Fitbit charge HR overestimates walking calories hugely

Seffell

Hello,
my stats are 36 female, 66kg, 170cm mostly fat, almost no muscle (have been a couch potato for health reasons for years). I've been on MFP since February this year and lost about 10kg so far (except for the last two months when I took a break as I was on a holiday). During my weight loss I've been taking a lot of data and have go lots of spreadsheets, all was going according to plan, I was loosing exactly as much as I was making a deficit. I'm mentioning this to say that I used to have a pretty good idea about my calorie burns.

I got a Fitbit charge HR yesterday (finally!!! )
Today is my first day and so far for the day it says I have burned around 2000 calories (it is 18:00 o'clock) and in MFP the projected estimate is around 2500 calories. All this doing some 9500 steps...
My BMR according to fitbit is just under 1400 which is about right, but since apparently while I'm walking about my day my heart rate is in the cardio zone (and fat burning zone) it estimates my calories way too high. I checked several times if its pulse measurements where correct and they were indeed what I manually measured. My heart rate is indeed quite high when I just walk for some reason (I have seen a cardiologist recently and I'm healthy). Before fitbit these 9500 steps according to my old phone pedometer would burn around 250-300 calories which I would add to my 1600 rest calories (BMR+thermal+such) to give a total of 1900. This method has worked for all my weigh loss. So I'm suspicious BIG TIME of fitbit's 2500+ calories.

I have changed today my activity to active in MFP to see what happens but fitbit still wants to add more and the day is not over. I'm yet to go out to jog.....

What say you?

malibu927

Give Fitbit several days to get used to your routine and become more accurate

jessiferrrb

malibu927 wrote: »

Give Fitbit several days to get used to your routine and become more accurate

agreed, it takes a while to zero in on the correct range. i find mine to be pretty accurate now.

Straitlover1965

EDIT: sorry, misinterpreted the question. Nevermind!!!

YvetteK2015

I have never found my fitbit to be accurate on the calories. I don't even pay attention to it. I just use MFP after I enter the exercise I've done for the day. But that's just me.

JeanLaw131

jessiferrrb wrote: »

malibu927 wrote: »

Give Fitbit several days to get used to your routine and become more accurate

agreed, it takes a while to zero in on the correct range. i find mine to be pretty accurate now.

^ This

Seffell

Thanks all, will do! I was so eager to get it, I really hope it gets more accurate.

Aaron_K123

Went for a long walk on flat ground in a city (not hiking not running) with my fitbit HR and this was the result:




Needless to say I did not eat 5300 calories that day. Although I think I did eat like 3700.

Went for a hike and went less distance but obviously had more elevation changes and it gave me this:



So clearly it is taking into account more than just steps (I had more steps with the first one). Not sure if its calculating based on changes in floors or literally off my heart rate or what.

I do think at high activity levels it underestimates, but at normal activity levels I think its pretty close. On a normal day I do eat back close to what my fitbit suggests but if I'm highly active I do tend to doubt it and eat back a portion of what it is suggesting.

kelhea

It counts your overall calories, not just the exercised calories. It asks you to put in your weight and height so it can get an idea of how much you burn overall in a day

inertiastrength

I have the Alta, I've had the One and the flex and I found them all to be pretty accurate based on the data of my weight loss etc. I'm pretty anal with my data so I'm sure about my calories etc. I lose what I "should" lose give or take the natural fluctuations; I'm looking at data over time is what I'm saying. Idk how te HR ones work but j can't complain about the above models

SCoil123

My flex doesn't have the heart rate monitor but I've found it to be very accurate

Christine_72

I have the Alta, which tends to overestimate my tdee on high exercise days. I think the HR monitor devices are a bit iffy for alot of people..

adamyovanovich

Today Ive walked 8500 steps. Its giving me 1,000 calories extra!!! And that's from walking. That would put me at 3000 calories if I ate them. Putting me at a 200 calorie deficit. I never trust my charge hr. For calories .

Christine_72

adamyovanovich wrote: »

Today Ive walked 8500 steps. Its giving me 1,000 calories extra!!! And that's from walking. That would put me at 3000 calories if I ate them. Putting me at a 200 calorie deficit. I never trust my charge hr. For calories .

