Fitbit accuracy

AmberGebell

I have a Fitbit charge hr and it says on average I burn 2800- 3500 calories a day and that seems high! I am a female , 5'7 and weigh 173. I am a hairstylist and I workout 3-5 times a week for about 45 minutes. MFP says my calories to eat are 1560 to lose 1 pound a day at lightly active and I don't add exercise to MFP, I am pretty hungry but suffering through it! I weigh and measure everything I eat and track it. If Fitbit was correct and I burn that much then the weight should be flying off but it is creeping. Any input would be helpful

peleroja

What is "creeping" to you?

If your Fitbit is accurate AND your counting is accurate (that is, you are actually eating ~1600/day), then you should be losing in the neighbourhood of 2 - 2.5 pounds a week, which is pretty aggressive for your current weight. If you're losing a pound a week, though, that means that either your Fitbit is overestimating or you are underestimating your intake...

My Fitbit is pretty accurate, personally - I run about thirty miles per week and have an office job and it has me maintaining around 2000/day - but it's certainly not impossible that it would overestimate your burn. Still, it's also possible that you're eating somewhat more than you think, especially if you're not using a food scale.

AmberGebell

I weigh all my food on a food scale! I am meticulous about tracking everything I eat! I am losing about a pound a week which is " creeping " to me. I will just disregard Fitbit calorie burn I suppose and just stay at my 1560 a day that my MFP says to eat, I don't have it synced together either because if it's wrong it would tell me to eat more CALORIES

AmberGebell

Bump

CyberTone

AmberGebell wrote: »

I have a Fitbit charge hr and it says on average I burn 2800- 3500 calories a day and that seems high! I am a female , 5'7 and weigh 173. I am a hairstylist and I workout 3-5 times a week for about 45 minutes. MFP says my calories to eat are 1560 to lose 1 pound a day at lightly active and I don't add exercise to MFP, I am pretty hungry but suffering through it! I weigh and measure everything I eat and track it. If Fitbit was correct and I burn that much then the weight should be flying off but it is creeping. Any input would be helpful

AmberGebell wrote: »

I weigh all my food on a food scale! I am meticulous about tracking everything I eat! I am losing about a pound a week which is " creeping " to me. I will just disregard Fitbit calorie burn I suppose and just stay at my 1560 a day that my MFP says to eat, I don't have it synced together either because if it's wrong it would tell me to eat more CALORIES

Look at the two statements I bolded from your two posts. Unless in your first post you made a mistake in typing that you expect to lose 1 pound per day (which is incorrect), you should only be losing at a rate of 1 pound per week.

AmberGebell

I am asking regarding the calories burned on my Fitbit, I am eating 1560 a day to lose one pound a week and of course I want to lose more but that amount of Calories is the lowest I can do without freaking out of starvation, lol... My Fitbit says I burn 2500- 3500 which is double to triple what I am taking in so confused as to why I am not losing more than a pound. Is that more clear?

janejellyroll

AmberGebell wrote: »

I am asking regarding the calories burned on my Fitbit, I am eating 1560 a day to lose one pound a week and of course I want to lose more but that amount of Calories is the lowest I can do without freaking out of starvation, lol... My Fitbit says I burn 2500- 3500 which is double to triple what I am taking in so confused as to why I am not losing more than a pound. Is that more clear?

Either you're not correctly estimating the number of calories you're taking in (that is, you're eating more than 1,600) or your Fitbit is over-estimating how many calories you're burning.

leooftheyear

what settings do you have for your fitbit, also do you have MFP and Fitbit linked?

