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Fitbit Walking Calorie Burn Estimate
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If mine is set to my height weight and age it underestimates my TDEE by 200 calories on average
But I have a zip and I overlay workouts by polar hrm with chest strap
I am set to sedentary on MFP ...I generally get a 400-800 adjustment
I use bio feedback to check ....over 18 months I have proved I need to eat them back and some to maintain1 -
I found that letting my Charge HR adjust my MFP calorie goal was causing me to get stuck in maintenance and even gain a few pounds back. So I disabled the Fitbit steps on MFP and only use my Charge to get a good idea of activity level and daily TDEE. Before the Charge I had a flex and I was not losing as smoothly as I had been before I got the Fitbit. That said I do like the Fitbit Charge very much as a motivator to move and for the information I get from it about my activity and sleep habits.
I currently have my activity level set to high, no exercise (I get 16-20k steps a day during the workweek. MFP gives me 2220 calories a day for a 2 pound per week loss. On my days off I eat around maintenance going off of the TDEE numbers that the Charge gives me. My weekend activity level is vastly different and I would be eating around 1400 calories on those days to stay at my prefered deficit. That just isn't going to work when I am used to eating almost twice that during the week. I log workouts and use the information from Charge HR's automatic workout tracker to input the calories burned. If charge did not detect a "workout" I don't log it. And I eat back 50% or less of those calories.
I started doing this last week and have already started dropping weight back off very nicely after a couple of months of the scale moving in the wrong direction. Hoping this will get me back on a good track.
I do want to say this. When it wasn't working it was because I was eating too much. I knew I was eating too much to lose weight and I allowed myself put the blame on the tool instead of taking responsibility for my choices. A tool is only effective if you use it effectively.2 -
Does this look accurate to anyone? For this, i got an extra 1,158 calories transferred over to mfp
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Christine_72 wrote: »Does this look accurate to anyone? For this, i got an extra 1,158 calories transferred over to mfp
Depends what activity level you have set in MFP and what MFP estimates your normal calorie level to be. Is it around 1800 cals? If so, then that may be correct.
I thought you had been using a FitBit with MFP for a while, why is this concerning you as to whether it is accurate or not?0 -
WinoGelato wrote: »Christine_72 wrote: »Does this look accurate to anyone? For this, i got an extra 1,158 calories transferred over to mfp
Depends what activity level you have set in MFP and what MFP estimates your normal calorie level to be. Is it around 1800 cals? If so, then that may be correct.
I thought you had been using a FitBit with MFP for a while, why is this concerning you as to whether it is accurate or not?
I'm set at sedentary. Yes i have had a fitbit synced for quite a while, but have never fully trusted it. I think if i ate back 100% of fitbit's calories i'd be gaining weight. I'm scraping by as it is eating back a max of 50%, and my logging is as accurate as i can get it.
I guess it would make me feel better seeing the numbers (and if they are the same as mine) of someone my height, weight and activity level who eats back all of their calories and is successfully losing weight.0 -
Ok... I'm 5'2, 120 and average 15k steps/day with a total calories burned average of 2200. I ate back all my calories while losing and now while maintaining. My activity level is set at active. I get adjustments of about 200-400 for that.
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Christine_72 wrote: »Does this look accurate to anyone? For this, i got an extra 1,158 calories transferred over to mfp
Your day looks a lot like mine (my stats: 5'6" 21 year old female, about 130ish lbs). I think mine might also be overestimating (I am wearing it on my nondominant hand but have it set as my dominant hand on Fitbit), but there might be some medical issues going on that is lowering my actual TDEE that Fitbit isn't taking into account (long story short, it's like I'm in menopause -I'm seriously thinking about changing my Fitbit's age to 51).
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Christine_72 wrote: »Does this look accurate to anyone? For this, i got an extra 1,158 calories transferred over to mfp
Your day looks a lot like mine (my stats: 5'6" 21 year old female, about 130ish lbs).
Do you have your fitbit synced to mfp @abatonfan ? What activity level did you choose?
I agree, very similar. I'm 5'8, 147lbs age 44. I also should add that i reduced my stride length and height by 3 inches on fitbit.0 -
Christine_72 wrote: »Christine_72 wrote: »Does this look accurate to anyone? For this, i got an extra 1,158 calories transferred over to mfp
Your day looks a lot like mine (my stats: 5'6" 21 year old female, about 130ish lbs).
Do you have your fitbit synced to mfp @abatonfan ? What activity level did you choose?
I agree, very similar. I'm 5'8, 147lbs age 44. I also should add that i reduced my stride length and height by 3 inches on fitbit.
