Heart Rate/Calories being counted when not wearing device

[APS85]

Hello! My Versa is counting a heart rate and calories even when not wearing it. I'll pick it up off the  counter in the morning  and it will say my pulse is in the 100s. I also noticed that my calories burned is waaaaay off because it's saying I'm burning calories during the night when I'm not wearing it. I've had it for several months now and guessing all my data collected is wrong .

[AngusR]

Can't speak for the heartrate, that does sound a bit odd, but you do burn calories during the night - you burn calories 24/7. It's called the Basal Metabolic Rate and it's the calories that your body burns just to keep your body working and your brain thinking. The Versa is showing these as well (they are calculated from a formula, not measured). Any calories you burn doing exercise are recorded in addition to the BMR.  

[APS85]

Thanks for your reply! The only issue is that I don't wear my Fitbit at night, so it says I'm burning calories when I am not wearing it. 

[AngusR]

Yes, but as I said, you are! If you weren't burning any calories at night you wouldn't actually be alive, which would be a bit of an issue.

Your body burns calories in order to keep you alive at a rate which can be estimated by a formula based on your height weight, age and sex. (for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris%E2%80%93Benedict_equation - I don't know what formula that Fitbit use, but it's likely similar) 

On the Versa your calorie count resets at midnight; during the rest of the night you burn calories and the Versa uses a BMR calculation to track them. It doesn't need to be on your wrist to do this as it's not based on exercise, heart rate, or anything else - just maths.

For example, let's say that the BMR formula says that your BMR is 1500 calories. That means that over 24 hours, regardless of anything else, you will burn 1500 calories just staying alive. So every hour you burn 62.5 calories; every minute a calorie will be burnt. Let's say that you wake up at 7am - you'll have had 7 hours of calories being burnt at that rate so your Versa would show you as having burned 438 calories even if it had been turned off, let alone not on your wrist. 

When you exercise and the Versa picks it up it is adding those calories in addition to the basal metabolic rate calories. Let's say you exercise for an hour, and burn 500 calories from the exercise itself (as tracked by heart rate and so on). Your Versa will show something like 563 calories because as well as the 500 calories from exercise you've had an hour of just being alive.

The reason for this is that you can't really compare food intake with calories burned unless you take BMR into account. 

[APS85]

I understand. My issue is that my old Fitbit never calculated something that wasn't on my body. It says I have a pulse of over 100 when it is sitting on my counter and that has to be affecting my data. 

[AngusR]

That is how the calorie tracking on the Versa works, so there's not a lot you can do about that. As I say, whilst it might be unfamiliar it is more useful than only recording calories burned by exercise. If you don't take into account basal metabolic rate you can't compare calories out to calories in.

I don't know why the false pulse readings are occurring and you likely need to contact Fitbit support on that. However, are you sure it's actually giving false readings during the night? Have you looked at the heart rate graphs to see? When I have my Versa off to charge there is a gap in the trace where there are no readings - do you see a similar gap when you are not wearing it?

Possibly a daft question, and not really related to the issue you're having. but why are you not wearing it at night? The sleep tracking is probably the most interesting data I get from the Versa, and because it's got a large enough battery I find that if I just charge it whilst I shower each day I don't need to do an overnight charge at all. So I just wear it nearly 24/7.