How accurate is the calorie counting with Fitbit?

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Ricardinho88
Ricardinho88 Posts: 17 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi everyone,

I've only just started my weight loss journey, so I've only just started logging my diet and exercise in the last few days.

I'm a big fan of table tennis, and play 3-4 times a week. I played it last night, and it was the first time I had recorded the workout since I purchased my Fitbit Surge HR. The total steps I made were around 2300 and my estimated calories burned was about 830, which seems rather a lot. Now the games do get pretty intense and I work up quite a sweat, but would the stats really be that high?

I'm still not sold on the accuracy on the Fitbit at the moment. The stats for yesterday seemed to be all over the place.

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  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
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    It will vary for each person.

    For me personally, the Surge has been pretty accurate and the zip/flex models underestimated by about 200 calories per day on average.
  • StaciMarie1974
    StaciMarie1974 Posts: 4,138 Member
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    It will vary based on the type of activity & type of Fitbit. I'd fear the wrist-worn device would count a high # of steps for something like table tennis where you're moving your arm/wrist a lot.

    For me, my Fitbit One has been fairly accurate. When I first reached maintenance I figured out that if I ate under what my Fitbit showed for daily burn, I continued to lose weight.
  • angerelle
    angerelle Posts: 175 Member
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    For me, it seems spot on, in that I log accurately, eat all the extra calories that my Fitbit gives me and I lose at the rate I am expecting to. But I have a Fitbit One and wear it on my bra and my exercise is pretty much all step based (running/walking), so it's a good fit for me. I think it's best to maybe eat half your Fitbit calories, and see where your weight trend goes then adjust the proportion you eat up or down based on that feedback.
  • emmycantbemeeko
    emmycantbemeeko Posts: 303 Member
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    Like angerelle, I wear a fitbit on on my bra or the neck of my shirt and do mostly step-based activities, and it seems to be very accurate for me. I have heard friends with the wrist-worn models complain that it under or overestimates for activities where your arms are unusually active or still.

    A hospital I worked at gave big discounts for them and most people bought the wrist-worn models, and then realized that when pushing a bed or a wheelchair, they got no steps. So you'd see nurses pushing patients down the hall with one arm and pumping the other like a race walker. It was pretty funny.

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