I do. I have mine set to below sedentary, because I hate having the negative calorie adjustments. For a goal of maintaining my weight, my calorie goal before syncing my Fitbit is 1550 calories (regular sedentary would be about 1700 for me, if I'm remembering correctly). If Fitbit is synced, I need to take about 3000-4000 steps in order to get MFP to register my calorie goal as 1550 (otherwise, I get about a 150-200 negative calorie adjustment if I took 0 steps).1 -
Christine_72 wrote: »Christine_72 wrote: »Does this look accurate to anyone? For this, i got an extra 1,158 calories transferred over to mfp
Your day looks a lot like mine (my stats: 5'6" 21 year old female, about 130ish lbs).
Do you have your fitbit synced to mfp @abatonfan ? What activity level did you choose?
I agree, very similar. I'm 5'8, 147lbs age 44. I also should add that i reduced my stride length and height by 3 inches on fitbit.
I do. I have mine set to below sedentary, because I hate having the negative calorie adjustments. For a goal of maintaining my weight, my calorie goal before syncing my Fitbit is 1550 calories (regular sedentary would be about 1700 for me, if I'm remembering correctly). If Fitbit is synced, I need to take about 3000-4000 steps in order to get MFP to register my calorie goal as 1550 (otherwise, I get about a 150-200 negative calorie adjustment if I took 0 steps).
Ha that's why i changed back to sedentary from lightly active. I always lost a couple hundred calories in the evening, and i hated being in the negative when i didn't get enough steps in, It put too much pressure on me, and i had to work extra hard in the morning to get out of the red (i prelog my day), i guess it was a mind game thing.1 -
Well according to fitbit a couple days ago I should have eaten 5900 calories in order to be sticking with my goal of one pound weight loss per week. Needless to say I did not in fact eat 5900 calories nor could I imagine doing so.
Correct me if I am interpreting its readout incorrectly but it is saying my TDEE for that day was 6461 calories right?
So you can understand my skepticism when the thing on my wrist suggests I should be eating at least 12 big macs a day.
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So today I just let myself go on eating just to see. I had a very large bowl of granola with whole milk and chocolate powder, a quarter cup of almonds, two full packages of beef jerky and a some dried fruit, shared a mini blizzard from Dairy Queen plus their Iced Mocha coffee. I had a monster taco and a jumbo jack from jack in the box. I had a 4-item combo from Panda express. According to fitbit I am still almost 2000 calories below my TDEE for intake.
So I can eat like that and lose 4 pounds a week? I call B.S. on that.2 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »So today I just let myself go on eating just to see. I had a very large bowl of granola with whole milk and chocolate powder, a quarter cup of almonds, two full packages of beef jerky and a some dried fruit, shared a mini blizzard from Dairy Queen plus their Iced Mocha coffee. I had a monster taco and a jumbo jack from jack in the box. I had a 4-item combo from Panda express. According to fitbit I am still almost 2000 calories below my TDEE for intake.
So I can eat like that and lose 4 pounds a week? I call B.S. on that.
The picture you posted prior to this post, that is a HIGH level of activity. That is way beyond Sedentary, Lightly Active or even Active. I scrolled through this post again and I don't see where you listed your height and weight so that I can tell you if this is a reasonable TDEE. However, I will say again that I am a woman, 5'3.5" and 108 pounds and my TDEE is 2000 to 2400 calories per day. On a lazy day, for me, my TDEE is around 1800. I have been eating 2000+ calories per day for a while now and have yet to gain weight. The one day I managed to get 44,411 steps my TDEE was 3,354 calories. I ate around 2900 calories that day because I was too tired to eat anything else.
The reason I quoted your second post is because of all the stuff you said you ate. Herein lies the issue; there is very little calorie accuracy there. There is no way to know the accurate calorie count in half of the stuff you ate. I weigh all of my food, so I know exactly what I'm eating aside from label rounding. I know 28 grams of the almonds I eat are 160 calories, so when I want almonds I weigh out the amount in grams. You say you had a "quarter cup". Even though that's the serving on the label, your version of a quarter cup could vary wildly from an actual serving of almonds. You could have easily had 300 calories of almonds, but logged it as 160 calories by using a measuring cup. Whatever the nutritional information for a mini blizzard, iced mocha, monster taco, jumbo jack and a 4-item combo are on their respective websites, they can and usually do vary greatly depending on who prepared them. So yeah, if you're going to eat like that, you definitely should leave calorie padding and not eat back every single calorie Fitbit is giving you. Also, you shouldn't just let yourself go on eating either; you should eat when you're actually hungry.3 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Well according to fitbit a couple days ago I should have eaten 5900 calories in order to be sticking with my goal of one pound weight loss per week. Needless to say I did not in fact eat 5900 calories nor could I imagine doing so.
Correct me if I am interpreting its readout incorrectly but it is saying my TDEE for that day was 6461 calories right?
So you can understand my skepticism when the thing on my wrist suggests I should be eating at least 12 big macs a day.
