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MyFitnessPal Community

Garmin vivosmart calories question

KMW1219

Hello! Sorry if this is a newbie question, but I was wanting to know how accurate my garmin vivosmart is as far as calorie burn goes. I've been working on myself for a few weeks and I thought I'd buy a fitness tracker to help me keep on track with my calorie burn/intake. I've worn it the last two days and it's showing me that I'm burning about 3500 calories a day, without exercise. I wanted to find what my natural daily burn was before exercise. Do you think this is a somewhat accurate number of calories that I'm burning? I am 28 years old and I weigh 288 lbs currently.

Thank you in advance for your time!

Replies

WalkingDeadFrank

KMW1219 wrote: »

Hello! Sorry if this is a newbie question, but I was wanting to know how accurate my garmin vivosmart is as far as calorie burn goes. I've been working on myself for a few weeks and I thought I'd buy a fitness tracker to help me keep on track with my calorie burn/intake. I've worn it the last two days and it's showing me that I'm burning about 3500 calories a day, without exercise. I wanted to find what my natural daily burn was before exercise. Do you think this is a somewhat accurate number of calories that I'm burning? I am 28 years old and I weigh 288 lbs currently.

Thank you in advance for your time!

Are you all muscle???

HappyGrape

It wasn't as accurate as fitbit for me, I had vivosmart active. The daily totals seem to be random very often.

Example day with gym, 22000 steps, swim - 1800 calories
Day with 9000 steps, no gym 2500 calories total daily burn

I returned it as I use my tracker for maintenance and this inconsistency would mess things up for me

MeanderingMammal

KMW1219 wrote: »

Hello! Sorry if this is a newbie question, but I was wanting to know how accurate my garmin vivosmart is as far as calorie burn goes.

With pedometer type trackers it's near impossible for someone else to say whether it's right for you or not.

Wrist worn trackers in general are more sensitive than clip on, so it should reduce the numbers of steps missed, but that also means more false positives. A lot depends on your lifestyle as well. The connection to MFP also confuse a lot of people, because that isn't really fixed until the end of the day. MFP will estimate based on what it thinks you're doing. You'll see big changes early in the day, and much smaller late.

With anyone expressing an opinion, you need to understand whether they're taking figures directly from their device, or from MFP after it's synchronised.

What's worth appreciating is that, most of your daily calorie expenditure is basically what you burn by existing.

I've had VivoSmart and then VivoSmart HR for about 20 months and I'm happy with it. I don't have experience of other device types, I stick with Garmin as my running and cycling GPS and my action camera all fit into the same ecosystem.

At face value, 3500 cals for BMR at your weight isn't unrealistic.

KMW1219

Thank you very much everyone!

Tacklewasher

Are you just wearing it without recording an activity, or are you recording an activity (say walking)? The VSHR screws up and double counts calories when you record activities.

prattiger65

That seems high. Just a rough number for your stats would probably be closer to 2500-2800, considering light activity.