don't follow fitbit's calorie counter

[rshe]

There is no way a person can consume the amount of calories that they fitbit dashboard says you burn and lose weight.  It is WAY OFF target.   A two mile walk doesn't burn over 1,000 calories and you can't lose weight if you are eating as much as it says you can.

[bshawy89]

Does anyone know how to tell what calories you are supposed to consume according to the fit band?  I know from doing Spark People that I'm supposed to eat 1700 calories per day.  Is there anyway to manually input that goal?

[Heybales]

Look at your band, find the number of calories burned so far.

Eat 500 less than that for 1 lb weekly loss.

Do that before each meal.

That's quick and easy, and whenever something is quick and easy it's also
not the best usually - so that method gives no ability to estimate what the
day will be to plan better.

Your other site is giving an estimate of eating goal based on your guess of
activity levels.

Fitbit is giving actual activity calorie burn and eating levels based on it.

Guess which is better estimate.

[PatNewMex]

I also use the feature on my phone to add a food by barcode. It's a lifeasaver! 🙂

[RunsWScissors]

Wow. The hostility! Is that really necessary?

[Heybales]

The initial post is almost as bad as people that are sure the Fitbit must be wrong, merely because they were unaware that they burned calories even sleeping.

[RunsWScissors]

I suppose you are kettle?

Sent from my iPhone

[Mavacast]

---

@Heybales wrote:

---

@rshe wrote:

There is no way a person can consume the amount of calories that they fitbit dashboard says you burn and lose weight.  It is WAY OFF target.   A two mile walk doesn't burn over 1,000 calories and you can't lose weight if you are eating as much as it says you can.

---

So all the thousands of success stories are lies, and your situation may not be the exception because of some issue that you don't wish to explore or fix?

Actually, Fitbit underestimates daily burn outside of exercise.

It counts BMR level burn to all non-moving time, which really only applies to sleeping deeply.

When awake you burn more - RMR.

When standing not moving you burn even more.

When eating and processing food you burn more (about 10% of calories eaten).

Exercise is usually underestimated too, because Fitbit doesn't know increased effort and calorie burn from inclines, or pushing or carrying more weight.

So if yours has an issue, it's yours.

Then again, the Fitbit estimates are based on calculations for average healthy body.

If yours isn't healthy, like a disease, or average, like lost a lot of muscle mass - then indeed their estimates may be higher than reality. But that normally wouldn't be WAY OFF target unless you've really got a messed up body.

And you are right though, a 2 mile walk should not burn over 1000 calories.

But is that how many miles Fitbit thought you went for a workout, or that's how many miles the treadmill or some GPS app said you walked?

And hopefully you aren't talking about the general Fitbit stats where the day may have said you have walked 2 miles so far today, and burned 1000 calories so far.

Because if that's the case - then you really don't know what you are talking about, because that calorie burn is NOT just the exercise, it's the total burn. And considering you burn calories sleeping, yes you could easily see 1000 calories for a partial day while only moving 2 miles in total so far.

I only include that last part because many are ignorant of that fact until they ask.

---

[LevAris]

If you have a device that counts your heart rate it measures calories burn by heart rate. It doesn't need to know how many miles or steps you walked.

[josephz2va]

From my experience if your strides aren't set correctly, it'll be off. My strides are 2 feet walking and 4 feet running but even that could be off.

Next you could burn 1,000 calories if you're doing an athletic exercise. I burned 556 calories in 43 minutes and 37 seconds though for those 2 miles but I was performing a heart rate interval on 130 and 160-170 two minutes each cycle.

Fitstar has my daily conditioning exercises for 11 minutes 123 calories on a few sessions. But it depends on how aggressive I'm going as well like Get Lean or Get Strong.

[ohjebus]

I use MyFitnessPal and yes you can link them.

[SunsetRunner]

Same, I just use Fitbit for recording the steps, everything else is Myfitnesspal

[rissadoodlebop]

I'm chiming in! Yes, I use another app for my food log! I use LoseIt but have also used MyFitnessPal! Both are similiar and work well as far as accuracy to the food searched. 

