Logging exercise, calorie count disparity

[WreckandRoll]

I spend a lot of time searching the forums for an answer to this. Found a couple people with the same question, but haven't been satisfied by the responses.

When I log exercise my calorie count and my active minutes go down. I understand that the Fitbit takes the data for that time period and replaces it with what it thinks is more accurate data for the activity tracked. But I don't understand why it thinks that 30 minutes of me walking around burns more calories or is more active minute worthy than this 30 minute dance workout video where I'm left breathless and dripping with sweat. That just can't be right. It also says the activity, logged as either aerobics or dancing burned 154 calories, which seems low to me. Elliptical is almost double for the same amount of time, and that's not as intense as this workout. Any solutions? I just want it to be accurate and to help motivate me to want to work out harder than just taking a walk.

[jump4life · Accepted solution]

WreckandRoll-  

A few questions for you... 

1) When you do your dance video are your wearing your fitbit?  

2) If so,  what is your calorie burn during that time (before you manually log)   

3)  Compare this 30 min to 30 min where you are truly "just walking around"?  Is it considerably more?

High intensity dance is an activity that my fitbit one will registeras very fast steps (running) and be give quite a bit of credit in terms of calorie burn.  If you replace it by logging the standard "dance" exercise you will "lose" credit vs. your actual effort.    You may consider  just marking the acitivty as exercise and allowing the fitbit to calculate your effort vs. manually logging the activity as dance.   

Another alternative is to create a custom activity for the dance video and enter the calorie burn that is closer to what you think is correct.   There are several websites that can help you calculate this based on your wieght and the intensity of the activity.   

[Panzerman]

I have somewhat the same issue, after just 400 steps this morning it shows calorie burn of 656, that is ridiculous. I checked my stride and it is correct.

[WreckandRoll]

Panzerman, that's not quite the same issue, but it displaying 655 calories is likely correct. The calorie burn it's showing is not just what you've burned from steps, but also the calories your body burns on its own at rest, your "basal metabolic rate" which depends on your weight and gender, but on average is around 1500 for women and 1700 for men, in the U.S. at least.