Teacher calorie burn

[Pikaver23]

Hi all! Long/short: toward the end of the school year my Surge made sense with calorie burn when I first got it. Then over the summer I was more sedentary (except at the gym: 2 hours per day) and it worked fine. Just got back to teaching. The first three days it seemed normal. Now with kids back yesterday, my calorie burn, activity minutes, and distance seem really, really high (136 minutes of being in fat burn while teaching and 3.15 miles). Granted we exert a lot more energy the first few days, but not sure to trust it. I do move around the room and my hands a lot.

Any other teachers or others with this experience? Just such a drastic set of numbers though we do expel lots of energy like I said.

Thank you.

[RobertoME]

Hi there @Pikaver23 welcome aboard to our Community. I'm not a teacher but I hope you don't mind my intrusion to share some of my experiences with the tracker. I wonder how many calories are you burning now that the kids are back that when you were more sedentary? What I found interesting is that you have several minutes in fat burn zone. I tend to express myself a lot with my hand while I'm talking, so my tracker sometimes takes that movement translating in to steps, increasing my rest of stats a little bit. 

I would like to share another post where I gave an example with other user who was having the same concern: Unsure about calorie burn accuracy... You can  use both of the experiences shared on that thread to compare with your numbers, although if you can share with me some screenshots to have a better understanding, that would be great.

So take a look at the post I have recommended and let me know if you have more questions. I'll be around.

[Pikaver23]

Hi there! Thank you! The kids being back is absolutely the cause in the increase. Teaching freshmen like hearding cats on a caffeine cocktail :). I think my real question is, after thinking about it, is can I trust the calorie burn? Clearly my heartrate was in the fat-burning zone while teaching due to the energy it requires this early on, but is that stress/energy exertion the same calorie burn as actual exercise?

I would like to add a screen shot, but not sure how from my phone. There's no button that allows me to add a photo. 😞 Is that something I can only do from a desk/laptop?

Very grateful for your help! 🙂

[AlvaroFitbit · Accepted solution]

@Pikaver23 I would like to add that your body is under stress while teaching (not necessarily a negative situation but one that calls for your attention and energy) and this causes the heart rate to increase which will cause an increase in calories burned. Additional to this you are moving your hands and this may count as steps that may reflect also that your activity is incrementing and this will also affect your calories burned calculation. All this is a calculation or estimation of what it is happening to your body. If you believe the steps recorded are affecting the calorie calculation then you could try logging a driving activity to negate them by following @Mcore's instructions here.

Finally to add a picture on your computer you just need to use your preferred browser and when typing a reply you will see an image icon which you can use to upload your information.

Let me know how it goes.

[Pikaver23]

That helps tremendously and makes complete sense. Teaching does bring up the intensity, especially high school. 🙂

And now I realize that using my phone was why I couldn't upload photos. Thank you for that, too!

Sent from my iPhone

[AlvaroFitbit]

@Pikaver23 Happy to hear that I could help a little bit! I would also like to invite you to visit our Discussions board where you will find great tips from other members and you can add them to get into friendly competition with them.

Hope to see you around!