calories burned accurate?

[AussieRuns]

I've used my FitBit for about ten days and I can not believe the calories burned. They just seem outrageously high. Anyone else?

[keengkong]

How high is outrageously high?

[Heybales]

You ever logged accurately how much you used to eat when you maintained higher weight and perhaps weren't as active?

Unless you did, how could you possible know what a high calorie burn is, there is no informed opinion.

Actually, Fitbit is going to underestimate daily burn.

For ALL non-moving time, it uses your BMR calorie burn, which is what you burn in deepest sleep.

But in reality, you burn more when awake, when eating, when standing, when moving slowly or moving arms and no steps.

So for many that is 1/3 of their time, and at least 10% of their calories from eating and process food is unaccounted for.

No - it's under your actual burn.

[Dominique]

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@AussieRuns wrote:

I've used my FitBit for about ten days and I can not believe the calories burned. They just seem outrageously high. Anyone else?

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Your profile as per Aug. 8 only shows step counts for four days (6436 steps on Jul 26, 3618 on Jul 29, 4285 on Aug. 1 and 8406 on Aug. 4). This is not much to draw conclusions. Have you used an online TDEE calculator like this one? The Mifflin-St Jeor formula (which I've been led to believe is what Fitbit uses) should give a TDEE pretty close to what you had on Jul 29 (day with least activity, as detected by your Fitbit), if you choose exercise level = couch potato.

[AussieRuns]

Thanks for responding.

I  only used the FitBit when I was exercising, not constantly, and it would show 1800 calories burned for 75 minutes of workout. 1 hour walking on treadmill, incline about 10 for 50 minutes and then weight resistance for 15 minutes.

[Maxit]

"... and it would show 1800 calories burned for 75 minutes of workout. 1 hour walking on treadmill, incline about 10 for 50 minutes and then weight resistance for 15 minutes."

...added to the calorie requirement for keeping you alive for 24 hours 🙂

[slysam]

Hi ausieruns, I think only wearing your fitbit during exercise may be the problem. There is a default setting "calorie estimation" that you will want to disable (in your profile settings). This setting gives you an estimated activity burn for days or significant parts of days where you are not wearing the fitbit to approximate your daily activity. I think it seems to estimate high, at least from what others have posted. I've had it disabled for years (other than occasionally turning it on to see what it does if I forgot to put my fitbit on in the morning), if I don't wear my fitbit with this setting disabled I am only credited for my Mifflin BMR for that time. I personally wouldn't get a fitbit just for exercise, I already had a heart rate monitor before I had a fitbit that I used for exercise. I use my fitbit for all day activity tracking and find it pretty accurate--if anything it slightly underestimates as Heybales mentioned if I don't log anything. My original intention was to use my fitbit for walking and general activity and my HRM for intentional exercise. I noticed for me, my fitbit and hrm give very similar calorie burn estimates for a lot of steplike cardio (walking, running,cardio kickboxing, aerobic dancing, cardio drills like jumping jacks, jumping rope) so I mainly log non-step cardio (swimming, cycling, rowing), non step exercise (yoga, pilates, etc) or resistance oriented activities (cardio on machines with resistance settings, circuit training, weights, etc.). If you disable calorie estimation--your fitbit burn will just be your bmr + exercise. I am not sure why you would want that though, it really works better as an all day activity tracker as that is what it was intended for.