Calorie counter confusion

[Annconfused]

Hello! I'm just looking to understand how the calorie counter works a little more as it's readings don't make sense to me at the moment.

Yesterday I did a run that burned 256 calories, a 45 min walk that 214 calories and a swim that burned 56. I did almost 12k steps. Yet my total calories burned was 2172 - under the default daily goal. 

What I don't get is that in the previous days on around the same amount of steps, and with no specific exercise having been done to burn calories, like running and no long walk, I did hit the calorie target of 2200.

So it burns more calories to not excercise? This makes no sense.?

[RobertoME]

Hello @Annconfused, a warm welcome to the Fitbit Community and my apologies for the late response. I was reading your post and I can understand calories burned in occasion make no sense. 

However all depend of the intensity you invest in the exercise, as this will determined how many calories you burn in an exercise session.

I'm gonna use my own stats to give you an example of this. (I used the Fitbit.com Dashboard to be more specific in my example)

In my first screenshot, you can see I burned 2,634 calories with a total amount of 4,752 steps. In the second one, you can see my calories are higher, with a total of 2,745 calories for only 3,326 steps. So you can say why I got less calories in May 26th if my day was a bit more active.

The answer to this, is in the intensity; you can see in my calories chart from May 26th the intensity was slightly low with prolonged peaks of moderate intensity. If we compare the day I got more calories burned for less steps, you can see the chart I had a shorter session of exercise, but the intensity was higher that the other day, resulting in more calories.

Hope this helps with your concerns and stay tuned if you have more questions like this.

[Annconfused]

But that doesn't make sense, as in this case I had been for a run on the day I had burned less calories. This happens regularly. For example, today I have done two walks and have done over 14,000 steps but did not hit 2,200 calories. On Friday, when I went to a brunch and spent all day drinking, did 5,000 steps, including no walks or exercise, I burned over 2,800 - no intensity, i was just drunk. It just makes no sense.