Fit bit accuracy
Replies
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georgiamaxine1 wrote: »Thanks for all of your help! I have my fit but linked to mfp but don't understand how it works? Does it link your steps/calories burned to mfp?
Yes, if your activity level as recorded by Fitbit exceeds the default level you have set in MFP, it will give you extra calories. In my experience, I have myself set as Sedentary in MFP so it gives me the "bare minimum" to start the day as my calorie goal and I earn more once I exceed that default level, which usually happens around 3k steps. This motivates me to move more, as the more I move, the more calories I get.
If you set your activity level higher, you will start the day with more calories but would have to exert more activity before the Fitbit will award extra cals. If you set your level higher than Sedentary, the consensus seems to be to make sure you have negative adjustments enabled. If you have a day with lower activity than you selected, the Fitbit will take away calories until you meet that level.
Hope all that makes sense...
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Here's how you find out. Because the accuracy of the Fitbit or any wearable device is affected by many factors, no one can tell you your Fitbit is "this accurate". But here is what is completely accurate if you make it so. Measure and log your food accurately. Weigh yourself daily first thing in the morning always wearing the same thing. Use a site like Trendweight.com to track your weight and calculate averages so as not to be fooled by water weight fluctuations. (This is easiest with an Aria) Use your Fitbit's info and eat at the same deficit every day, or every week. If you are losing .5 pound a week your real deficit is 250 calories per day. If you are losing 1 pound a week your real deficit is 500 calories per day. You can see and know for yourself if your Fitbit is accurate or not and adjust accordingly. Don't trust electronics to do all the thinking for you. Think for yourself and let the electronics help you. My Fitbit is consistently off by about 150 calories. One thing about Fitbit is that it seems to be consistent on average. However I have moved on from letting the Fitbit decide my calorie intake. I found my maintenance by the above method and I add calories for extra steps and strength training very conservatively and my numbers are dead on. It took a little time for me to learn this but because I did, my weight loss and maintenance no longer depend on electronics because I know my body well now. When my Fitbit doesn't sync to MFP, I don't care because I know what I am burning based on steps. If I swim, I conservatively add more as well because that doesn't give me steps but it sure burns calories! But again, I don't just trust MFP's calories. I still track my weight and adjust what I am doing as needed. Wearables and MFP are all great tools but success comes from educating yourself as much as you can about how deficits and weight work. That's where confidence comes from. I know with confidence how much I burn because I know with confidence how much I am losing or not. Scales don't lie but you do need to know how to read them.5
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One more thing. I log my food to the gram on MFP every day. My reports say I eat an average of 1700 calories a day. Fitbit say I burn an average of 1900 calories a day. My scale show my weight maintaining perfectly. So it seems Fitbit Charge HR 2 for me is 200 calories a day too high. That's an example of how you can know for sure. But it does take diligence and consistency.1
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Either that, or logging inaccuracies, or a little bit of both.....0
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CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »StaciMarie1974 wrote: »ps my Fitbits HR function is NOT super accurate depending on what I'm doing. Too often it shows no reading, or will show 60-something when I'm in the middle of a brisk walk going uphill.
same here when exercising a lot of times it will show no heart rate, sometimes when Im even sitting still. I tell hubby"well according to my fitbit Im dead" lol.
Not sure yet if this is causation or correlation, but I'm more likely to have a bad/missing HR readout on the Charge 2 HR if my arms are low, hanging. If I have my elbows bent, hands slightly higher than elbow & closer to heart level, I almost always get a more reasonable # showing for HR. Maybe something to do with the position but it might be random luck also.1 -
georgiamaxine1 wrote: »Thanks for all of your help! I have my fit but linked to mfp but don't understand how it works? Does it link your steps/calories burned to mfp?
When you use MFP and tell it an activity level: MFP estimates how many calories you'll burn in a day based on your stats and activity level. For example sake, say it assumes I will burn 1800. THis averages out to 75 per hour.
