FitBit Seem Stupid?

LovingLife_Erin

I have the flex, and find it to be pretty accurate. I've loved mine and have had no issues with it. The 2000 calories burned with no exercise sounds reasonable to me to be honest. If I do nothing all day, even only a thousand or so steps, I burn around 2200. I like that it motivates me to get up and walk to get my steps, and for that alone it is worth it. Mine is synced to mfp and both will give me roughly the same calories to eat for my chosen deficit.

JenniferInCt

I have the charge hr and ive found it highly accurate. Multiple times ive tested it while driving and never ever get an extra step. The only inaccuracy i noticed was when on the treadmill. The hr and calories were almost identical, but the distance was a little short. Im pretty sure thats because i never calibrated my strife length. I wear mine on my non-dominate hand, and made sure its set accurately. Maybe yours is defective?

JenniferInCt

Stride length

debrag12

LovingLife_Erin wrote: »

I have the flex, and find it to be pretty accurate. I've loved mine and have had no issues with it. The 2000 calories burned with no exercise sounds reasonable to me to be honest. If I do nothing all day, even only a thousand or so steps, I burn around 2200. I like that it motivates me to get up and walk to get my steps, and for that alone it is worth it. Mine is synced to mfp and both will give me roughly the same calories to eat for my chosen deficit.

I burn around 1600 doing little in a day

Tubbs216

Actually it sounds like it's being quite accurate. I'd re-sync with MFP and see how the next couple of weeks look. FitBit will send you an email report each week and you can compare your weekly calories in/out and exercise and check it against your weight loss. I find that really helpful as I tend to have leaner weekdays to allow for more eating on weekends!

jgnatca

Congratulations, preschool teachers are on their feet more than you thought! You are above average.

49ermama

I have had an issue I think I created when initially setting up my Charge, accidentally set up my height as 5'11 and I am 5'4 every now and then it reverts back to that and I correct it. I would obviously burn a lot more calories at 5'11.

daisyverma

I am a little confused. The fitbit shows the sum of all activity...walking, breathing,sleeping etc ? For example a friend of mine does 10,000 steps using their fitbit and it shows over 2000 calories burned. I am thinking that is from everything that person does and also their body movements

How does one figure out which calories are "exercise" calories and which are "being alive" calories?

PrizePopple

I've been a teaching assistant for about a month now, and the only reason I've dipped below 10k steps per day recently is because I've been proctoring the MAP testing for half my day. I use Breeze on my phone to track, so I know it's not perfectly accurate. The other day I hit 15,000 steps even with the testing going on. So I'd say that 17,000 steps a day is not totally unreasonable. Milling around a classroom all day and recess time really spikes those numbers. :P

GoPerfectHealth

I have the Surge, and I find it to be pretty accurate for counting steps. I would trade your fitbit in for a different one.

shadow2soul

daisyverma wrote: »

I am a little confused. The fitbit shows the sum of all activity...walking, breathing,sleeping etc ? For example a friend of mine does 10,000 steps using their fitbit and it shows over 2000 calories burned. I am thinking that is from everything that person does and also their body movements

How does one figure out which calories are "exercise" calories and which are "being alive" calories?

With the exception of the Zip, there is an Activity mode you can turn on for workouts.

Also, if you look at the fitbit dashboard (website) there is a graph that breaks up your day into 15 min time segments. If you change this graph to view calories (it also can show steps and a few other things), then find a segment with no activity and it will tell you how many calories you get for every 15 mins of no activity. These are the calories that are your BMR. Then any activity (walking to the fridge, walking to your car, walking around a store, ect) add to that and finally exercise calories along with all of that.

The Fitbit adjustments are when the calories you burned through out the day exceed what MFP estimated based on activity level and logged exercise. So if Fitbit says with your activity you burned 2400 calories, but MFP thinks only 2000 than you get an adjustment of 400 calories. This can also work the other way. If MFP thinks you burned 2000 but fitbit says based on your activity it's more like 1800, you will lose 200 calories (if negative adjustments are enabled).

jgnatca

daisyverma wrote: »

I am a little confused. The fitbit shows the sum of all activity...walking, breathing,sleeping etc ? For example a friend of mine does 10,000 steps using their fitbit and it shows over 2000 calories burned. I am thinking that is from everything that person does and also their body movements

How does one figure out which calories are "exercise" calories and which are "being alive" calories?

