbit. Workouts manually added there sync over.

And that 1 cal is awful idea. Actually, your adding the Delta like you described replaces the original calorie burn too if you are selecting the same Start/duration time. Now wonder daily calories takes a nosedive.

If your watts is coming from Strava - I'd actually suggest using their Calorie burn, usually tad underestimated since they don't know about extra wind, and the fact a headwind out rarely is as strong if even there as tailwind back. I hate it when that happens on long out.

[hovdeo]

since i'm an excel guy, i do my calories in excel, meaning i use FB's calorie burn + (Strava Exercise Burn-FB Exercise burn) = adjusted total calorie burn. i never adjust in FB app. which leaves me confused as to what/why 1200+450= 1300 in FB world. 

i used a Quarq Dzero power meter on my trusted steed and since i am not a fine-tuned, hyper efficient machine, i believe i burn more during the ride than my kJ (production) indicate (which seems to confirmed by the kJ vs cals in TP). i will check and "test" with adjusting kJ with BMR over same period (76cal/hr or so). 

for strava, with headwind etc, one would either get higher HR or higher w if same speed, or u just go slower while producing same w and HR. 

but, when doing intervals, particularly longer ones, 5-20 mins in my case, with elevated HR during intervals, one should be "credited" with extra burn for the extra effort. you seem to say, if i understand you correctly, that the elevated HR following the interval (1-2 mins) will give you a higher than justified burn? what about the slower ramp up of HR at the beginning of the interval? it can take a min or two there before you reach your HR compared to w, which are pretty much instantaneous, or rarely more than 5-10s into the interval. (i ignore the z6-7 intervals for now). 

thank you for your time! 

[Heybales]

Oh, if never changing Fitbit info then indeed nothing to worry about.

You must have your own exercise diary you use for the more details. I use SportTracks desktop app for importing Garmin data, or manual entry if swimming or other.

Just remember that if you want Fitbit to have complete figures for review later, just create a new Workout Record with the total calorie burn from your power meter. I'm sure the 22-24% efficient difference is not that meaningful, but indeed the fact it's only getting calories from what's put into the pedals but nothing else does mean it's low ball.

You can even leave the Activity Record which is merely a snapshot of Fitbit data during the chunk of time given. It'll have the HR, incorrect distance, incorrect calories, ect. But may be interesting to review later.

Your Workout Record, manually entered or synced in, will replace the calories and distance in the Fitbit daily totals. But it won't change the Activity Record since it is a snapshot of what was there, but is no longer in the daily totals.

But there are many reasons why HR-based can be off too - besides the HR changes on intervals.

Heat, dehydrated, stressed, meds, ect.

But as I mentioned, fitter you are the less the incorrect effect of HR going up & down is - still not as accurate as power meter though, with a tad extra added for BMR & upper body usage. Especially not an issue with longer intervals when fit.

You do some HIIT style intervals though of 30-45 sec all out and 90-135 sec recovery - you'll find the HR profile on interval set 10 much different than set 1, with HR recovery amount and time very different.

But in that case - the inflated calorie burn based on HR would be so minor in the scheme of things - really doesn't matter.

Could TP not be using the kJ reading from the power meter?

Sure sounds like it's supposed to.

https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/how-accurate-is-that-calorie-reading/

[hovdeo]

trainingpeaks ingests both kJ (from power meter/watt) and HR from from my wahoo headunit so i can see both. and TP is my main training diary with all its analysis vs. strava which is more of a social media thing. riding a fair bit indoors due to work schedule, i'm painfully aware of HR drift following temperature and dehydration even with a good fan - i sweat a LOT! 

i will from time to time do 40/20, 30/30, 20/40 but more in the 5 to 20 mins, building aerobic capacity. "push from below" as coach will say rather than "pull from above". he's more above z3-4 for intervals, only occasional z5. 

i have a tendency to forget to start the spinning session (indoor session) on time but i seems like i could just add it afterwards (from TP), at the proper time of the day, and it would replace the data during the period of time with my manually entered data. and i could do the same with the automatically registered bike rides (or turn of this function) and then add manually. something to tinker with this weekend. 

great insight and thoughts, thank you! 

[rachiti]

Yes and no.  When I was being strict with my calories (eating under 2,500) with lots of veggie-filled salads, I lost quite a bit of weight.  When I stopped being as strict with my calories, I gained a few pounds.  Now that I'm getting fewer power-walking steps and less heavy lifting as I switched jobs at work (even though my diet is the same)...I'm gaining even more though my steps are the same.  So, if you're using it to actively increase your steps - track the types of additional exercise you get in - and using the calorie counter to keep your calories in check...yes, you can lose weight as long as you don't have an underlying medical issue holding you back.  If you just wear it passively, not so much.

[rachiti]

Congratulations on your success and dedication!  Might I suggest swapping out the artificial ice cream for a real ice cream treat?  The artificial sugars can undermine your weight loss because they mess with your gut bacteria.  I like Breyers all natural vanilla.  It only uses natural binders instead of ones that can mess with your digestion. Good luck on continued long-term success.