Fitbit estimates your calorie burn daily using your stats and your actual movement. The difference between MFP's prediction and Fitbit's actual calculation will result in an adjustment on your daily calories at MFP. Note though, that if you do not have negative adjustments enabled you'll see a 0 adjustment if your Fitbit burned # is less than what MFP expected.
So back to my example. I am 5'5.5", 127ish pounds, 42, female and lightly active. MFP expects me to burn 1800 daily. For yesterday, Fitbit said I burned 2000 so that would be a +200 on yesterday.
Each time you sync, Fitbit sends data to MFP about what you've burned so far for hte day and MFP uses its estimation to predict where you'll end. I'll break it down:
*5:00am I wake up. I was in bed, sleeping, not being active. My BMR is about 50 per hour so Fitbit says I've burned 250. If I sync now, since MFP expects 75 per hour, my adjustment would show -125 because MFP expected me to be at 375. Note: MFP cannot calculate that you're sleeping some hours, on your feet others, etc.
*5-6:00am I am moving around the house, getting ready for my day. At 6am I'm at 325 burned. MFP expected 450, so I'm still -125
7:00am I go for an hour run, and at 8am I'm at 750 burned. MFP expected 525 so now I'm +175
Each time you sync thru the day, MFP makes these calculations.
At 10pm, Fitbit says I have burned 1900 and I am going to bed. MFP expected 1650 after 22 hours, so +250. But MFP also expects me to burn 75 cals each of the last 2 hours of the day and I won't. So when I sync the next day, Fitbit will probably show me about 2000 total burned for the completed day, and the adjustment will change to +200.1 -
StaciMarie1974 wrote: »CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »StaciMarie1974 wrote: »ps my Fitbits HR function is NOT super accurate depending on what I'm doing. Too often it shows no reading, or will show 60-something when I'm in the middle of a brisk walk going uphill.
same here when exercising a lot of times it will show no heart rate, sometimes when Im even sitting still. I tell hubby"well according to my fitbit Im dead" lol.
Not sure yet if this is causation or correlation, but I'm more likely to have a bad/missing HR readout on the Charge 2 HR if my arms are low, hanging. If I have my elbows bent, hands slightly higher than elbow & closer to heart level, I almost always get a more reasonable # showing for HR. Maybe something to do with the position but it might be random luck also.
I dont know it for me happens at all times and sometimes when I check my pulse manually against my fitbit its very seldom the same.same with when I use my polar ft7,it will give me another number than my fitbit will. The polar FT7 was more accurate than the fitbit.0 -
CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »
I dont know it for me happens at all times and sometimes when I check my pulse manually against my fitbit its very seldom the same.same with when I use my polar ft7,it will give me another number than my fitbit will. The polar FT7 was more accurate than the fitbit.
That uses a chest strap, yes? I doubt a wrist-worn HR will ever be as accurate as a chest strap.
Personally, I think the Fitbit One is the best Fitbit model. But I like the additional features that come with the Fitbit Charge 2 HR. And you can have multiple devices on one Fitbit profile. So I wear both. It seems to me that Fitbit uses data from each of them. It tracks cardio automatically w/ the Charge 2 but uses the step count from the One. The Charge 2 often does not count steps if I move a little at a time, like going to the bathroom at work which is 10 feet from my office. And if I'm doing something using my hands (folding pizza boxes in a part time job @ Dominos for example) the Charge 2 adds steps, but when I sync the One takes them back off. They work together pretty well.
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StaciMarie1974 wrote: »CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »
I dont know it for me happens at all times and sometimes when I check my pulse manually against my fitbit its very seldom the same.same with when I use my polar ft7,it will give me another number than my fitbit will. The polar FT7 was more accurate than the fitbit.
That uses a chest strap, yes? I doubt a wrist-worn HR will ever be as accurate as a chest strap.