SusanMFindlay

AmberGebell wrote: »

I have a Fitbit charge hr and it says on average I burn 2800- 3500 calories a day and that seems high! I am a female , 5'7 and weigh 173. I am a hairstylist and I workout 3-5 times a week for about 45 minutes. MFP says my calories to eat are 1560 to lose 1 pound a day at lightly active and I don't add exercise to MFP, I am pretty hungry but suffering through it! I weigh and measure everything I eat and track it. If Fitbit was correct and I burn that much then the weight should be flying off but it is creeping. Any input would be helpful

The part I bolded is likely the culprit. You're on your feet all day, and your FitBit is a heartrate monitor. Depending on your age (which affects where FitBit sets the zones), it may well be that FitBit is considering you to be in the "fat burning zone" (lowest elevated heartrate region) for most of the day. That may inflate your daily burn.

So, how old are you? Also, how many steps per day are you getting? The steps will give a better idea of how many calories/day you should expect to be burning.

There is, of course, another possibility. The FitBit burns may be accurate, and you may be underestimating how much you're eating. If you're not weighing your food, you should try that to check the the "calories in" half of the equation is correct.

Before a bunch of people chime in that 2800-3500 cals/day is ridiculous for a woman, it's not. I'm just under 5'4 and weigh 165 pounds. My FitBit (Charge 2) reports that I burn anywhere from 2500 to 3100 cals/day, and my weightloss history (combined with food logging) suggests that I burn an average of 2800 cals/day. But to get to that level, I'm walking 15-25K steps per day. If the OP is getting that many steps, her numbers may be real and she would need to tighten up the food logging. If she's more standing than walking, FitBit is probably overestimating for her.

CyberTone

AmberGebell wrote: »

I am asking regarding the calories burned on my Fitbit, I am eating 1560 a day to lose one pound a week and of course I want to lose more but that amount of Calories is the lowest I can do without freaking out of starvation, lol... My Fitbit says I burn 2500- 3500 which is double to triple what I am taking in so confused as to why I am not losing more than a pound. Is that more clear?

I am glad that the original post contained a typing mistake.

You have stated that you do not have Fitbit and MFP synced. Do you log your Calorie intake and changes in weight information in Fitbit? By not syncing the two applications or logging MFP information into the Fitbit application, you are not giving Fitbit a chance to refine or personalize the underlying algorithms it uses to estimate your total daily projection.

Your job as a hairstylist likely involves a lot of jerking arm movements with little stepping besides shuffling around a client or between the chair and counter. Arm movement and jerking of the Fitbit Charge HR could be registered by the Fitbit as steps, slightly inflating estimated Calorie burn, but I doubt by hundreds of Calories per day. I play/practice the piano. When I practice for more than ten minutes, I put my Fitbit Charge HR in my pocket, because I have noticed the left arm movement from playing octave strides with my left hand simulates steps and the Fitbit counts those as steps. Have you thought about taking off the Fitbit one day during work and comparing that day with other days you wear the Fitbit?

Also, how many weeks have you been logging food in MFP? And how many weeks have you been wearing the Fitbit? If one or both answers are fewer than four weeks, you might need to give both of them at least a few more weeks, before declaring that you are "creeping" along at weight loss. Recently, I decided to drop the eight pounds I had gained after I declared I was in "maintenance." It took four weeks of eating at a 250 Calorie deficit before I actually started seeing a consistent downward trend in my weight.

KWlosingit

I have a fitbit one and have it synced with MFP. Fitbit usually says I burn between 2500-3000 per day which seems about right based on how much I am losing per week. The fitbit one is just a step tracker, no heart rate. I don't do any "fitness" activity, I just walk. Usually 10,000-12,000 steps per day with most if it just being my daily activity.

Christine_72

Maybe try turning of the HR feature, and just go by your daily steps. I would not use a heart rate monitor for anything other than steady state cardio.
Also, being a hairdresser you are moving your arms around a lot during the day possible picking up false steps in the process. If it were me, i would swap to a fitbit one or zip that clips onto your bra while i was at work, and use your charge 2 on non work days.

Christine_72

Turning *off* the HR feature, not of..

