Why so many steps to break even calories on Lose IT

[realbigjon]

2 years ago I lost a bunch of weight and unfortunetly I've gained most of it back.  So time to lose again. Last time I used the Lose It app and it worked well for tracking food and exercise, now I can combine my fitbit with it.  

My question is in regards to the calories burned.

Lose It uses the Mifflin equation to come up with how much a typical person loses in a day based on height, weight, age and sex.  For me to be able to equal this I would have to walk around 7-8,000 steps in a day (and get any adjustment).  This seems a little absurd since Lose It states that the calories burned calculated should be on the low end and for someone who is in a typical office atmosphere and does the usual day to day things.

Then I realized that pretty much as I'm sitting there throughout the day, the fitbit (obviously not amounting any steps) is counting calories at the average resting rate.  Through out the day, someone is driving, doing office work, holding things, thinking hard 🙂 and ect. that amount to much more.  This all burns more energy than just sleeping.

I really think fitbit should change there algorithim to get this right.  My recomendation would be to figure out average steps in a day, that people take that reach the mifflin equation or calories burned, then go from there.  I really don't want to go into fitbit every time I do exercise (ellipical), or driving or anything of the nature that is more than RMB.  I read that typical Americans steps are around 5,000.  In my mind if I live my life as usual (3,000 and under is sedentary) and reaching 7,000 steps I should be burning more calories than what the equation projects.

I'm now not sure what the real benefit of the fitbit if it assumes that when I'm not moving, that I'm not burning more calories than when I'm sleeping, besides counting your steps.  

Has anyone else seen this issue.  Are there ways around it?  What I'm thinking is now I'm just going to put outside exercise into Lose It like I did before and really only use the fitbit for steps.  Right now I'm kind of dissatisifed with the product.

On a good note. I've lost 8lbs already!

[DMJ123]

I work in a office and I walked 1.12 miles today by my GPS at lunch then this evening I walked 1.74 miles and the rest of the day I was at my computer in my office. I do walk the 35 steps to the copy machine and back but most of the time I am at the computer. I measured my steps and I put in 2 ft.5in for my stride, The flex which I recevied for Christmas is saying I am walking 12,000 steps. I find this hard to believe and wondered if any one else is doubting this?. I even put on my non active arm.

Thanks

Dorothy

[Dominique]

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@DMJ123 wrote:

I work in a office and I walked 1.12 miles today by my GPS at lunch then this evening I walked 1.74 miles and the rest of the day I was at my computer in my office. I do walk the 35 steps to the copy machine and back but most of the time I am at the computer. I measured my steps and I put in 2 ft.5in for my stride, The flex which I recevied for Christmas is saying I am walking 12,000 steps. I find this hard to believe and wondered if any one else is doubting this?. I even put on my non active arm.

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I'm using the One. 1.12+1.74 miles of brisk walking would give me about 5800 steps. It's hard to believe you would walk another 6000 steps during the rest of the day if you have a sedentary office job.

I believe the general consensus is wrist-based Fitbits (Flex, Force) overestimate step counts compared to waist-/torso-based models (One, Zip, Ultra).

[SunsetRunner]

Hi, realbigjon! I'm not 100% sure I got your question correctly, but I'll try to answer as best I can.

The calories fitbit counts are generally your RMR (resting metabolic rate). It counts for everything your body does while you are at rest, like keeping your entire organ system going.
The fitbit does account for your steps and count extra calories (how much, I'm not completely sure of), but I also get a few hundred calories over my BMR even if I'm playing couch potato for a day (~1000 steps, no joke, it's a pain day), so I suspect it does kind of account for actually being awake and a sedentary lifestyle.
Things like driving and doing office work doesn't add up to many extra calories burned, but if you exercise (like the elliptical), you might want to add it manually as this is something that usually amounts to more muscle work and gets your blood pumping more than for example normal walking.
If I do the dishes for 20 minutes, I won't log it, cause it wouldn't amount to more than a few extra calories anyway. This activity won't trigger my flex to count steps as I keep it on my non-dominant hand, by the way.
The Mifflin and Harris Benedict equations are quite similar as far as I've experienced (just now I had a 9 calorie difference on my stats), but might yield different results for different stats. I'm not sure which fitbit uses, but it shouldn't be a huge issue no matter. If you have more muscle than the norm or more fat than the norm, this might skewer the results as more muscle burns more calories.
I think the only way to get it more accurate is to connect to a heart rate monitor... After all, the fitbit is basically just a step counter with a few nifty features.

[Colinm39]

Fitbit uses the Mifflin-St.Jeor equation.. Confirmed recently from Fitbit.

My BMR/RMR is 4 calories different between Mifflin and Fitbit sleeping over 24 hours.

[realbigjon]

Do you rock in your chair. I noticed ifi was rocking my daughter to sleep I would get a bunch of extra streps. Best to look at your phone and see when the extra steps are taking place

[Colinm39]

I'm the Carer for my b-in-law and was sitting in his rocking chair and the same thing, not many calories but slow easy steps...

[realbigjon]

My issue is if you go into the fitbit and activity like driving for a half hour it is twice as many calories as if I didn't do anything. 45 vs 22.5. I know overall I can't get things perfect but at the end of the day I think a buffer should be added to the base calories because it really isn't giving a true calorie count. My fitness pal is now giving negative adjustments. I think people would agree with me that they then would want the calories some what accurate. Right now I'm not going to eat anymore than I would normally when dieting. I'm more trying to find a game plan post diet. 2012 I went from 271 to 198 at my lowest in 5 months. On January 2nd (I ate a lot over the holidays) I was 261. I don't want that to happen again. My entire family has dealt with obesity and I don't want too anymore.

