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Calories Burned Inaccurate to the Point of Being Useless

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‎04-10-2016 06:18

‎04-10-2016 06:18

I've been meticulously tracking all calories in for the past few months, while wearing the Surge at all times. Over the past 30 days I've averaged 2303 calories in, and - according to the Surge - 3371 calories burned. In that span I have a total calorie deficit of 32,030 calories.

 

Giving the Surge the best case scenario of all of the deficit going to fat burn, using 3500 calories per pound of fat, that's 9.1 pounds. Even if I was underestimating my food intake by 500 calories a day, that's still 4.9 pounds I would expect to have lost.

 

I weighed myself on the Aria scale upon waking every morning during this time. Not only have I not lost 5-10 pounds, I'm on an upward trend with about a net gain of 1.5 pounds:

 

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Again giving the Surge the best case where all of the weight gain is muscle (about 1600 calories per pound), gaining 1.5 pounds over 30 days means eating 2400 calories more than I burned, or about 80 per day. Since I have an average deficit of 1067 calories per day, I'm either underestimating my food intake by 1100 calories per day, or the Surge is overestimating my calorie burn by upwards of 30%.

 

What's the point of providing calorie burn information if it's so wrong that you can't use it to make decisions?

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‎04-10-2016 13:45

‎04-10-2016 13:45

I have found similar issues.  In fact I have adjusted my BMR (on Lose It! it is called Calorie Budget) down twice for a total of 100 calories per day.  I have my data for about 90 days now and have compared to the Fitbit One and the Basis Peak.  Believe it or not my old trusty One is actually very close to predicting what my actual weight loss was!  I know its weird carrying around 3 devices but at this point have not decided what I will do in the future!  When I find the time I will post my data as you did.

 

BTW: 1,600 calories per pound of muscle is a variable  I have not considered in my spreadsheet.  I will play with that sinch I know how much fat I lost and so so my net lean body mass (can assume that change is mostly muscle I think?)

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