Fitbit calories burned seems high?

merifey

I just started using a FitBit Flex for about a week now and the calories it says that I have burned seem really high. I haven't been actively trying to increase my step count this week just so I could get a baseline and have been averaging about 6000-7000 steps a day. I haven't logged any exercise for today at all and according to my FitBit app have only done about 4700 steps for today but according to MFP I've burned about 430 calories? This seems like a huge amount to be eating back and I'm not done with my day. I have my activity levels on both MFP and FitBit set to sedentary, I'm 5'2" and 260lbs, and have MFP and FitBit set to lose 2lbs a week. I'm a bit confused as to what's going on. Any help would be appreciated.

shagerty777

Fitbit calculates all calories burned during a 24 hr period, basically your TDEE. Hour by hour it adds to that figure. I have found it best to not eat back the exercise calories or at best, only half of them. If calories burned were a really accurate figure, I'd weigh 100 pounds by now... Good luck!!

merifey

Thanks, that makes sense. I do find it annoying that MFP counts those calories as exercise then. I guess that means I'll be unsyncing my Fitbit.

MegaMooseEsq

There are a ton of threads floating around about how to get Fitbits to synch, but to be honest, I was never able to get it to work myself. I ended up logging active calories as exercise (usually walking or jogging) and ignoring the steps, and then I switched to an Apple Watch for unrelated reasons. That said, I know other people get the calorie adjustment to work with Fitbit, so it might be worth a little digging to see if you can get it to work.

SezxyStef

shagerty777 wrote: »

Fitbit calculates all calories burned during a 24 hr period, basically your TDEE. Hour by hour it adds to that figure. I have found it best to not eat back the exercise calories or at best, only half of them. If calories burned were a really accurate figure, I'd weigh 100 pounds by now... Good luck!!

@merifey and @shagerty777

Fitbit takes your activity and assumes a number for the end of the day..for me today it's 2088 ad this is based on a total calorie burn of 1511 for the day so far...that is total calories including breathing etc

then it takes your stats from MFP including height weight age gender and activity level and gives you an assumed total calorie burn for that for me today it's 1687

so my adjustment for fitbit is 401 calories...

But keep in mind my fitbit is set to lose weight and so is MFP so it takes that into account as well.

https://myfitnesspal.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1084232-what-is-the-calorie-adjustment-in-my-exercise-diary?article_id=1084232-what-is-the-calorie-adjustment-in-my-exercise-diary

On the calculation page, under the partner totals, you should then see your MyFitnessPal total. The MyFitnessPal total includes not only your daily goals, but also the calories needed to reach the goals you have set within the program, such as lose 1 pound, (we originally deduct these calories when providing your daily goals on MyFitnessPal, they then must be added back in when comparing against your actual total burn from your partner device). Since our program instantly awards calories to your day when exercises are added into the cardiovascular section, to avoid double credit, we also add your cardiovascular totals in with your MyFitnessPal total.

So the adjustment you are seeing is basically the same as if you had logged an exercise...as a matter of fact if you log a walk at 100 calories you will see that adjustment go down.

MFP is designed for you to eat back exercise calories as it assumes no exercise and gives you the calorie goal to lose the weight you want.

aeloine

I had a lot of luck with telling it that I was using my dominant hand and actually using non-dominant hand. It cancelled out a lot more "noise"

BrianSharpe

If you want to sanity check your fitbit's calculations 10,000 steps is, on average, 5 miles of walking. Walking burns about 30 cal/mile for every 100lbs of body weight so someone weighing 150 lbs walking 5 miles would expend about 225 cal in addition to their BMR.

rsclause

I wouldn't unsync the fit bit as it can be motivational. Set your base activity level as inactive and now let fitbit be the activity monitor. I also don't recommend eating back walking calories until you have established a baseline that you are in deficit and losing weight.