With that high of an activity level you may be an outlier for whom the algorithms aren't accurate. It's really hard for any of us to say with certainty. I understand your skepticism but all we can do is share our personal experiences and for the vast majority of people, FitBit is a relatively accurate predictor of total calorie burn and linking the tool with MFP enables us to meet our weight loss or maintenance goals.
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Aaron_K123 wrote: »So today I just let myself go on eating just to see. I had a very large bowl of granola with whole milk and chocolate powder, a quarter cup of almonds, two full packages of beef jerky and a some dried fruit, shared a mini blizzard from Dairy Queen plus their Iced Mocha coffee. I had a monster taco and a jumbo jack from jack in the box. I had a 4-item combo from Panda express. According to fitbit I am still almost 2000 calories below my TDEE for intake.
So I can eat like that and lose 4 pounds a week? I call B.S. on that.
I'm not sure who you are calling BS to... The people responding in this thread trying to give you helpful advice from our own personal experience?3 -
From my own data (2 years worth) I think Fitbit can be trusted when activity is in the neighborhood of around 10,000 steps (non-rigorous). I feel it underestimates burn if I'm not active, and progressively overestimates (and gets more and more ridiculous in its estimates) if I'm more active than that.
I log accurately, to the gram and don't eat out very often. And I do without apology blame the tool for telling me my TDEE is in the neighborhood of 3000 calories and that I'd need to eat that much to maintain my weight when that's not at all so for me, and I suspect for most other people with my stats. (I.e. I'm not special)
I do however blame myself for eating that much despite knowing darn well from years of data that, like Christine said, I would have hit my goal ages ago if Fitbit burns reflected reality. But not everyone has years of data to inform them that high Fitbit burns are, very probably, complete BS.2 -
Lourdesong wrote: »From my own data (2 years worth) I think Fitbit can be trusted when activity is in the neighborhood of around 10,000 steps (non-rigorous). I feel it underestimates burn if I'm not active, and progressively overestimates (and gets more and more ridiculous in its estimates) if I'm more active than that.
I log accurately, to the gram and don't eat out very often. And I do without apology blame the tool for telling me my TDEE is in the neighborhood of 3000 calories and that I'd need to eat that much to maintain my weight when that's not at all so for me, and I suspect for most other people with my stats. (I.e. I'm not special)
I do however blame myself for eating that much despite knowing darn well from years of data that, like Christine said, I would have hit my goal ages ago if Fitbit burns reflected reality. But not everyone has years of data to inform them that high Fitbit burns are, very probably, complete BS.
This is fair. My step count is in the 15k range usually and it's been pretty accurate for me but on rare days where I've exceeded 25k I have seen some high adjustments. Since they are a rarity for me I happily enjoy the 3000 cals and didn't see any negative issues but if it were common I might be more skeptical.
I do think one has to build their own data set over time in order to determine how implicitly to trust this tool. Just like with any new technology it takes getting used to. I also think it is important to have an activity setting in MFP that aligns with your true activity setting. I personally don't understand why people who average 20k or more steps would keep themselves set at sedentary, then question why the adjustments are so huge. I know it's personal preference and at the end of the day, the total numbers should align, but getting my activity level on MFP correlated to what my Fitbit says I burn from a step perspective was key for me in being able to trust the numbers I see on both systems.1 -
WinoGelato wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »So today I just let myself go on eating just to see. I had a very large bowl of granola with whole milk and chocolate powder, a quarter cup of almonds, two full packages of beef jerky and a some dried fruit, shared a mini blizzard from Dairy Queen plus their Iced Mocha coffee. I had a monster taco and a jumbo jack from jack in the box. I had a 4-item combo from Panda express. According to fitbit I am still almost 2000 calories below my TDEE for intake.
So I can eat like that and lose 4 pounds a week? I call B.S. on that.
I'm not sure who you are calling BS to... The people responding in this thread trying to give you helpful advice from our own personal experience?
No no, calling BS to my fitbit TDEE measure, I appreciate the time people have taken to comment and apologize to you if you thought I was calling BS on one of your comments.1 -
Here's my two cents - step tracking cannot measure calorie burn, period. What Fitbit's system does is build an estimate based upon some typical averages. Aaron, if you're consistently getting in 20K or 40K in steps every day then you're obviously an active individual who spends most of your day on your feet. And based on your profile photo and that step range I'm going to guess you're a pretty fit individual. You are not average.
When someone has a high level of fitness their body is efficient at using energy. For example, someone who is just starting out with running who goes out for a 3 mile jog at a 10 minute mile pace is going to have a pretty high heart rate, fairly close to their max, throughout the run. An experienced runner running at that same pace will have a much, much lower heart rate. Both are doing exactly the same amount of work (assuming similar gait, body weight, muscle mass, etc.), but the more experienced runner has, through practice and training, gotten more efficient at using oxygen (which is what calorie burn is all about). So, same distance, same pace, but the first runner's body is working harder to accomplish the same thing.
