Calories Burnt: Auto Tracking vs Manual Logging

[SunsetRunner]

Hi all, I've just started using my Fitbit again after a long hiatus and I've noticed a significant discrepancy between the calories burnt in an automatically recognised activity compared to a manually entered one.

Yesterday, my Fitbit automatically recognised my walk home from work. It said that I burnt 603 calories on my 77 minute walk with an average heart rate of 111bpm.

Today, it didn't automatically recognise my walk along the beach, so I manually entered it. I entered the time that I started and finished, and it took my average heart rate during that 64 minute period (which was also, coincidentally, 111bpm). However, the app tells me that this walk only burnt 231 calories. 

How can a 13 minute difference equate to such a significant difference in calories when the average heart rate is identical?  

There are other irksome differences between the auto and manual tracking. I am not able to enter a distance for the automatically registered walk even when I'm in the edit page (distance box is greyed out and cannot be selected/edited), and they display differently on the exercise summary page (the manual one shows an average pace whereas the auto one shows calories burnt).

 Am I doing something wrong?

[YojanaFitbit · Accepted solution]

How you doing @SunsetRunner! Welcome to the Forums. Thanks for the description and for attaching the pictures. Sorry to read that your Surge didn't recognized you activity automatically, that's weird! You might need to restart your Fitbit Surge to reset the hardware of it. Now, about the information that you manually entered you have the option to enter the amount of calories if you know it, which I think is the best option, otherwise it will give you basically just an estimation using your heart rate information. 

The automatic recognition doesn't take the distance in count for the average, so even if you try it won't let you add them. SmartTrack takes steps, duration and calories.

I suggest to use the option "Walk" from the options in your Fitbit Surge in the Multi-Sport section. I will give you steps, duration, distance, calories and GPS will show you the route. In this way, you will take advantage of your Fitbit Surge, which is the only one that has this feature. If the option "Walk" is not on the Surge, you can edit your Shortcuts by going to the Fitbit App > Surge > Shortcuts. And add the ones you use the most.

Hope this works for you! Happy stepping!

[SunsetRunner]

Hi Yojana,

Thanks so much for your reply! Walking wasn't set up as a shortcut on my Surge and I didn't know that I could actually add it in the settings - that's so cool! You've just made Fitbit 1000x more useful for me - thank you!

[YojanaFitbit]

Hey there @SunsetRunner! Good things in life happens to positive people all the time! I'm glad to know that this helped. This is the purpose of being a family member of this Community, feel free to ask any question that you might have. 

I invite you to mark this post as the solution. Marking posts as solutions is a great way of thanking another community member while also highlighting their solution so that it may be discovered more easily by other community member's facing the same questions or issues as you. You can read more about Accepted Solutions here. 

If you have time please check our Discussions board where you will find other members sharing their experiences and tips for an active lifestyle.

Happy stepping!