Fitbit Charge HR ... Adding Insane Amount Of Calories

PAV8888

MartinWardPhoto wrote: »

I'm sitting here pretty confused, I've just got a Fitbit Charge HR at the start of this week and today it's causing me a bit of concern.
I meant to eat 2800 calories? I've been losing at 1760, surely an extra 1000 will stall this? Likewise, at the same time I don't want to be eating too little....

Is this a "one off" or a common occurrence?

8,000 steps would place you between "lightly active" and "active" in MFP. If the steps were fast, and knowing that Fitbit will probably reduce that by a 100 or so before midnight, and given your height and weight... sounds right to me!

This is why you periodically review your purported deficit and compare it to your weight loss.

If over a few week/month period, you thought you had a 500Cal deficit; but, were losing at 2lbs a week (or a 1000Cal deficit and were losing at 0.5lbs a week)... you didn't!

You had a logging problem with either with your food or exercise diary (or your body is seriously not average when it comes to food and exercise).

PAV8888

shadow2soul wrote: »

Here are some visual examples of how the adjustment works (these are my numbers from a randomly selected day last week if I remember correctly...I'm 5'4.5" and 147.5lbs):

How adjustment is calculated if Exercise is logged on MFP -

How adjustment is calculated if exercise is logged or just tracked with Fitbit -



How adjustment looks if your Fitbit calorie burn is less than MFP's estimate-

***this one happens to be Friday last week, early in the day. I did actually end up changing this adjustment by getting a workout in

• If Fitbit's calorie burn passes the red line, you get a positive adjustment. This doesn't have to just be exercise, but any calories burned that pass what MFP expects (and as you see I have 2 examples based on changing what MFP expects through exercise).
• If Fitbit's calorie burn stays under the blue line, you get a negative adjustment (if enabled) or 0 adjustment.

Alright, so the 2 above that have exercise calories are the exact same day. All I did is change where I logged my exercise calories. I'm almost positive I pulled the numbers from the 17th.

Anyway, I'm set to Lightly Active on MFP.
For Lightly Active setting, MFP estimates that I would burn 1990 calories in the day before exercise.
My total steps for the day were 12,608. Of those 6,278 were taken during a run. So 6330 were taken during just daily activity. Somewhere in those steps, was the cut off for what MFP predicted without exercise, because my daily daily activity calories ended up exceeding the amount MFP had allotted by a little over 300.


My guess, is that you don't have your activity level set high enough. I originally had mine set to sedentary, but even at lightly active I'm up and around enough that my calorie burn without exercise still ends up higher. I really do feel sedentary most of the time and most days I even take a nap in the after noon. I eat mine. My Surge has proven to be closer to my TDEE than the Zip or Flex models were (Zip and Flex were way under and Surge comes pretty close to actually being it).

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/PAV8888/view/exercise-do-i-enter-it-on-my-all-day-activity-tracker-on-mfp-or-both-741788

Steps vs activities: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14715035

PAV8888

shadow2soul wrote: »

Merkavar wrote: »

I thought the fit bit with hr was based on calories burned not steps.

As in it calculates a calories burned based on heart rate.

I'm pretty sure the HR kicks in only once it reaches a certain level. Not 100% though. I can't seem to find anything about that on their website. I'm still looking and might email them about it.

edit: Looking at the Fitbit Forums so far, I've found 1 person saying HR isn't used when it goes below 50% of their max HR (they analyzed their own data and that's what it looked like to them). I can't find anything else yet. I might just email Fitbit about it.

They won't answer. It is proprietary. Frequency of steps counts the most. Altimeter readings (stairs) count second. HR counts a distant third. By personal observation; subject to error

PAV8888

Is the Fitbit Calorie Adjustment accurate? http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/PAV8888/view/fitbit-charge-hr-good-idea-accurate-adjustments-741808

dennyman100

Mine usually says I need to eat back 800-1k calories at the end of the day. Here is how I go by it, MFP tells me I need to eat 1770 Cal a day to loose weight. I cut myself off at 2100 cal (I run everyday for an hour averaging around 500-700 cal burned). I also have mine set for lightly active but go over 15k-20k steps a day walking to work, around work, and the final walk back home. I use my fitbit mainly to track my exercises as well as step goals. In total I have dropped 20lbs adding the fitbit to MFP because if by noon I see I am under 10k steps I know I need to walk for a while once I get off work. Take any adjustments with a grain of salt and do with them what you will.

GoddessLotus

I still don't understand my charge hr

barbiereynolds701

I have a fitbit charge. love it. Have had it just over a month. I lost 6lbs last month when I was projected to lose only 4. So yes. I trust the fitbit burn calories. Now just have to get better at eating them back.

brb2008

I just barely got mine but I'm planning on completely IGNORING the suggestion to eat back any excess Burned calories. That's the opposite of your goal. I think that guideline may be more for athletes looking to maintain weight, because that's the only way that math would make sense. I want the calories out, I want that deficit, therefore I shall be ignoring those suggestions. It's helpful for workouts and step counting, but I'm not planning on taking its calorie burn outside of exercise too seriously. It seems too high to me already and today's just the first day of wearing it. I do walk around a lot for work but it's only 1pm and it thinks I have Burned 1400 which just seems too high. I'll mentally adjust it when I see it

dubird

I set mine to Sedentary, and it's not the best, but at least it gives me a good estimate of what I'm doing over the day. I usually end up not being hungry enough to eat all the calories back, so I sometimes end up 200-400 under, but I'm still over the minimum I need for the day, so I don't worry about it.

MakePeasNotWar

Mine seems to kick in after i get above 8k or so steps in a day (I'm set at lightly active), and is usually 100-200 on non-hiking days, and 400-700 on hike days. So far it seems pretty accurate when compared to my actual weight changes. It's been over 1000 a couple of times, but those were days with 5+ hours of challenging hikes.