Calories Burned Calculation

[BL.]

Does the Surge include Thermic Effect of Food in its calories burned calculation? If so, to what degree? 10% of calories consumed is standard. Please, no educated guesses, answer only if you are aware if TEF is included or not in the actual equation fitbit uses. 

[SunsetRunner]

This matter of how Fitbit calculates calories burned has been a topic of recent discussion here. No one knows exactly how Fitbit is calculating calories burned, and Fitbit isn't saying. The moderators will tell you to go read some nonsense article which tells you nothing.

The closest thing to answer your question is the Fitbit API documentation (https://dev.fitbit.com/docs/activity/#get-activity-intraday-time-series). This API topic points to external documentation we can only assume they use for calculating EER (TEE). There is discussion of TEF in the cited article ("An Easy Approach to Calculating Estimated Energy Requirements").

All you're going to get is an educated guess. Take it or leave it.

[bbarrera · Accepted solution]

Calorie estimation algorithms are proprietary. Very little information other than API docs and an old blog entry. Sometime after Sept 2015 Fitbit removed older blog entries, however the blog is preserved on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150911173055/https://blog.fitbit.com/a-brief-look-into-how-the-fitbit-...

I originally provided that info to @SunsetRunner in this thread:

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Surge/Average-Heartrate-and-Calories-Burned-Inaccuracy/m-p/1134147