My fitbit estimated BMR is overestimating my BMR?

[jennydagg]

Hi everyone, 

I have been using the fitbit app for about a month now. I log excerise and track my walking through my iphone. For 3 weeks my "calories burned" would readjust itself according to my daily excerise, averaging betwen 1200-1400 daily. But now it is saying 1884 "calories burned" when I wake up and check the day before. (Before I go to bed, it is a normal number, but then changes to the same number every night) 

I know I should use the bracelet, and I have one in the mail, but I don't understand why the app would increase the my "BMR" 

Any advice?? 

[Heybales]

First - that's not your BMR.

Look at your Activity tab, calories burned in 5 min increments.

Look at your non-moving time - that's the Fitbit estimate of your BMR, NOT your daily burn up to a certain point.

Take that value / 5 x 1440 for BMR they are using for all non-moving time.

If that changed, then you logged a new weight, and it would have gone down.

If your daily burn upon waking has gone up compared no prior days, then your option for Calorie Estimation was turned back on, under Settings.

And are you sure you aren't looking at different tiles, like eating goal was between 1200-1400, but daily burn was always around 1700-1900?

Because if your daily burn with walking was honestly only 1200-1400 - you must be older, shorter, and skinny.

"Use the bracelet" ? Huh? I think there is some confusion going on too - you do or do not have an actual Fitbit?

[jennydagg]

Ok, so is the calorie estimation being on not a good thing? Do most people ignore this function then?

The daily burn was that low, Im 5'4, 30 and regular weight for my height. I think I will turn off the estimation and go from there.

I currently use the fitbit app on my iphone (which uses the gps to calculate the distance walked etc)

Thanks for your reply!

[Dominique]

@Heybales   has a point: do you or do you not have a Fitbit tracker? Using the mobile app without a physical tracker doesn't make much sense to me. If you could afford an iPhone, just splash the few extra bucks needed to get a Fitbit tracker.

[jennydagg]

As I said it's on it's way!! A
But the app is actually quite useful on it's own.

I thought the community was for support, and not to get snarky at one another. And as per your assumption, my phone was a gift...

[Heybales]

It is support, I saw nothing snarky about our comments, unless you happened to read them with a negative bent. If you thought ours were snarky, get ready.

Support doesn't mean total agreement and you are doing everything right, it includes questions (which are not assumptions either) to see if you are doing something wrong worthy of correction.

That's true support, willing to point out things for improvement. "Hey keep going everything is great you are doing fine" isn't support, that's cheerleading.

To your question then, you want calorie estimation off since you have no device. And when you do get it and use it - probably disabled still unless you have the same routine daily and you forget it frequently or are terrible about planning food.

With it disabled it assumes sedentary for figuring eating goal, until actual activity pushes the burn higher and eating goal higher.

So last workout of day could cause problems if you don't plan well, or very more active than sedentary during the day and you don't sync until night time.

Yes, app can be decent for adding in exercise outside where GPS works. But as you have discovered, very limited compared to real thing. You basically did what MFP does, figure daily burn without exercise totally based on calculations, add in exercise later, adjust eating goal as needed.

Which is indeed valid and useful, but not as nice as real device, which you'll discover.

[Heybales]

You are average height then, confirm your stats when you use the device, that was rather low daily estimated calorie burn.

Because even your sedentary daily burn with no extra exercise (some walking is included of course, gotta move around), is over 1500 if weight is about 120, middle road for age/height.

[trike]

Snarky is about tone, some of these comments do objectively read as snarky.  It may not have been intended, but it was there.  Phrasing such as "do you or do you not..." is defintely snarky, unless you are in a court of law; it is condescending in casual discussion.

[Heybales]

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@trike wrote:

Snarky is about tone, some of these comments do objectively read as snarky.  It may not have been intended, but it was there.  Phrasing such as "do you or do you not..." is defintely snarky, unless you are in a court of law; it is condescending in casual discussion.

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Strong first post!

Resurrect a thread that is 11 months old.

And was not snarky, but asking questions no matter what you might think, as it started to hit what may be the situation here.