You don't have to worry about that. My fitbit only "counts" calories over my basal 1600 a day as being "extra" calories to be eaten back.

sugaraddict4321

SammieePaigee wrote: »

Try changing the settings, wear the device on your non-dominate hand but set it to dominate it worked for me.

Great suggestion! I have a Zip and a Flex and I find the Flex definitely over-estimates my cals. I'll try setting it to dominant even though I wear on non-dominant and see what comes up.

d_kiwi66

Maybe try exchanging it for a different Fitbit. I use the One and find it to be very accurate in terms of knowing when I'm walking or driving/on the train/whatever.[/quote]

I have the Fitbit one also and it seems to be very accurate for counting steps.

ShanitaMarie85

I love mine and can't give without it! Hoping to win this challenge this week! It'll be my 3rd win in a roll!

Kimdbro

SammieePaigee wrote: »

Try changing the settings, wear the device on your non-dominate hand but set it to dominate it worked for me. Also, have you set up the 'food plan' its a part of fitbit that helps you lose weight, you need to set it to the same goals you have for MFP

Exactly what I did, and immediately it worked correctly. I've walked around holding it and counting my steps as I do and it's bang on. Weird things like if I'm doing an excessive amount of map folding (part of my work) it reads weird, so I take it off doing that) obviously if you're waving your arms around a lot this will be an issue... maybe think about that. It works as it was designed to, but if you swing your arms around or are a "hand talker" being a preschool teacher, you may be setting it up for failure. I'm not a step counter really anyway, I care more about calories burned and km (or miles if you prefer) person, steps are relative. I like the motivation. I hav the Surge, so i'm using it as HRM for my gym workouts mainly... the steps per day is just an add on, but I've had no issue with that. Unfortunately the HRM beam crapped out today, so I'm off to exchange for a new one after work.... it's a new product, so I expect some glitching. If making the appropriate changes still doesn't work for you, I'd suggest returning for another. It may just be one of the defectives that are bound to occur.

Dragn77

The calories burned per day include everything your body burns in a day...2000 actually sounds about right... If you do nothing at all, if you only sleep all day and never get out of bed, your body is still burning calories just to keep you alive. Fitbit counts all these calories, not just the ones from activities.

PayneAS

I don't know if the Charge is one of those ones you wear around the wrist but I've heard that people get inaccurate results with those because it'll count steps if you swing your arms. As a teacher—and even more so as a preschool teacher—I bet you are moving your arms a lot even when you aren't walking. I love my FitBit One tracker. Had it for 3 years now and find it accurate. I clip it on my bra and forget about it. It's actually done it's job a little too well in the forgetting department because I keep forgetting to log my sleep every night which I used to do daily.

NancyN795

I would recommend that you trust your FitBit, and test it. I don't think that 17000 steps is unreasonable for a preschool teacher. The "average" teacher sits at a desk, stands and lectures, or writes on a chalkboard a lot - activities that probably don't factor into your day a lot. Those activities don't generate a lot of steps or burn that many calories, but getting up and down working with preschoolers is going to mean more activity detected.

You should join the MFP FitBit Users group. Read the FAQ that is a sticky there. I know it is long, I know it seems complicated, but heybales really did a great job with it and there's really good information in it. There are several very knowledgeable people in the group who will answer your questions.

To test your FitBit, you need to trust it for several weeks, log your food very accurately (so you'll really know what your "Calories In" value is) and then use your "FitBit Weekly Report" to see if your weight change matches the difference in calories. I've been doing this test for a couple of weeks now and so far it has been very close, but I'm going to continue to pay close attention to it. If, in the long run, my FitBit (also a Charge HR) seems to be underestimating or overestimating my calories, I'll be able to figure out how much offset to apply.

bfitgirl

I have fitbit one and it very accurate for me step wise. My friend just got the wrist HR one and she said she's easily clocking up her 10,000! I was quiet jealous of her getting in her daily quota until last Saturday out for a nice meal and drinks she turns around to me and goes 'woohoo just got my 10,000 steps' and there it was flashing on her wrist - I mean we were sitting at a table drinking wine! I do question it myself, however not going to burst my pals bubble she's obviously doing a good bit of walking or either a good bit of drinking!