Calories values in the getActivity API call

[pauloamaral]

Dear dev team,

I would like to understand the calories values that I get in the "summary" sent by the getActivity API call (https://wiki.fitbit.com/display/API/API-Get-Activities):

1. activityCalories
2. caloriesBMR
3. caloriesOut
4. marginalCalories

Also, I am trying to figure out what are the calculations that connect all those numbers. Can you explain that as well?

Regards

Paulo Amaral

[jeremiahlee · Accepted solution]

activityCalories: calories burned during the day for periods of time the user was active above sedentary level. includes BMR.

caloriesBMR: only BMR calories (the calories you burn just by being alive)

caloriesOut: calories burned by the user. includes BMR.

marginalCalories: this value is deprecated and should be ignored.

[mklinge]

Just following up on this - hoping that is ok 🙂

I would expect that:

caloriesOut = caloriesBMR + activityCalories

But tht don't seem to be the case in reality with my own or my wife's data.

My own from today is:

• caloriesBMR = 1427
• activityCalories = 566
• caloriesOut = 1885

My wife's data from yesterday:

• caloriesBMR = 1433
• activityCalories = 1475
• caloriesOut = 2605

In both cases the caloriesOut is less than what I would expect - can somebody please enlighten me? 🙂

Edit:
Ah I think I got it; activityCalories contains both calories for the actvity and BMR for that timespan.

So to get the "raw" calories burn by activity span by subtracting caloriesBMR from caloriesOut 🙂

//M