Calories burned increasing

[Cerriann1t]

I've just set my surge up for the first time and according to the app I've burned 700 calories and it's rising, even though I'm not wearing it (it's on charge) why is this? 

[SteveH]

Welcome to fitbit!

As well as tracking calories you burn through activity your fitbit also tracks calories you burn just keeping your body alive  (even when asleep). These calories are  known as your BMR calories and they are calculated from your profile settings so you needn't be wearing your fitbit to get them. What you are seeing is the total BMR calories since midnight.

[Cerriann1t]

Thanks. Will this automatically reset and become more accurate when I actually start wearing it? It's not even been on my wrist yet 

[SteveH]

If your profile settings for age, gender, height and weight are set correctly then those calorie burn numbers are correct now. It comes as a surprise to many people that we burn so many calories even when we seem to be doing nothing.

[dogenzenji]

Hi, everyone burns a set number of calories from just being alive, so even if you were in bed all day you would burn for example 1500 calories... when you start moving about and doing exercise this figure will increase, but you will always get the Surge telling you your base amount. So it will not reset just increase based on how much you do during the day. If you look just after midnight it resets back to zero for the new day.

[Cerriann1t]

Will these calories show as seperate from ones burt during exercise? 

[SteveH]

Unfortunately not. A number of people have asked for this but no sign yet from fitbit that they will show them separately. I think the logic is that if you are using fitbit for weight management then it doesn't matter if they are BMR calories or activity calories, they all count the same.

[Cerriann1t]

That's a shame, would like to know how much I've burnt from specific exercises 

[SteveH]

You can manually work it out (but it's a bit of a pain). You burn your BMR calories at the same rate throughout the day and night. So, if you look at your calorie burn rate when you are asleep then that will be your BMR burn rate. If you take this off your total calorie burn during exercise you'll be left with just your activity calories. 

[dogenzenji · Accepted solution]

If you look at your activity log it will tell you how many calories you burn for each exercise so you can add them up manually, either auto recognised or tracked.

Also if you export your data to a CSV or XLS file there is an "Activity Calories" field that shows you an accumulation by day. Not sure why this figure is not displayed anywhere on the web or on the app, perhaps I have missed something.

[Cerriann1t]

Great! Thanks for your help