There is no way for the Fitbit algorithm to take into account overall fitness level for two people of the same age, height and weight, or to measure any of that. So, while your average human walking 45K steps in a day might have burned the calories the Fitbit app gave you, someone of your fitness level would naturally burn many fewer calories doing that same amount of effort. It's like the difference between two cars that you can see any time you go auto shopping. A Toyota Camry gets 27 mpg and a Chevy Malibu gets 30 mpg. Similar size cars with roughly equivalent engines, but one is slightly more efficient than the other. (Which gets to another point - Fitbit cannot account for genetic, inherited differences between the "engines" in two similar individuals.)
Part of the problem here is that there is actually no way, outside of a laboratory environment, to measure the oxygen use efficiency of an individual, and oxygen use efficiency is the only true measure of calorie expenditure. Steps won't do it and heart rate won't do it. So, someone might ask, why do Fitbits, heart rate monitors and gadgets at the gym give you calorie burn estimates? Because having a baseline to measure against helps to track progress. It doesn't matter if that baseline is accurate, it just needs to be consistent.
Another part of the problem is that people, mostly well meaning types, talk about calorie intake as if you can measure that accurately outside of a lab. You can't. The closest you can get is using a food scale (which, by the way, you should do, but only if you're not the type who becomes demented and obsessed about stuff, because it can turn unhealthy really quickly if that's the case), but even that is still just an estimate based upon averages. When lab studies have been done on both packaged and whole foods the actual calorie counts have between anywhere between 10 to 30 percent off. And then your gut gets into the action. The health and quality of your gut flora determines absorption rates of the food you take in, along with a bunch of other factors. Just like oxygen use efficiency, some people are very efficient at digesting and absorbing nutrients and others are very bad at it. And this can be variable down to the macro nutrient level, with some folks being inefficient at absorbing proteins, and others being inefficient at absorbing fats and so on down the line and vice versa.
So why do we bother? Because, again, having something to measure helps to track progress, so long as the system you're using is consistent. This is why you see fitness models posting their elaborate container systems they use to do their weekly food prep. Which containers you use don't matter. It matters that you use the same ones and stay consistent with what you put in them.
(Wow, this is a lot more than two cents, but I'm on a roll - yay, coffee!)
Finally, the debate about whether or not someone should eat back their exercise expended calories is one I've waded into over and over again over the years. There's a few things to consider before deciding what you need to do, and the first among these is to be clear what your goals are. If your goal is fat loss/weight loss, then in order to make that happen you have to be in a caloric deficit, period. In order to lose fat/weight you must consume fewer calories than you burn. The laws of thermodynamics don't bend to the wishes and fantasies of the masses. You can do that by eating fewer calories or increasing your burn rate through increased activity, but trying to do it via the latter method is much, much more difficult and time consuming than using the former. A total couch potato who begins to exercise and also goes from 3000 steps a day to 10,000 is going to create a big deficit via increased activity. But this same person, as their overall fitness level increases and their body adjusts to this new activity being the norm will plateau. So, early on if she eats back some or all of those expended calories will lose weight, but if she keeps eating them back she'll hit a brick wall.
Now, if your objective is to build muscle mass and strength, and you don't care what the number on the scale says, eating them back is probably a good idea, provided you watch your macros. You don't want to eat them back in the form of sugar and french fries. But this is really only for athletes and body builders. If you're doing 10K steps a day and doing a moderate gym workout for 30 to 40 minutes a day I wouldn't recommend eating back your expended calories as estimated by a Fitbit or MFP.6 -
Lourdesong wrote: »From my own data (2 years worth) I think Fitbit can be trusted when activity is in the neighborhood of around 10,000 steps (non-rigorous). I feel it underestimates burn if I'm not active, and progressively overestimates (and gets more and more ridiculous in its estimates) if I'm more active than that.
I log accurately, to the gram and don't eat out very often. And I do without apology blame the tool for telling me my TDEE is in the neighborhood of 3000 calories and that I'd need to eat that much to maintain my weight when that's not at all so for me, and I suspect for most other people with my stats. (I.e. I'm not special)
I do however blame myself for eating that much despite knowing darn well from years of data that, like Christine said, I would have hit my goal ages ago if Fitbit burns reflected reality. But not everyone has years of data to inform them that high Fitbit burns are, very probably, complete BS.
This was my suspicion as well. Any device like this is going to have an accuracy range and it makes sense that the company would tune their instrument to be most accurate in the ~2000 calorie TDEE range. Outliers to that would be less accurate and the further you get away from that the less accurate it would be.4
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