AmberGebell

I walk between 8000 and 19,000 with average about 13,000. I am 42 and yes I weigh and measure all my food, Thank you for the responses, I am sure the Fitbit is just overestimating and I will not believe it and just do my 1560 calories MFP says to lose a pound

CyberTone

AmberGebell wrote: »

I walk between 8000 and 19,000 with average about 13,000. I am 42 and yes I weigh and measure all my food, Thank you for the responses, I am sure the Fitbit is just overestimating and I will not believe it and just do my 1560 calories MFP says to lose a pound

It looks like you have made up your mind, so good luck to you, and I will just leave this bit of information.

While I was losing weight in July, I was 54 y.o, 5'8" and 150 lbs. My half-pound per week loss goal was 1610 Cals (i.e. 1860 Cals maintenance - 250 Cals deficit). On days when my Fitbit Charge HR logged 13,000 steps, my total Fitbit projection was 2600 Cals. I definitely ate back about half of those extra 1000 Cals in order to fuel that day's activity and minimize any loss of lean muscle mass.

Edited to add: My Diary is open; here is a link to a day with 13,000 steps.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/CyberTone?date=2016-07-08

AmberGebell

So do you think I should do that Cybertone? Eat back half of my calories?

SusanMFindlay

AmberGebell wrote: »

So do you think I should do that Cybertone? Eat back half of my calories?

Hard to say. Based on your numbers, it sounds like FitBit is overestimating - likely due to all the standing (which slightly raises your heartrate; I'm 40, so all I need to do is get my heartrate over 90 for FitBit to count that as "fatburning zone". At 42, it'll do the same thing as soon as your heartrate is over 89.)

If you're measuring your calorie intake accurately, it must be calorie output that's inaccurate. Are you eating the same amount every day? If you have higher days ("treat days", "cheat days", "maintenance days", whatever you want to call them), they need to be factored into the weekly average that you'd use to back-calculate your burn. Once you have a month or so of calorie intake data and weightloss data, you can calculate your deficit reasonably accurately (500 cals for every pound lost per week), add that to your intake and calculate your average daily burn. Compare that number to FitBit's data and it tells you how accurate FitBit is for you.

At the end of the day, that comparison is the number that matters. With regard to the hunger, try shifting your diet toward foods that provide more satiety for you. That's a pretty personal thing. For some, it's high protein foods. For some, it's high fat foods. For some, it's high fibre foods (and/or volume). For some, it's a combination. One place to start would be to look at what you've cut out of your diet. Are you suddenly low fat? If so, that might be making you extra hungry.

CyberTone

AmberGebell wrote: »

So do you think I should do that Cybertone? Eat back half of my calories?

When I first got my Charge HR in August 2015, I also did not sync it with MFP for four weeks; I wanted to do a four week comparison of data. At that time, I thought the Charge HR was overestimating my Calorie burn. After the four weeks, I compared the data and realized that I could eat more than I had been and still lose weight at my desired rate. I synced the Fitbit, dropped logging my exercise Calories on MFP, and trusted the Fitbit total daily projection and averaged eating back about 90% of those extra Calories. I was so much happier, and less hungry.

There is a limit a person's fat stores can burn per day without the body digging in to non-fat stores (lean body mass, such as muscle). That is roughly 30 Cals per pound of fat per day. So, let's say you still want to lose 25 more pounds, 25 pounds of fat can safely provide about 750 Cals per day of a deficit (25 x 30). If you are routinely doing 13,000 steps per day, your Fitbit is averaging about 2600 Cals per day, and you are not eating at least some of those Calories back; you are increasing the risk of losing more than just fat. Once that lean muscle mass is gone, it is tough to get it back without dedicated resistance training (which at that point would require eating at a surplus to build back that muscle).

My recommendation would be to sync MFP and Fitbit and eat back at least 50 to 90% of the earned Calories the synced apps recommend. You said yourself that you are "pretty hungry." I think your body is trying to tell you something, maybe it is time to listen to it.