Fitbit underestimating, synching with MFP and other questions

Marianna93637

This is my 2nd day of having my Fitbit but I am very confused about calories burned.
It says that yesterday's Zumba class burned 413, and today's class 390 (same instructor). I was jumping around way more than usual, way more than anyone else, had heart rate up, sweating, out of breath a lot... By the way I've been taking Zumba on average 3 times a week for a year and I'd say I'm in pretty good shape.
Up until now I estimated my classes 350-400 when I was hardly even sweating, didn't even get tired. I guess since I got my Fitbit I was motivated to really jump around and hoping to see some numbers like 500.

Could it be underestimating it?
What gets me is that walking my dogs for 15 minutes at a moderate fast pace burned 90 calories. That means that in one hour I would have burned 360 cals, almost as much as Zumba?? There was no sweating, no out of breath, just walking. The walking calories make sense, the Zumba doesn't. On top of it I was holding 2 leashes for 2 German shepherds in the hand that has my Fitbit, and I was thinking it would majorly underestimate my calories because my hand and arm hardly moved, but nope.

I have heard that Fitbit will adjust over a few days or a week, so I was hoping for a higher / more accurate number today. I'm taking a Zumba class every day this week (that's the plan) so I can see any changes.
Can someone please explain this to me??


My other question: is it ok, does it make sense not to synch it with MFP, at least not for now? I just want to do everything the way I'm used to for a couple of weeks and then synch it.
What I'm doing right now is I log all my food on MFP as I have done for over a year. I used to log my exercises. Now let's say before I go for a walk, jog, or umba class, I take a screen shot of how many calories I burnt during the day up to that point, and then take another screen shot at the end (so I don't forget lol) and deduct. Then I log that as exercise in MFP.
I know this seems like a lot of extra steps but I'm not confused this way.

So yesterday I ate 1644 calories, (my goal is 1300), I exercised 573, and I had 229 left over.
This is the number or system I always cared about. Now I also look at Fitbit, and it said I burned 2062 calories the whole day. So that tells me I overall had 366 calories more going out than coming in. I only look at this part just out of curiosity.

How would synching it with MFP make it simpler? Because everything I've read just made me a little confused.

Thank you!

xLyric

I like Fitbit for exactly this reason; the calorie burns are more accurate. Many times you'll see people recommend the Fitbit entries because they're much more accurate than, say, an exercise bike's built in calculator. I generally trust my Fitbit's estimation and eat them all back, whereas any other source I'd likely assume overestimation and only eat back a portion.

Without knowing anything about you or your body composition, 90 calories for a 15 minute walk does seem like a lot. I would imagine the leash played a bit of a part there, which is why I went for the Zip; no strange arm movements can trick it. If I take a 6,000 step walk, I usually get around 300 extra calories to eat. If I did my math right, a 15 minute walk would give me about 50 calories. Maybe you're walking faster than you think?

Honestly the easiest thing for me when MFP and Fitbit are confusing me, is to look at your Fitbit's "Calories Burned" area and subtract your deficit. I want to lose 2 pounds a week, so I want to have a daily deficit of 1,000 calories. This means, if I want to be able to eat, say, 1500 calories a day, I need to make sure I burn 2500 calories by midnight. I can look at that calories burned area and see how much I can eat based on that. Or just use it as a goal. If I set that 2500 calories burned goal, I can check and see how close I am throughout the day and make sure I hit it.

Syncing helps a lot. If you walk more than MFP expects you to, Fitbit lets MFP know and you get more calories to eat here. If you have negative adjustments enabled and you walk less than MFP expects, it may take away calories. I highly recommend you join the Fitbit group on here and read the FAQ.

I probably over-complicated most of this but hopefully at least some of it is helpful. (And please, if my math is wrong, feel free to correct me.)

Marianna93637

Thank you!
To respond to one of your comments, I'm sure I walk faster than normal. My adult German shepherd walks fast, and I know I'm supposed to control him, but it's just easier to walk fast with him and control him lol. And then the puppy is going right along, so that's 165 lbs of dogs in one hand and I'm walking fast. so maybe that's where the 90 calories come from.

Tonight I actually synched the two. It's still a little confusing.
After I came home from Zumba I was exhausted and starving and because I have been going to the gym to work my butt off almost every day I figured I reward myself. that resulted in some high calorie food and 2.5 glasses of wine No guilt, it was all good

So here are the stats, and they're not really matching:
MFP says: Ate 2113 calories, exercised 485, my goal is 1300= -328 (overate 328 cal.)
Fitbit says: ate 2113 calories, burnt 2398 calories, = 297 calories are left over.

Obviously I'm not going to eat the 297 calories. Fitbit knows I want to lose 15 lbs. I'm going with MFP who says I ate too much! Eating this much (including the wine) is not typical, maybe on my cheating days once a week, but even then usually not over 1800.
So why is there a difference in the reading? Or do I not know how to figure this out?

Protranser

Hello Marianna,

You will probably find a lot of answers to your questions here. I can't fully explain how it works; I'm not an expert. I am guessing your zumba class burn was calculated using your steps and heartrate, which is accurate for step based activity (walking, running) but not as accurate for things like yoga, calisthenics, swimming, biking. You'll need to manually log your zumba in your fitbit dashboard as "zumba"

The FAQ I linked will give you a lot more detail than this post did. Good luck!

minamina27

Hi it sounds like you have different goals set up on your mfp and fitbit app. Make sure the goals are the same I.e a 2 llb a week loss on both of them. From your figures it looks like you might have mfp set up for say 2lb a week loss and fitbit set up for 1lb a week loss

flatlndr

I can't comment on your Zumba burn, but I can comment on your walking. I did a lot of walking while dropping weight, and checked online calculators, MFP, fitbit and a Polar HRM. They were all pretty close ... 130-140 cals per mile when I was at my heaviest, 105-115 per mile at target weight. If you walked 15 mins at a very brisk pace, you probably did close to a mile, so your 90 cals shouldn't be far off.