Calories burned walking too high

[MikeBryan]

I've used a Charge HR for a week now.  I'm a 53 year old male, 186 pounds, 6 foot even.  The calories burned for an hour walk are way too high and I'm frustrated.  For instance, I walked 65 minutes yesterday at a moderate pace of 3 mph, I took 6070 steps which was just over 3 miles, 124 bpm.  My daily BMR is 1730 so that equates to 72 an hour.  Fitbit says I burned 598 calories for that walk.  Deducting the 72, that's 526 calories for a 65 minute walk!  I wish that were true but don't think it's possible.  Does over 500 calories burned seem reasonable for a 65 minute walk?????

[kalimm]

That does seem a little high to me. However, on my last walk it says I burned 269 calories in 41 minutes at an average bpm of 131. That equates to 7 cals/min. For 65 minutes at that rate it would be around 455. So assuming my tracker is correct (it always has been when I've checked it with other apps and equipment), I'm not sure if yours is too far off. 

[SunsetRunner]

CalorieLab says your 65 minutes of walking 3.0 MPH should have been 302 calories. 

My heartrate as measured during the walks is often 150% of what I expect it to be, and I think this skews the calorie count higher.  I have a theory and that is that there is some light leaking behind the device due to long sleeves, arm hair, or whatever.  I think I'm going to experiment with a dark and wide wristband to cover the watch, and either shaving the arm hair there under the watch or wearing the watch so that the sensors are over my inner wrist than my outer wrist.  It's just a theory, but I am confident that my HR is being mismeasured and skewing my walk calories too high.

[dlhnj]

I have the same problem with calorie burn too high on walking.  I have a Charge HR which I purchased about 2 months ago.  All of the on-line calculators I have found (that include gender, height, weight, age, and pace)  estimate a calorie burn of 7 kcal/min for a walk at 4 mph.  My FitBit is always in the 8-9 kcal/min range even though my heart rate rarely gets above 75 beats per minute.  On a typical day this is 200-300 calories burned  that is credited but not real. 

[MichaelBan]

Same problem with my ChargeHR - was actually happier with my Flex!  

45 yrs old male, 192 lbs, at 6 ft even.  Being rewarded 500 calories for a 3 mile walk at 3 mph pace! Absotuely not correct. All the online walking calculators report a 3 mile walk at about about 300 to 320 calories. My FitBit Flex use to track at about 100 cal per mile, but my ChargeHR rewards 175 cal per mile.

I've tracked 3 mile walks with the heartrate monitoring of the ChargeHR on and off and get the similar results.

[CMikey85]

Headed to these forums after just seeing the same thing. Roughly one hour walk gave me about 440 calories. When I play soccer for a similar time frame (granted it is stop/start due to subbing, halftime, etc.) I was right around 400, which sounds right to me. Has anyone found a solution to this or way to edit the information?

[JAClapp]

Bumping/replying so hopefully someone with a potential fix will respond.  I'm a 31yr old female, 135lbs.  I walk the dog at a pretty leisurely pace (with a 30lb baby on my back!) almost every day.  A 45 minute walk (with a 10 minute stop at the dog park) usually records 320-380 calories burned.  Considering my heartrate doesn't go above 85, that seems very high.  This is especially worrying since when I go to the gym and focus on keeping my heartrate above 140 for 30-45 minutes on the stationary bike, my Charge only records 200-ish calories burned.  In other words, same duration of activity, more effort, and yet, fewer calories burned.  Something is clearly wrong.

My guess is that the charge dramatically overestimates the number of calories burned per step, because a bike set to high resistance (or a spin class) should burn much more than walking does.  Hopefully FB will update the firmware with this in mind.

[dlhnj]

I have had my Charge HR for 6 months.  Fitbit has updated the software several times but so far there is no fix for the excess calorie burn for walking. It would be good to get a response from them for how they calculate calorie burn during walking and why it is so different from all other estimates in the literature. 
Regarding spinning, the fitbit is not set up to accurately calculate calorie burn for spinning or biking.  As you mention the fitbit underestimates calorie burn during spinning since it does not count any "steps" or just a few steps. At my gym the spin bikes give highly variable calorie burn so I enter calories based on average heart rate during spinning. There are simple equations for calculating calories burned depending on heart rate but FitBit has chosen not to use them. Why, I don't know.
On the other hand, fitbit also uses your base metabolism calorie burn whether you are sleeping, sitting or standing.  Literature suggests sitting should be 1.5X base rate and standing 2X base rate.  But fit bit does not know if you are sitting or standing.  So it underestimates calorie burn when sitting or standing.  So overall, I think it gets total calorie burn for my typical day about right.  