Personally, I think the Fitbit One is the best Fitbit model. But I like the additional features that come with the Fitbit Charge 2 HR. And you can have multiple devices on one Fitbit profile. So I wear both. It seems to me that Fitbit uses data from each of them. It tracks cardio automatically w/ the Charge 2 but uses the step count from the One. The Charge 2 often does not count steps if I move a little at a time, like going to the bathroom at work which is 10 feet from my office. And if I'm doing something using my hands (folding pizza boxes in a part time job @ Dominos for example) the Charge 2 adds steps, but when I sync the One takes them back off. They work together pretty well.
Interesting! I've noticed the same thing with my charge 2. There was one night that I was within about 400 steps to my goal so I was walking around my apartment to get those steps and was getting frustrated when it wouldn't pick up the steps.
Another time, I was sorting through paperwork for a little bit and noticed that it added steps for that. So I figure that all the skipping steps and some added steps cancel each other out.1 -
My theory is that the newer Fitbits were intended to be less sensitive, so that it would take more 'arm movement' to make them register false steps. Which would mean you need more bodily movement to get it counting steps also. Better to be falsely too low than falsely too high? I've noticed w/ the One that if I take a step or two, it does not count. That I need to move 5+ steps and it will add all 5+. This threshold seems higher w/ the Charge 2, like it might need 8-10 to get it going.
But it will also depend on the user and how they move. Almost every time I sync my One is higher step # than my Charge 2. But Hubby is different. He also wears both. He must talk alot with his hands or something because he said his step # from the Charge is usually higher than his One, so when he syncs he gets the lower number.
Fitbit seems able to tell when you're only wearing 1 device though. Saturday I changed shorts before heading out to walk, only had on the Charge 2, and was really afraid that I was going to lose 8,000 steps when I got back home, got the One and synced. But I did not lose the steps. Was the Fitbit Goal Day 2017 so I was nervous, wanted that badge.RosieRose7673 wrote: »
Interesting! I've noticed the same thing with my charge 2. There was one night that I was within about 400 steps to my goal so I was walking around my apartment to get those steps and was getting frustrated when it wouldn't pick up the steps.
Another time, I was sorting through paperwork for a little bit and noticed that it added steps for that. So I figure that all the skipping steps and some added steps cancel each other out.
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reyoflightphoto wrote: »Here's how you find out. Because the accuracy of the Fitbit or any wearable device is affected by many factors, no one can tell you your Fitbit is "this accurate". But here is what is completely accurate if you make it so. Measure and log your food accurately. Weigh yourself daily first thing in the morning always wearing the same thing. Use a site like Trendweight.com to track your weight and calculate averages so as not to be fooled by water weight fluctuations. (This is easiest with an Aria) Use your Fitbit's info and eat at the same deficit every day, or every week. If you are losing .5 pound a week your real deficit is 250 calories per day. If you are losing 1 pound a week your real deficit is 500 calories per day. You can see and know for yourself if your Fitbit is accurate or not and adjust accordingly. Don't trust electronics to do all the thinking for you. Think for yourself and let the electronics help you. My Fitbit is consistently off by about 150 calories. One thing about Fitbit is that it seems to be consistent on average. However I have moved on from letting the Fitbit decide my calorie intake. I found my maintenance by the above method and I add calories for extra steps and strength training very conservatively and my numbers are dead on. It took a little time for me to learn this but because I did, my weight loss and maintenance no longer depend on electronics because I know my body well now. When my Fitbit doesn't sync to MFP, I don't care because I know what I am burning based on steps. If I swim, I conservatively add more as well because that doesn't give me steps but it sure burns calories! But again, I don't just trust MFP's calories. I still track my weight and adjust what I am doing as needed. Wearables and MFP are all great tools but success comes from educating yourself as much as you can about how deficits and weight work. That's where confidence comes from. I know with confidence how much I burn because I know with confidence how much I am losing or not. Scales don't lie but you do need to know how to read them.
This.
Also, to anyone asking if a specific calorie burn seems high? We can't possibly answer that without knowing your height and weight (as well as age, gender and step count). My husband is 9 inches taller than me and about 70 pounds heavier. He will burn as much as 1000 more calories in a day doing the exact same thing as me.