[SunsetRunner]

The calorie burn estimate with devices like this is never going to be 100% correct, at least not without a HRM and it probably won't even with HRM, sadly..
In any case isn't better that it shows less than it actually is, though? That way, you eat by the numbers, but probably end up having an extra little deficit due to those activities not being counted?
I'm more worried it goes the other way, showing me I burned more than I did...

As for you future game plan, I suggest the lifestyle change route, as it's probably the only game plan that will keep you at your goal for life.

[realbigjon]

I agree to a certain extent, but being off by 100s of calories in my estimate, seems like fitbit could be doing more to give a somewhat accurate rate of burn. 

Does anyone know if the numbers are adjusted if you get their scale, or a withing scale. since that would give body fat% which would give a more accurate reading on BMR?

I guess I feel that fitbit has a ton of data sources that can be linked to it, I would think that they would then therefore to get accurate reading or atleast promote it more.

I really like my Force, but IMO fitbit better start uping there game b/c the CES show this year is littered with wearables.  in 3-5 years I see myself buying a smart watch, that would also have a pedometer and a network that would link together tons of apps.  Right now fitbit has alot of this, see if they partner with someone to make a smart watch.

[pixelheap]

I was dissatisfied with Lose It for this very reason. Lose It said my budget was 2400 calories to lose a pound a week but I would need to do a ton to dent my fit bit adjustment. For example, I would walk almost three miles at the park, play with my kids and would get like a 30 calorie adjustment at the end of the day.

Why would it assume I burn so much?? My BMR is 2010. I know they use the equation but that is completely unreasonable for someone who sits at a desk all day like me. 

SO, I use MyFitnessPal and made my budget 2030. It's higher than my BMR, and when I burn 2530 calories I go into the surplus. The reason I like this is yesterday I walked for 24 minutes and at the end of the day I had ~150 calorie adjustment... pretty spot on to what that walk should have burned... 

If I find 2030 hard to maintain from a hunger stand point I will adjust it higher and be more active, but for me, right now, this math makes the most sense. you NEED to see an adjustment, it's motivating. When i was walking 3 miles a day and seeing zero adjustment i thought "so i need to do this EVERYDAY just to keep up???" no way...

[realbigjon]

Actually they don't use a unreasonable equation.

Lose It! estimates the number of calories you burn each day at rest using a standard formula based on height, weight, age and gender (Mifflin equation). This equation produces what is known as a Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR).

The Mifflin equation provides a good approximation for most people, however, individual metabolisms can do vary. If you feel that your RMR varies from that of a typical person (e.g. because a doctor or nutritionist has more accurately measured your RMR), you may wish to adjust your daily calorie budget accordingly.

Lose It! also assumes that your Personal Activity level (PAL) is sedentary to light (e.g. a typical office worker). In more technical terms this corresponds to a PAL of 1.45. This PAL corresponds to the following set of activities:

• Sleeping - 8 hours
• Personal Care (dressing, showering) - 1 hour
• Eating - 1 hour
• Cooking - 1 hour
• Sitting (office work, selling produce, tending shop) - 8 hours
• Driving car to/from work - 1 hour
• Leisure activities (watching TV, chatting) - 3 hour

If you believe that your PAL is higher or lower based on your actual daily activity level or because you have had your PAL measured more accurately by a doctor or a nutritionist, you may wish to adjust your daily calories budget accordingly.

Note that dedicated exercises such as jogging, running or playing sports are not included in your daily PAL. This is because Lose It! enables you to account for calories burned from these activities explicitly by logging them as exercises.

This is very reasonable IMO.  Why wouldn't you think if you were awake 16-18 hours in a day that you couldn't burn 15-20 extra calories an hour just by doing simple life events.

My whole point is that the FITBIT doesn't take into account said simple life events into its calculation, leaving it inaccurate and at times frustrating when comparing it to other apps/websites that obviously have done there reasearch.  

I do agree that it is better to be under than over estimated b/c that will make people lose more weight.  But knowing that there are adjustments that they can probably make (especially if fitbit knows when you are sleeping) to adjust for day to day activity that burns more calories without someone manually entering data into the fitbit.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/the-pedometer-test-americans-take-fewer-steps/?_r=0

Article above talks about a study done for number of steps done across the world.

[pixelheap]

Yeah, I don't think the equation itself is unreasonable, but for me, it should never assume I am walking three miles a day, which is what it was doing by giving me no adjustment when I did so. That just doesn't make sense or motivate me in any way.

[Colinm39]

Here is the steps graph of the Fitbit population world wide from Premium.

Fitbit have updated the parameters and it is now updated monthly with the last 9 months data. Probably miminmises the slackers and dropoffs this way. Still poor when you consider your NYT link amd me for a 74 year to be in the 99% percentile with only 15k steps/day.

[realbigjon]

15K is alot. Great job.

But there are also people (like me) who take it off when doing the elliptical or other exercieses where the tracking isn't good, and you don't want to screw up the step results.

[realbigjon]

@pixelheap wrote:

Yeah, I don't think the equation itself is unreasonable, but for me, it should never assume I am walking three miles a day, which is what it was doing by giving me no adjustment when I did so. That just doesn't make sense or motivate me in any way.

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I think you're missing my point.  It shouldn't take you that much walking to reach the goal that Lose It has for you because the Fitbit is not taking into affect the million other things other than walking/jogging/running/stairs that you/your body do to burn calories.  I'm sure lose it only estimates around 5,000 steps for an average person and the few other things they add into the above listing.  They even say there estimates are nearly for sedentary people.

Which then therefore comes to my point that it would be nice for the Fitbit to add an average calorie burn in that takes into account these optional calorie burning activities.