[MRH8615]

I've had the same exact problem with the charge HR, where as my Flex seemed to be far more accurate after i tweaked the settings over and over. That just doesn't seem work for the HR. There are only 4 things after personal experience and several math/science equations I have done that I have come to the conclusion of on why the calorie burnt count is way off.
1. If I use the fitbit app and track my exercise like a walk AND wear my HR, I get double the calories. Is that because the app is tracking what you do along with the HR and adds both together for the wrong reading?

2. Does the HR detect the actual workout activity AND the movment sensed from your arm moving AND your heart rate then add all those 3 toghhter to get the higher calorie reading?

3. When you do workout, your BMR (which fitbit calories burnt is based off of) does raise from the extra exertion in activity, does that add and count as the higher calorie burnt reading?

4. The entire software/hardware and algorithm fitbit uses is just pure garbage and altogether wrong?

I find number 4 to be the most plausible reason but this is all just based on personal experience with both the Flex (which i had problems with for 13 months) and the HR for 2 months so far.

[dlhnj]

I am pretty sure it is not #1 because I get a high reading whether or not I use the Fitbit app for a walk.  By the way, you have to manually input the data from the Fitbit app into the "activities" section otherwise it uses the data from the Charge HR itself.  
I don't think it is #2 or #3, but these are essentially the same as #4 anyway.  It would be good to understand whether Fitbit thinks it calculates walking calories correctly or if there is a glitch somewhere in the software that they are trying to fix.  I know this is proprietary but at least give the community an idea of how calories are calculated for walking and why it is so different from the other published methods. And would be good to know if a large percentage of users have this same problem - or if they are just assuming it is correct. 

[Rickeveru]

I have the same problem, my surge shows at least double the calories really burn. The displayed heartrate when walking is also way too excessive. So i tried turning the heart rate monitor off while walking thinking this was the problem....no luck there. I hope fitbit fixes the problem as it's throwing off my daily calories burned.

[Rickeveru]

Did a test. Fitbit calculates 520 cal/hour while walking ....my max calorie burn while walking should be 200 cal/hour. I do like my fitbit and the app but will replace it if the problem is not fixed. Customer support suggests modifying some of the variables in my profile i.e. weight, age, etc.

[dlhnj]

200 calories burned for a one hour walk seems too low unless you walk very slowly.   300 calories seems more reasonable but is very dependent on pace and weight.  But 580 is clearly way too high. In any event, it is not reasonable for FitBit help desk to ask you to adjust parameters like weight. Does not make sense to input wrong data to try to fix an incorrect algorithm. 

[Rickeveru]

Thanks. Wish it showed 300. At 4 mph (6 km/hr) last indicated 600 calories
burned in one hour. Fitbit wants to try to replace the tracker...doesn't
hurt to try I guess.

[JAClapp]

I agree!  "Adjusting" your height/weight inputs to some imaginary number is entirely the wrong answer!  

[wzlstx]

Same problem with the surge. Especially when it autodetects I'm walking. I do 60 min of pretty intense class and I get max 340-360 calorie burn at 120 HR which I believe but then a 45 minute walk at a moderately leisurely pace will give me 200 cal burn at a 75HR. Why wouldn't I walk all the time if this was true - besides that I know it's better to challenge your muscles etc lol. Very frustrated with this aspect of the Fitbit

[dlhnj]

Your walking calories look about right, approximately 4.5 cal per minute.  Mine is way too high at 7 to 8 per minute.  The 6 cal/min burn for your cardio work out is way too low - it should be 11-12 cal/min just based on your heart rate.  The fitbit is always very low for circuit training or cross training since it cannot figure out what kind of exercise you are doing. If you are doing a bench press all it knows is you are lying down and not walking. But it should be able to calculate calorie burn based on heart rate.  Maybe they will get there one of these days. 

[JuanJoFitbit]

@wzlstx A warm welcome to our Fitbit Community! So sorry to hear that your calorie burn is to high when you walk and low when you do intense cardio. I'd like to know if the explanation that my friend @dlhnj provided helped. If not, make sure that your height, weight and gender entered on your Dashboard is correct. Finally. restart your tracker as advised in Alejandra's post and test your tracker's calorie burn after trying a test workout.

Keep me posted on the outcome my friend and I'll be around! 

[Nat2788]

None of this has helped. My tracker said I burned 500 calories whilst sleeping and I wasn't even wearing the Fitbit!!!

[Callaghan86 · Accepted solution]

That's your BMR (basal metabolic rate, or the calories your body burns just to stay alive). Your BMR calories will increase steadily throughout the day whether you are wearing the fitbit or not. 

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@Nat2788 wrote:
None of this has helped. My tracker said I burned 500 calories whilst sleeping and I wasn't even wearing the Fitbit!!!

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