Fitbit calories burned suddenly changed?

[Kaelle]

Hi, I was reading my calories burned in the app to caclculate what I can afford to eat to stay within my calorie goal for the day. Immediately after my workout, the app said I had burned over 2,000 calories.

Ten minutes later, the app says I've only burned 1,700 calories. Is there any reason for the sudden change? Is there any way I can prevent this in the future?

[MarreFitbit]

Welcome to the Community @Kaelle ! By any chance, do you manually log activities? 

Do you already have a Food Plan?

1. Overbudget means that you're current deficit is too small compared to your target deficit. You need to eat less or, better, get more active.
2. Underbudget means that you're current deficit is too large compared to your target deficit. You need reduce your activity or, better, to eat a little more.
3. In zone means that you're current deficit is just about right compared to your target deficit. You are doing everything just about right. You haven't necessarily been more active than usual, but you are eating for your current activity level.
4. Calories left means that you can eat that many calories between now and midnight and end the calendar day in zone. You can have part or, if calories allow, all of that tempting chocolate bar before bed and not feel guilty.

Basically, use it as a guide to what changes you need to make to your life to move yourself into your zone and/or towards your goal.

If you are trying to lose weight, the important bit is that the colored bar is shorter than the grey bar. It doesn't really matter if it is green, orange or red. It only matters that you maintain a deficit and you are making lifestyle changes that will allow you to maintain your goal weight when you reach it. There is no wrong rate of loss, just statistics that say slow and steady has a greater probability of maintaining goal.

Have a great day! 

[Nicodraxus]

This happened to me as well today. After my workout, around 1:30 pm, the Fitbit buzzed to tell me I had hit my goal of 2200 calories. This was expected. Several hours later, at 6 pm, I checked the app to find my calories burned back down to 2100. (And when it hit 2200 for the second time today, it didn't buzz.) Something very buggy is going on here, and the reply you received, Kaelle, is not answering the question.

[MarreFitbit]

Would you mind double checking your settings to see if your calorie goal is properly set on 2200 @Nicodraxus?  If it isn't, that's the reason why you saw 2100 a few hours later. 

In regards to the second question, your tracker will vibrate just once when you meet your goal. If the goal is 2200, your tracker will vibrate when it reaches that amount, but it won't when you reach 4400. 

Hope this helps @Nicodraxus!

[Nicodraxus]

Well, first of all, I did check to see if my goal was still set to 2200. It was. But more importantly, this isn't related to my goal. The "calories burned" number should continue to climb throughout the day regardless of what you do, because the body is always burning calories. As far as I understand, it only resets at midnight. When I wake up, it usually reads somewhere between 400 and 600. When I go to bed, it is usually in the 3600 to 3800 range. That day, it finished at around 2600, despite an extra-long workout, because it somehow went backwards between 1pm and 6pm.

The point is that I passed 2200 "calories burned," or "calories out," and four hours later was under 2100. That's not possible. You can't unburn them. I've had the Fitbit for a month now, and this never happened before. I don't think we can chalk this up to user error. A conflict with the iPhone Health app, perhaps, or the UA MyFitnessPal (which I use only for food logging, because I prefer their system to the Fitbit system, unfortunately). But even if this is the case, it's strange that this is the first time this has happened since I started.

[MarreFitbit]

Yep, and this is very strange to me as well @Nicodraxus. My best recommendation would be to get in touch with Customer Support directly since they have all the tools needed for this.

They'll be able to do a deeper investigation and see where this issue is coming from. Be specific about when this happened (the date exactly), what you did, what food you logged and so on.

I'm pretty sure they will find the answer you're looking for.

[Kaelle]

I'm glad I'm not the only one this has happened to. The copy/paste "help" message was anything but helpful in this case. Thankfully it hasn't happened to me since, but if I notice it again I'll certainly try to contact customer support, since the replies here did nothing for my issue.

[Kris111]

Mine keeps doing this to I've been resetting it constantly. But I just reset and downloaded all my music again last weekend and this time it only took a week to go backwards on calories. 

I've contacted fitbit they told me to reset and seem to try to tell me to do everything I have and they never come up with a solution.  I'm going to try again sure would be nice to get my money back and buy a garmin that's for sure. 

[Klove7]

Mine is doing the same thing. I think I’ve figured out why. The caloric burn after a workout is added to the count on the tracker. HOWEVER! The app is still tracking normal caloric burn until you sync them. As soon as it syncs, it wi take the “normal” accrual and subtract it from the total. 
EXAMPLE: If I burn 100 calories From 7-8pm, the app is constantly adding based on your normal burn. But! If I’m exercising from 7-8pm and I’m tracking on my watch and not my phone, and it says I burned 300 calories in my workout, the watch thinks it’s 300+100 so my Fitbit says 400 calories. Once you sync it, it realizes it actually double counted during 7-8pm and it goes down by the 100 calories that shouldn’t have been accruing. 

[SDNMBikes]

I thought this might be the issue as well, but even the intensity of my exercise changed.

Immediately after my activity, I looked at the graph and it said low-high intensity throughout my workout. When I went back to the graph after the calories changed, it said the whole thing was only moderate intensity. But maybe we are having the same issue with different causes.

[rswanker]

Would love to hear more about whether there is a fix for this. At lunch I did a pretty intense fat bike ride in the snow. I let my Versa 2 auto track the exercise. I synced and in the web app immediately after it showed that I had done the activity "bike ride" and said I had burned 569 calories. A couple hours later I went to add log some food and it had the the same ride but had cut the number of calories burned by half.

