Separate BMR from Activity Calories Burned

[knelson2]

I will admit to being someone who quite recently learned what BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is and that we burn a certain amount of those calories just to live based on our gender, weight and height.  

Currently Fit Bit combines BMR and activity calories together.  While I think it's very valuable for people to be aware of BMR, it's also nice to see (and reward yourself) for activity based calories. 

It would be really nice to have a clear seperation of the two in a real-time tally on the Dashboard and even on the Fit Bit device.

Ex. Today:

BMR - 790

Activity - 560

Active Minutes - 200

Total - 1350

Frankly, throughout my day, all I care about is activity calories.  Right now as a user I have to do a calculation at end of day (total calories minus my avg BMR) to see how hard I worked that day, sweating my butt off, not just blinking and breathing.

Thanks! I'd love to hear whether or not i'm just missing something and this is available, or if it's something you'd consider for an enhancement. 

Kristi

Moderator Edit: Labels / Updated subject for clarity.

[DJ_Ange]

It would be good if the fitbit app calculated BMR and identified actual calorie deficit or surplus based on this and exercise logged rather than only showing total calories burnt. 

Given the true indicator of weight loss is BMR - calories eaten + calories burnt through exercise it would be great if the app showed this.

[Ali02]

It would be nice to have a display option that shows the active calories and bmr calories separate from each other.

[ncarpi]

Agree!  For all of the above-stated reasons.  I have an Alta HR and really want to see this separation.

[adrew75]

That would be great!!!!!!

[n7of9]

Honestly, the fact this isn't already an option is mindblowing

[Sicahjes]

I agree with @n7of9 - why is this not a basic function? It would save a lot of confusion for many people. It would also help those of us that want to track our calories burned against our activity without having to either a) do manual calculations or b) download our data from the website. 

[Enbleu]

Yes! Passive vs Active.

[Sicahjes]

@Enbleu - Thanks for commenting! Make sure you click on the vote button (I was vote number 47) 🙂 

[Fuddled]

and put activity calories on the dashboard.  The calories counter that changes just by time passing does not help motivate me and leaves me guessing whether I'm going to meet a calories goal.

[Emmap88]

I cannot believe that this isn't a function, it's seriously putting me off my fitbit! 

[atmansheth]

Please add a sub section under calories where we can get a total of all the active calories burnt during our individual workouts and exercises, so that we don't have to go inside each individual activity and add up to get the total calories burnt during various exercises. I know subtracting my BMR from total would give me the active, but having the calories for just the 'active minutes' makes more sense.

[LilBunn]

I just recently switched over from an Apple Watch and I kind of don’t like the BMR information. The Apple Watch was a little simple with just tracking how many calories do you burn purely from exercise. I don’t necessarily need to know the extra thousand or so. It’s just kind of confusing and I wish there was an option to turn that base calorie burn off

Moderator Edition Labels. 

[AlexandraFitbit]

Nice suggestion, thanks for sharing. We look forward to hearing what other community members think.

[nukamoi]

TL;DR: +1 for better visibility of calorie split, and for more flexibility in which calories are included in daily total...

Based on other forum posts from a few years ago, I understand that fitbit is estimating calories in 3 categories:

~ BMR
~ Activity estimation (i.e. day-to-day walking rather than specifically-logged workouts)
~ Logged workouts (e.g. the suer activates the "run" workout)

The reason I would like this is because the second category seems to provide a drastic over-estimate for me (of the order of 1000kcal). Other users seem to wish that they could disable BMR, in order to view only their 'active' calories from that day.

I would therefore suggest to be able to see a breakdown of total calories burned each day into these 3 categories, with the option to include or exclude each category in the daily total (independently, of course!)

[nukamoi]

correction:

e.g. the user activiates the "run" workout

[snehakc]

I am surprised to see only one comment here.. this is really most needed enhancement. I know many people who switched to Apple watch due to this annoying feature of Fitbit

[Orchidazzle]

I would like to suggest to add a feature in the Fitbit app to only show calories burnt during steps and activities rather than estimates of calories when we are asleep and so on. 

Also, it will be helpful at the calorie section, divide how many calories have been burnt during each section so we can see for our selves rather than a cumulative with bars. Thank you 

[Enbleu]

Good ideas! Thanks

larry t

[thebailey]

I understand that having "total calories burned" is the right metric for people who calorie count their food. However, some of us just want to see at a glance the % of their exercise they've done today in calories.

So I roughly know that if I spent the whole day in a hospital bed doing nothing, I would burn 2000 cals. If I have a calorie goal of "2600 cals" then I know at midnight that if I achieved 2500 cals, I should have exercised harder. Well too late now.

In practice, I glance at my watch at 1pm and it says "1243 cals". Well am I on track to achieve my 2600 cals? It makes it very hard to know. I'd have to stop and go "well it has been 13hrs since midnight, and if I burn 83 cals/hr, then at this stage my metabolism alone means I would have achieved 1083 cals so I have burned 159 extra calories.

At very least, if fitbit can't or won't implement "active calories" as an optional / additional setting metric you can add, could you at least provide a "number of calories you should have burned by now" as a metric you can compare. It could be a great graphical feature on the versa that shows a bar graph with the total number of calories vs your goal, but with an additional line that cuts across it showing where you should be by now at this point in the day to reach your goal.

Or, perhaps even easier, you could have a "projected calories if you did no extra exercise today" module so you can see your trajectory?

If fitbit refuses to do any of the above, is it possible for Versa / Iconic owners to have a watchface that implements this functionality so you can see it at a glance?

It is the most frustrating thing about fitbits versus almost all competitors, and something I have been using every day for the past decade. I'm sure I'm not alone here.

[Enbleu]

Thanks for though reply!

larry t

[Markkersley]

I find it rediculous that the OS hasn’t come with the function to only show calories burned by exercise activity (without the calories burned from being alive.....!!)

no no idea why this hasn’t been added yet, seems ludicrous that this is being suggested everywhere with no reasonable answers! (Please no replies about how you can manually do the sums to get the answer.... This would be very simple to add to the software)

[Ktank0910]

I had a suggestion for the app. For the active minutes, if we could see how many calories we're burned through that time. I know mine don't have heart rate so it's an estimate anyway with how many calories are burned but it would be awesome to get an estimate through the active minutes. 

Thank you

Moderator edit: Updated subject for clarity.

[Ktank0910]

Estimate*

[gemnau]

I just got my versa and I if there is one feature that must be modified is the calories on the watch it shows the combined BMR and active calories I think these should be seen separately or there should be an area in the app that shows both in order to see what was burnt in an actually workout as opposed to due to my BMR ! 

[NY2MD]

I would love an option to see only burned calories vs BMR and burned in my total.