Hello -
I have tried to find the answer to this, to no avail. And I have spoke with Sparkpeople support, and they are saying that the import into Sparkpeople is correct albeit, a bit high, so here I am at Fitbit.
I have a Fitbit Charge, that I have had and been wearing for about a month now. Last Monday, I started my "get healthy' journey and started using Sparkpeople again. Sparkpeople is awesome, and I love all of the motivational things, excercise videos, etc., and it doesn't cost me a dime.
I linked my Fitbit with my Sparkpeople. Now, I get that Sparkpeople and Fitbit uses different algorithms, formulas, etc., to get the calories burned. I do. And I know, that Fitbit sets your BMR, the minium amount of calories you need to live, when you set up your profile. And that the extra calories that show are those that are above and beyond what your BMR is, correct?
I also know, that Fitbit only counts moderatley active and very active minutes towards your activity minute count, which is where Sparkpeople comes in. Sparkpeople ONLY imports minutes and calories burned from moderately and very active minutes. Okay, that is great. I get that.
So, here is my question(s). On Tuesday, I did a 27 minutes HIIT routine. I did not log the excercise manually, I just let Fitbit and Sparkpeople do their thing. Initally, it said I burned 423 calories, which seemed reasonable. I am a heavy girl, worked my butt off, and I can see that I was blasting about 15 calories a minute. But, as the evening wore on my calories kept getting higher in Sparkpeople, above and beyond the 423. In fact, my total calories burned for that day was 746 calories!! I worked out, made dinner, cleaned up, went to bed. Now, I will say, that I have a fairly active desk job. I get up, walk alot, move stuff, etc, not on a daily basis, but maybe 3 times a week. I know, that on this particular day, though, I wasn't really active, but there were some spurts.
Yesterday, I was at my desk about 80% of the day, although, I had some shipping to do, and some product locating. Went home, did a 15 minute cardio ballet workout and then 10 minutes of kickboxing. Again, did not log. Looked at my active minutes, and it said that I had burned 310 calories. 12 calories a minute? Okay. That probably isn't too far off. But, by the end of the evening, Sparkpeople had pulled 609 calories from Fitbit.
Again, SP tells me that the info they are posting is correct accoring to Fitbit data.
So I guess my question is, how is Fitbit calculating the calories above and beyond my BMR? Are there too many calories being sync with Sparkpeople? How can I change this if it is inaccurate?
I am not eating my calories, I try to stay mid range of my 1200-1550 calorie alottment on Sparkpeople, even though it automatically adjusts when I work out, giving me more.
I just want to make sure that I am being honest with my workout, and that syncing with Sparkpeople is worth it.