This has happened multiple times in the past few weeks and I don't understand why. 

[Loveheartbear16]

I have the Versa 3 & in the past few weeks my calories burned have almost halved but I am still doing the same amount of exercise...plus today my RHR has stuck on yesterday's recording & not recorded any for today...

Really ticks me off...I've restarted my Fitbit...uninstalled/reinstalled the app...restarted my phone & nothing...

Phoned Fitbit & the guy said it can take 1/2 days for your RHR to change..had a Fitbit for years & its never happened before!

Fobbing me off springs to mind...

[j_mcg]

I have had the same issue. I try to reach a calorie burn of 2000 calories, which I achieve at 7pm today. Now, 3 hours later, my calorie burnt is only 1900. 

This has happened a couple of times in the last few weeks, and I am unsure how to resolve it. Does anyone have any suggestions? 

[Kris111]

Yeah my suggestions get a garmin. Even if you have to buy used or a cheaper one or look for a deal, they are much better.

[Nicodraxus]

So, to those still following this question, Klove7 gave a reasonable explanation that made sense in my situation. I suspect this is what happened:

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Other-Charge-Trackers/Fitbit-calories-burned-suddenly-changed/m-p/44...

Basically, it was just a syncing issue, where the data from the Fitbit is adjusted to match other data that my phone had (in the iPhone Health app, for example). This might not be the answer in all cases. But I long-ago stopped using the Charge HR Fitbit and have the Versa now. I haven't experienced the same problem since. This question is now five years old. I suspect that any problems people are experiencing now are different from the original post, since a lot of Fitbit versions (hardware and software) have come and gone in that time.

That said, I'm a lot less obsessive about exact numbers these days, and a lot happier for it. Probably healthier, too. Honestly, if you're doing the exercise, you're still getting the benefits. Use the Fitbit to keep a general track of your workouts and health. It's great for sleep tracking, step tracking, exercise tracking, heart rate, etc., but take calorie numbers with a grain of salt. Unless you're training at an Olympic level, keeping track of calories burned isn't an exact science. You could eat the same exact thing every day, and do the same exact exercise every day, and still not burn the same exact number of calories. There are more variables than any fitness tracker can possibly account for. So, getting worked up about the loss or gain of a few hundred estimated calories is really just stressing yourself out over nothing. Of course, if your numbers are all over the place and not making any sense (like those who said the number of calories burned is randomly getting cut in half) then there is probably an issue. But I think the original post, and most of the others here are just server-side adjustments as your watch data is crunched and sent back to you. 

I've also noticed that quite often other numbers can change after syncing, too. I might glance down while running and find find my heart-rate at 145, but then the quick post-exercise tally on my Fitbit screen tells me my peak heart-rate was 180 — which is kind of heart-attack territory, and most likely just a glitch due to sweat or movement on my arm. These peaks often get evened out after a proper sync with the phone, and the numbers look more reasonable in the app. 

[SunsetRunner]

Hi my fitbit app is completely different to my friends app so different I can't change my calories deafeset or edit plan only easy medium or hard plan..

This is so different in so many ways and not working had this issue for over few years now..

Ive got a Samsung galaxy note ultra phone and friends is a iPhone they completely different setups as in the fitbit dashboard and set up..

This is my problem I've even spoken to customer service and they say this shouldn't happen and the setup should be the same..

my fitbit food log isn't working properly I've done everything to sort it out..

I've got a 1553 calories a day so it says at midnight it resets to 1553..

I don't get to choose my calories a day just the 500 calories medium plan..

I select it then it set's it up on the dashboard it's showing my calories in the food log but not 1553 it's already down before I do anything..

By the time I get up for my breakfast to log in my food it's already gone down to 3 or 400 calories before I've even logged my food in..

This has been reset uninstalled deleted new account it do it every time..

Spoke to lady on live chat she says my food log shouldn't change or go down before I log in my food..

I understand the calories burned throughout the day on dashboard but it shouldn't do it on my food log..

But the time I log food in at the end of day saying I'm over my budget which I eat 8 to 900 calories saying I've gone over..

[3dawn]

This is happening to me years later so I guess there is no resolution. I got a new job a six weeks weeks ago that has me walking a lot because I was previously stuck at a desk all day. I give myself star stickers on my calendar when I get more than 2200 calories. When I worked my sedentary job I was burning 1,700 - 1900 a day and my new job I was easily over 2200 every day. I checked it at night and put a sticker on my calendar. The other day I did a workout class as well before work. I checked the app to see my no doubt sky high number and not only was it only 1900, but the whole month was under 2200 despite the stars on my calendar showing me it said over 2200 almost every day until that night. I'm so mad it's wiped out all my progress. It records exercise now but for some reason its always these.low numbers now. So discouraging. I'm walking at least an hour a day and often more. I walk up and down flights of stairs at least ten times a day and sometimes do aerobics classes and the fitbit gives me the same numbers as when I was stuck at my work from home desk all day and only went to the bathroom and back all day. Makes me want to throw it in the trash.ive had a fitbit of one sort or another since before they were watches and this is just wrong numbers. 

[3dawn]

Oh!! I fixed it!!!

Typed all that and it triggered the memory of me taking my weight out.

Put it back in and synced and the right numbers came back!!!

Hope this helps!!