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StaciMarie1974 wrote: »CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »
I dont know it for me happens at all times and sometimes when I check my pulse manually against my fitbit its very seldom the same.same with when I use my polar ft7,it will give me another number than my fitbit will. The polar FT7 was more accurate than the fitbit.
That uses a chest strap, yes? I doubt a wrist-worn HR will ever be as accurate as a chest strap.
Personally, I think the Fitbit One is the best Fitbit model. But I like the additional features that come with the Fitbit Charge 2 HR. And you can have multiple devices on one Fitbit profile. So I wear both. It seems to me that Fitbit uses data from each of them. It tracks cardio automatically w/ the Charge 2 but uses the step count from the One. The Charge 2 often does not count steps if I move a little at a time, like going to the bathroom at work which is 10 feet from my office. And if I'm doing something using my hands (folding pizza boxes in a part time job @ Dominos for example) the Charge 2 adds steps, but when I sync the One takes them back off. They work together pretty well.
yes its a chest strap one.0 -
StaciMarie1974 wrote: »My theory is that the newer Fitbits were intended to be less sensitive, so that it would take more 'arm movement' to make them register false steps. Which would mean you need more bodily movement to get it counting steps also. Better to be falsely too low than falsely too high? I've noticed w/ the One that if I take a step or two, it does not count. That I need to move 5+ steps and it will add all 5+. This threshold seems higher w/ the Charge 2, like it might need 8-10 to get it going.
But it will also depend on the user and how they move. Almost every time I sync my One is higher step # than my Charge 2. But Hubby is different. He also wears both. He must talk alot with his hands or something because he said his step # from the Charge is usually higher than his One, so when he syncs he gets the lower number.
Fitbit seems able to tell when you're only wearing 1 device though. Saturday I changed shorts before heading out to walk, only had on the Charge 2, and was really afraid that I was going to lose 8,000 steps when I got back home, got the One and synced. But I did not lose the steps. Was the Fitbit Goal Day 2017 so I was nervous, wanted that badge.RosieRose7673 wrote: »
Interesting! I've noticed the same thing with my charge 2. There was one night that I was within about 400 steps to my goal so I was walking around my apartment to get those steps and was getting frustrated when it wouldn't pick up the steps.
Another time, I was sorting through paperwork for a little bit and noticed that it added steps for that. So I figure that all the skipping steps and some added steps cancel each other out.
That would make sense for the Charge 2. I would definitely rather it undercount than overcount! With the exception of when I'm soooo close to my step goal!
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I also have the Blaze and I use trendweight to keep track. I eat at a 1000 calorie deficit according to my fitbit's data and careful logging (over on fitbit, not here) and my actual deficit according to my weight loss is 683 calories per day, so a difference of around 317 calories. Now, I am borderline hypothyroid but not low enough to treat AND like the poster above mentioned, food labels aren't always accurate. So, how much of that 317 calorie difference is food logging error, or food label error, or blaze tracking error or me just burning less than the averages assumed in the model they are using? Meh, NO idea. But, I do know that I could simply eat around 300 calories less than the blaze says to correct for the difference. I have a lot to lose, so, I could, but, I'm consistently losing and I think I'm just going to stick with what I'm doing.
I will say that the Blaze is consistent. So, even if you aren't a dead match for the averages it's built to calculate around you can still use it as a tool to figure things out so long as you use it with trending too, like trendweight or some similar thing.2 -
NorthCascades wrote: »Gave Beth 1,000 steps driving home from the last hike we did. Bigly accurate! The best!
Download the DriveBit app and when you are in the car, start the clock (can chose what kind of vehicle, driver, passenger etc) and that turns any "steps" taken during that time into an "activity and removes it from your step count.
I drive a manual, up and down a mountain 2x a day. It would NEVER be accurate without the 2nd app.
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You have to keep in mind too that 1) it's easy to underestimate how much you're eating, 2) MFP gives too many calories for extra steps (but it gets fixed at midnight... which is kinda too late).0
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