Fitbit seems to be overestimating how many calories I'm burning. Am I missing something?

[Johnathankrage]

So I've been using the Fitbit Versa 3 for both tracking calories burned and eaten for the last month. I've lost 5.1 lbs as of this morning according to my smart scale, and just now I decided to input all my data into an excel sheet to see how accurate the watch is.

1 pound of fat is 3500 calories, so for every 3500 calories of deficit I should have lost 1 pound. But I've only lost 1 pound for every 6600 calories of deficit. After inputting everything, I should have lost 9.6 lbs by now.

According to my calculations for every 100 calories I burn according to Fitbit I actually burn about 87 calories. So Fitbit is overestimating my burn by 15%!

Am I missing something here? Or is it really this inaccurate? Is there any way to modify my calorie burn estimate to be more in line with what I'm actually seeing?

Screenshot of my excel sheet for reference:

[LZeeW]

Hello @Johnathankrage and welcome to the Community.  All calorie burns are estimates for all users.  As an example, Fitbit uses the Mifflin St Jeor equation to estimate your BMR calories.  People come in a range of body sizes.  This estimate will be correct for some people, but it will be an overestimate or underestimate for most people.  Likewise, your calorie burn during exercise is an estimate.  This is why a spreadsheet analysis like yours just doesn't add up.

Also, counting your calories from the food you eat can have a lot of error, especially for grocery store foods and definitely for restaurant meals.

My recommendation is to understand that every piece of data that comes from a Fitbit is an estimate and to work that into daily life.

[Dreamsinemerald]

My husband has a versa 3 and its heavily overcounting steps and over estimating calories. I don't think you're crazy. I think its a software issue they don't seem to be acknowledging 

[Sliegrom]

I mean sure everything is an estimate. However if I can consistently have 800+ calorie deficits 2-3 times a week and not exceed the calories the rest of the week set on a 2lb/wk calorie deficit on top of that which is comes to a eight thousand five hundred to nine thousand five hundred calories of calorie deficit per week and with the fitbit estimations I am still maintaining my weight. 

That's not a small overestimating, that is a gross overestimation and literally adding a minute of 3-4 days lazy days worth of calories to my diet in overestimating.

I don't buy restaurant food and I don't buy prepackaged food from a grocery store. I produce all my own meat and it's leaner than what's available at the store and buy almost exclusively raw ingredients and all my food is measured.

I bought a fitbit for dieting because when I just logged food I lost weight way to fast to the point it was unhealthy and obviously needed to track my calories more. So I buy a fitbit to do such and now that fitbit is my single biggest obstacle to losing weight at a healthy level, because with the fitbit I just maintain and never lose. I can deal with some issues with estimation when it's this off it's just broken and useless.