What are your stats, weight and height? OP is only 66kgs (145lbs)

So far today I've done 8827 steps and have earned an extra 447 calories in mfp. I'm 5"8 and 148lbs.

adamyovanovich

5'8" male 30yo 313.4. My maintain is 3300 now. I'm eating 1800-2000 a day. Fitbit fave me a 1096 adjustment for today.

Psychgrrl

How do you all get so many calories for steps? I'm 5'3, 115 and get about 250 calories for 15,000 steps being set at sedentary in MFP.

SusanMFindlay

Psychgrrl wrote: »

How do you all get so many calories for steps? I'm 5'3, 115 and get about 250 calories for 15,000 steps being set at sedentary in MFP.

By being heavier.

Heavier people take more energy to move the same distance as lighter people because there's more mass to transport.

adamyovanovich

I get that an all. But... I'm losing 11 lbs a month. If I ate the extra 1000 cal each day I'd only lose 2 lbs. I'll just wait till I'm at maintain to trust eating those back.

Christine_72

adamyovanovich wrote: »

I get that an all. But... I'm losing 11 lbs a month. If I ate the extra 1000 cal each day I'd only lose 2 lbs. I'll just wait till I'm at maintain to trust eating those back.

I've heard that the calorie burn for heavier people can be a bit sketchy, eat back as many as you can whilst still losing and reavulate again when you're closer to your goal weight.

Psychgrrl wrote: »

How do you all get so many calories for steps? I'm 5'3, 115 and get about 250 calories for 15,000 steps being set at sedentary in MFP.

I'm over 30lbs heavier and 5 inches taller than you. Having said that i try not to eat more than 50% of my exercise calories back. I think if i ate the whole lot i'd start gaining. I'm losing at a snails pace as it is..

250 calories for 15,000 steps is a bit sad too though. Do you eat all of your calories back?

adamyovanovich

Thanks for the help.

amusedmonkey

It does level out after a while. Yesterday I got 298 extra calories and barely 2400 total burn for 8500 steps and I'm much heavier than you (96 kg).

Aaron_K123

Psychgrrl wrote: »

How do you all get so many calories for steps? I'm 5'3, 115 and get about 250 calories for 15,000 steps being set at sedentary in MFP.

Well for my numbers I maintain at something like 2200 so subtract that from the 5200 calories and you get that I burned 3000 calories from walking that day. I think that day was 60,000 steps so four times as much. The remainder has to do with our weight difference. If you carried a 60 pound backpack around to make up for the difference in our weights when you did those 15,000 steps you'd burn a lot more too.

Still with all of that said 250 for 15000 steps does seem low.

WrenTheCoffeeAddict

Hey
You're right, that does appear to be crazy high. I walk an average of 10,000 steps a day, usually a bit more, and it commonly gives me about 300-500 extra calories a day. I'm 5'6 and weigh 110KG.
If it's not giving you the right results within a couple of days, try starting from scratch, disconnect it from the app, give it a hard reset (plug it into charge and hold the button down for what seems like forever) and see if that fixes it.
If that doesn't help, Fitbit have a decent 'chat' option on their website, they can talk through the settings with you to see if there's any issue there, and if they issue is with the fitbit itself, they usually send out a replacement quite quickly.

minniestar55

I have a Charge HR & a Surge. I find the steps, heart rate & calorie burn estimate to be fairly reasonable...5'6", 9st 5lbs (131 lbs). I always take exercise calories with a big grain of virtual salt; I work out 6 days weekly with combination of cardio/Pilates reformer/bootcamp & kettlebells. I exercise for health, but base my weight maintenance (formerly weight loss) on calorie intake. I know cardio machines generally over-estimate calorie burns, & I am certain MFP does as well...I see friends enter 600 calories burned for 45 min walking 3.5 mph on MFP, for example. (I use FitBit for all exercise, MFP for food). My fitbits will give me a max of about 450 after an hour of treadmill intervals (hills & speed) & 45 mins of power step...which seems much closer to a realistic estimate to me, although I think it may still be too high. I do think folks need to remember that these devices are not medical devices...they give estimates & best guesses...& are a tool for keeping track of workouts & calories, but don't take as gospel any exercise calorie burn.

