Different calorie counting on MyFitnessPal

[donamy]

My estimated calories for a sedentary lifestyle on myfitness pal is 1600/day.  My fitbit estimates my calories burned even after walking 3 to 4  miles and several flights of stairs as around 1500 calories.   Who is right here?

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity

[Colinm39]

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@donamy wrote:

My estimated calories for a sedentary lifestyle on myfitness pal is 1600/day.  My fitbit estimates my calories burned even after walking 3 to 4  miles and several flights of stairs as around 1500 calories.   Who is right here?

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@donamyA couple of things, both MFP and Fitbit use the same BMR calculator as confirmed to me  by Fitbit Support a few months ago. Here is the calculator and the result is only 5 calories different for me.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator

Also stairs do not generate extra calories because Fitbit cannot detect exertion, it is only the steps and speed, and there is some consensus that going up stairs you will burn more which you need a HRM to record, and going down stairs it is lighter effort and one may even the other out so the tracker could be accurate.

Was your 1500 calories the full 24 hours ?, because calories burned is normally about 75-80% BMR and the remaining 20-25% exercise and genetics. Fitbit includes BMR in all of its activities.

My BMR is 1584 and my average at days end for just under 10,000 steps is 2,400 calories average. The average distance is 2.5 miles/day. Looking at your profile youy should have a similar "end day" calorie burn.

[slysam]

Adding on to what Colin said, most calcualtors that estimate a calorie burn for a specific activity level (one of four or five choices) do so by multiplying your BMR by an "activity multiplyer" associated with the level you chose. For sedentary, most use either 1.2 or 1.25 times your BMR. That assumes either 80% or 75% of your total calorie burn is just your BMR. But it also assumes some activity. I usually need at least 5,000-6,000 steps and 24 hours of my BMR to exceed my sedentary burn. But it will depend on how fast you walk. Fitbit credits you with a portion of your BMR for every minute starting at 12am, so if it is early in the day you may have met or exceeded your sedentary estimate but haven't accumulated enough of your BMR burn to bring the total up to that level yet. Also, different formulas will yeild different estimates. For comparison, be sure an use Mifflin (the one Colin linked to), if you use Harris Bennedict than it will be different. Harris-Bennedict (one of the most common formulas) will predict my sedentary activity level similar to lightly active per Mifflin (to exceed my Mifflin lightly active I need at least 7k-8k steps usually). The H-B formula is older developed in the early 1900's (I think 1909 if I recall, but am not great with remembering historical years), the mifflin is a newer update from the 1990's and is commonly thought more accurate for contemporary people. (One theory is H-B was developed when their testing population was more lean and muscular on average and lean mass burns more calories at rest, but also their research and testing methods may have changed over the years).