[SunsetRunner]

I find that I must leave at least 450 calories if I am going to lose weight. My daughters are able to eat more than I and still lose weight. They are also allotted more calories per day than I am. There is a calculation done on weight lose versus steps taken or excercise done. 

As I am losing weight it does not worry me that I cannot eat those last 450 calories. My health is improving and fitbit makes it easier. I pay no attention to the flights of stairs though as I get most of mine whilst driving my car.

[shipo]

I find it interesting how many folks are convinced Fitbit calculates calorie burn correctly; I am from the other camp which says my Fitbit Surge is not only off, but WAY off. If my Fitbit is to be believed, I have about the same caloric burn per stride during a leisurely walk as I do when running at a pretty good clip. Kinda silly if you think about it.

[Heybales]

---

@shipo wrote:
I find it interesting how many folks are convinced Fitbit calculates calorie burn correctly; I am from the other camp which says my Fitbit Surge is not only off, but WAY off. If my Fitbit is to be believed, I have about the same caloric burn per stride during a leisurely walk as I do when running at a pretty good clip. Kinda silly if you think about it.

---

Only because it appears you are new, and I've seen so many read stats wrong or get them wrong.

How long have you had the Surge?

So does the walk and run both show up as an activity record - either from you doing a button press or Fitbit doing it automatically?

Are you looking at stats based on a workout record (which is different) - because you had the Fitbit app on phone also with you tracking the distance and it made that workout record?

Because if a workout record was created based on distance on app - then it overwrote the original stats, and actual steps was replaced by calculated from stride length, and calorie burn from distance, not HR.

Also the HR-based calorie burn for first couple weeks is getting more accurate based on your body stats.

You can tell the difference between Activity and Workout records - Activity you could edit if desired, like the name or start/end times. Workout only can be deleted and viewed.

Also, have you measured and confirmed the distance of the leisurely walk - it could be the stride distance is off along with one of the reasons above for the run being off.

Because - indeed there should be a difference.

Then again - when you look at total daily burn - what % of the day's time or calorie burn are you talking about in relation to this difference only between time spent running or walking?

If the running is way lower than it should be and the walking is more correct - that's for how much time - 1 hr perhaps? And the difference for that mere hour?

[shipo]

• I've had the Surge just shy of a year.
• Yes, both run and walk show up on the activity log.
• The distances are *usually* spot on, that said, there are times when the device will plot me running across a lake or through the ladies locker room at the local health club.  I'd say my runs are probably 95% accurate, however, when they're wrong, they're *really* wrong.
• An example: last night I ran 8.06 miles, plotting the same course on MapMyRun says 8.12, close enough for me.  Per my activity log I ran it in 77 minutes at a 9:32 pace; fairly strenous for my plump 59 year old body; the final calorie total was 1,141 with an average BPM of 138.  Last weekend I did a relatively leisurly 3.5 mile walk (validated by MapMyRun) with my wife; we completed the walk in almost exactly one hour; the final total was 572 calories with an average BPM of 105.

To my way of thinking, either the run numbers are low (but they seem consistent with a 210 pounder running that far), or the walk numbers seem really high.

[BWright1175]

---

@shipo wrote:

To my way of thinking, either the run numbers are low (but they seem consistent with a 210 pounder running that far), or the walk numbers seem really high.

---

Walk numbers are really high.

For reference, while I'm younger than you, we're close to the same height/weight...

Manually logging a walk exercise for that distance/duration shows me at 290 calories.

Was it a manually logged walk (entered afterwards) or did you enter workout mode before the walk started?

[shipo]

Thanks for the response.

The activity was auto-logged; your numbers seem a heck of a lot more inline with what I would expect. 

[Serich]

I add the foods I consume.  Since I have a regulated routine, there is not much to add.  I believe it is pretty accurate.

[stephen63]

I just received a replacement HR, had to sync up the new device, saw that all my custom entries were gone! The ones  from a brand I selected off a list were there, but ones I had to add/customise, were not there. Discouraged by such a waste of time and so many reports on inaccuracies with the calorie counts etc. I spend as much time logging items and wondering if they're correct as I would excerising. Feeling like it's all a waste of time.