Christine_72

I finished today with 18,000 steps, and earned an extra 834 calories. I ate 100 of those back.

Seffell

It's been 4 days and unfortunately it hasn't settled down yet.

Wed: 2689kcal
Thu: 2180kcal
Fri: 2334kcal

That's for walking only.

By my old calculations I should have burned around 500+ less each day. Starting to feel very upset. I was hoping for a more accurate estimate not for a worse than a free pedometer app. Especially from a pedometer costing £90... Now I have to disconnect it from MFP unless I want to keep doing mental math to calculate how much to eat if I want to make 200kcal deficit (like I used to successfully).

Before fitbit my phone free pedometer would make extremely accurate calculations/estimates.

ZombieLauren wrote: »

Hey
You're right, that does appear to be crazy high. I walk an average of 10,000 steps a day, usually a bit more, and it commonly gives me about 300-500 extra calories a day. I'm 5'6 and weigh 110KG.
If it's not giving you the right results within a couple of days, try starting from scratch, disconnect it from the app, give it a hard reset (plug it into charge and hold the button down for what seems like forever) and see if that fixes it.
If that doesn't help, Fitbit have a decent 'chat' option on their website, they can talk through the settings with you to see if there's any issue there, and if they issue is with the fitbit itself, they usually send out a replacement quite quickly.

Thanks, that sounds helpful.

minniestar55 wrote: »

I do think folks need to remember that these devices are not medical devices...they give estimates & best guesses...& are a tool for keeping track of workouts & calories, but don't take as gospel any exercise calorie burn.

Like I said my old pedometer app made extremely accurate predictions. Using it I kept track and the total deficit I've made between February and July was 81 000 kcal equal to exactly my 10.5kg lost at that time. I only expected fitbit to do at least as good a job (considering its price) and to do the math for me so that I can stop doing it.
I'm not talking exercises either. Just walking. Plain walking.

Aaron_K123

You can actually burn quite a lot of calories just walking. The part of your post that confuses me is to know that your fitbit HR is overestimating you first have to know the correct value. If you know the correct value already from which to compare to your HR, then why do you need an activity tracker on the first place?

Christine_72

OP we are very similar height and weight. I'm 2ks heavier and 2cm taller.

Seffell

Aaron_K123 wrote: »

You can actually burn quite a lot of calories just walking. The part of your post that confuses me is to know that your fitbit HR is overestimating you first have to know the correct value. If you know the correct value already from which to compare to your HR, then why do you need an activity tracker on the first place?

because I'm tired of keeping spreadsheets and doing math. I've been keeping spreadsheets of data for 6-7 months. I was doing it because I was making a very small deficit so I need accurate estimates.

Seffell

Christine_72 wrote: »

OP we are very similar height and weight. I'm 2ks heavier and 2cm taller.

Christine, if I made 25k steps my pedometer would give me around 850kcal so
1600 (give or take bmr+therm+others) + 850 = 2450kcal.
Is 2900 what you would consider a good reading? (that is an honest question, not a rhetoric sarcastic one )
Have you been able to maintain eating 2900kcal/day (while using a scale etc.)?

Christine_72

gebeziseva wrote: »

Christine_72 wrote: »

OP we are very similar height and weight. I'm 2ks heavier and 2cm taller.

Christine, if I made 25k steps my pedometer would give me around 850kcal so
1600 (give or take bmr+therm+others) + 850 = 2450kcal.
Is 2900 what you would consider a good reading? (that is an honest question, not a rhetoric sarcastic one )
Have you been able to maintain eating 2900kcal/day (while using a scale etc.)?

Nope, I would call that a gross overestimation. I guarantee i would gain weight if i followed fitbits numbers. I'm losing at a snails pace eating back no more than 50% of my exercise calories, if that, but i only have around 4kgs left to lose (i keep changing my goal weight lol).. My only exercise is walking, which is why a HR monitor would be a waste of time for me, as my heart rate does not go up by much from walking.

i earned an extra 1,105 calories on mfp for that day