Garmin forerunner watch says I burned over 1000 calories?!

motolady11

Hey yall so I just got a Garmin watch and it says I burned 1000 calories as active and 1300 as resting, is that even possible?? I go on the treadmill for about an hour every morning walking 3 miles with 12% incline and that burns 300, but I don't do much the rest of the day only errands and chores so do I really burn 1000 calories throughout the day?

AnnPT77

Well, you burn quite a few. Without knowing your height, weight and age, it's hard to say whether that's reasonable or not.

Keep in mind that you'd burn calories even if in a coma (for breathing, brain, heart, digestion, etc. - this is your basal metabolic rate, or BMR.

Then you burn calories doing daily stuff - cooking, getting the mail, taking a shower, etc. This plus your BMR is your Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or NEAT.

And, as you know, you burn extra calories during intention exercise, on top of your NEAT.

Those, plus a couple of small things most people don't worry about, add up to your Total Daily Energy Expenditure, or TDEE.

You'll see those acronyms - BMR, NEAT, TDEE - on here a lot. BMR is usually the biggest chunk for many sedentary people, with the calories for daily activity next in size, and exercise smallest.

As an inactive, small (5'5", 120s), 61-year-old woman, doing the exercise I do, most calculators would estimate my TDEE at somewhere in the 1600s. For someone taller, younger, more active, or heavier, they'd estimate higher. And, from weight loss/maintenance experience, I know that my real TDEE is larger than those estimates.

So, what you're seeing seems certainly in the realm of possibility for you.

TenaciousPeach

That depends on how intense your chores and errands are. If you vacuumed a 4000 sq ft house, went shopping, and stood around in your kitchen, yeah you probably burned 1000 calories including that treadmill workout. The way I gauge my burn when I do things like chores and cooking is I simply gauge how tired I am afterward. Remember, Calories are energy units, we can quantify our diets based on energy in (food) and energy out (body heat + physical work). Burning calories with activity is literal work, and it should feel that way. What I have found is that 400 calories burned over a reasonably short period of time (less than several hours) makes me just as tired in the long run regardless of the way in which I burn them. Standing around cooking, cleaning my kitchen, and doing dishes takes 2-3 hours and burns the same amount of calories as my speed walking workout of 4 miles, and it's equally tiring. So, in short, if you don't feel wiped out, you probably didn't burn 1000 calories. Experience has shown me that many of these activity trackers are horribly inaccurate, I think mostly because the data science behind them isn't that great just yet. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and being kind to yourself doesn't burn fat, being a calorie cynic does.

AnnPT77

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motolady11

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Well, you burn quite a few. Without knowing your height, weight and age, it's hard to say whether that's reasonable or not.

Keep in mind that you'd burn calories even if in a coma (for breathing, brain, heart, digestion, etc. - this is your basal metabolic rate, or BMR.

Then you burn calories doing daily stuff - cooking, getting the mail, taking a shower, etc. This plus your BMR is your Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or NEAT.

And, as you know, you burn extra calories during intention exercise, on top of your NEAT.

Those, plus a couple of small things most people don't worry about, add up to your Total Daily Energy Expenditure, or TDEE.

You'll see those acronyms - BMR, NEAT, TDEE - on here a lot. BMR is usually the biggest chunk for many sedentary people, with the calories for daily activity next in size, and exercise smallest.

As an inactive, small (5'5", 120s), 61-year-old woman, doing the exercise I do, most calculators would estimate my TDEE at somewhere in the 1600s. For someone taller, younger, more active, or heavier, they'd estimate higher. And, from weight loss/maintenance experience, I know that my real TDEE is larger than those estimates.

So, what you're seeing seems certainly in the realm of possibility for you.

I am 5'9 and 24 yrs old and 123lbs

emmarrgh

I just got a Fit Bit knockoff, and it adds my 10,000 steps (no exercise, just daily movement) to MFP and MFP gives me 1,700 extra calories to eat! I know better than to eat them - eating 2400 cals a day is what made me 220lbs in the first place lol.

I have upped my activity level settings to lightly active, and hoping it won't give me so many extra cals now. I thought 10k steps was normal. I contemplated turning off step tracking but I like having them and my good logged on the same app.

AnnPT77

motolady11 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Well, you burn quite a few. Without knowing your height, weight and age, it's hard to say whether that's reasonable or not.

Keep in mind that you'd burn calories even if in a coma (for breathing, brain, heart, digestion, etc. - this is your basal metabolic rate, or BMR.

Then you burn calories doing daily stuff - cooking, getting the mail, taking a shower, etc. This plus your BMR is your Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or NEAT.

And, as you know, you burn extra calories during intention exercise, on top of your NEAT.

Those, plus a couple of small things most people don't worry about, add up to your Total Daily Energy Expenditure, or TDEE.

You'll see those acronyms - BMR, NEAT, TDEE - on here a lot. BMR is usually the biggest chunk for many sedentary people, with the calories for daily activity next in size, and exercise smallest.

As an inactive, small (5'5", 120s), 61-year-old woman, doing the exercise I do, most calculators would estimate my TDEE at somewhere in the 1600s. For someone taller, younger, more active, or heavier, they'd estimate higher. And, from weight loss/maintenance experience, I know that my real TDEE is larger than those estimates.

So, what you're seeing seems certainly in the realm of possibility for you.

I am 5'9 and 24 yrs old and 123lbs

Something 2100-2500ish would be a common range for someone your size/age, depending on how hard you're hitting that treadmill, and what your daily life is like (even for a sedentary life, people differ in other daily activity).

So your Fitbit numbers seem rational. At your current weight, since you're so light, I'm assuming you want to maintain or even gain, so by all means don't be afraid to eat the calories your Fitbit is giving you, and see what happens over a period of weeks.

(I put your data into an online TDEE calculator, with a range of activity assumptions, to get that range, BTW. MFP's profile settings calculate a NEAT for you, which you eat back to maintain, and you add intentional exercise separately, and eat that back too (or some of it, if you worry it's over-estimated). But with the Fitbit, just eating what it says is a good starting point.)