Maxxitt

rsclause wrote: »

I wouldn't unsync the fit bit as it can be motivational. Set your base activity level as inactive and now let fitbit be the activity monitor. I also don't recommend eating back walking calories until you have established a baseline that you are in deficit and losing weight.

^^This

Psychgrrl

BrianSharpe wrote: »

If you want to sanity check your fitbit's calculations 10,000 steps is, on average, 5 miles of walking. Walking burns about 30 cal/mile for every 100lbs of body weight so someone weighing 150 lbs walking 5 miles would expend about 225 cal in addition to their BMR.

Do you have a source for that?

WinoGelato

How many total calories does FitBit say your are burning on average?

Keep in mind that the adjustments from MFP is a true up between the amount of calories that MFP thinks you would burn, based on information you entered during set up, and the actual calories you burned according to FitBit. FitBit is an activity tracker and as such, measures your total calories burned from all your daily activity including just keeping you alive, general activity, and purposeful exercise. The sum of those is called TDEE and is equivalent to your Maintenance calories. Eating below that, should result in weight loss.

For what it's worth I'm 5'2 and about 120 lbs and my total calorie burn is around 2200. MFP thinks my calorie burn is around 1850 for my stats, so I can easily get 300-400 calorie adjustments for the steps I take.

firef1y72

WinoGelato wrote: »

How many total calories does FitBit say your are burning on average?

Keep in mind that the adjustments from MFP is a true up between the amount of calories that MFP thinks you would burn, based on information you entered during set up, and the actual calories you burned according to FitBit. FitBit is an activity tracker and as such, measures your total calories burned from all your daily activity including just keeping you alive, general activity, and purposeful exercise. The sum of those is called TDEE and is equivalent to your Maintenance calories. Eating below that, should result in weight loss.

For what it's worth I'm 5'2 and about 120 lbs and my total calorie burn is around 2200. MFP thinks my calorie burn is around 1850 for my stats, so I can easily get 300-400 calorie adjustments for the steps I take.

I'm the same height but (quite) a bit heavier at 148lb and Fitbit (Flex2) gives me around 2500 Calories on my lower activity days (20000+ steps) and 3500 on a higher activity day, I have MFP set to lightly active (works best with the Garmin I also wear) and a 250 Calorie deficit (for covering any treats including a weekly cake date with my 3yo) and have been maintaining by eating at that level for almost 2 months now (previously lost 141lb eating what the Fitbit/MFP combination gave me), which is anything from 1000-2000 credited Calories over and above the base level.

WinoGelato

firef1y72 wrote: »

WinoGelato wrote: »

How many total calories does FitBit say your are burning on average?

Keep in mind that the adjustments from MFP is a true up between the amount of calories that MFP thinks you would burn, based on information you entered during set up, and the actual calories you burned according to FitBit. FitBit is an activity tracker and as such, measures your total calories burned from all your daily activity including just keeping you alive, general activity, and purposeful exercise. The sum of those is called TDEE and is equivalent to your Maintenance calories. Eating below that, should result in weight loss.

For what it's worth I'm 5'2 and about 120 lbs and my total calorie burn is around 2200. MFP thinks my calorie burn is around 1850 for my stats, so I can easily get 300-400 calorie adjustments for the steps I take.

I'm the same height but (quite) a bit heavier at 148lb and Fitbit (Flex2) gives me around 2500 Calories on my lower activity days (20000+ steps) and 3500 on a higher activity day, I have MFP set to lightly active (works best with the Garmin I also wear) and a 250 Calorie deficit (for covering any treats including a weekly cake date with my 3yo) and have been maintaining by eating at that level for almost 2 months now (previously lost 141lb eating what the Fitbit/MFP combination gave me), which is anything from 1000-2000 credited Calories over and above the base level.

Sounds about right. I think that there is this inherent distrust of high calorie adjustments and a basic misunderstanding of how FitBit and MFP work together that leads to new users thinking they should ignore the information or even unsync the devices.

I lost the weight I set out to lose and am currently maintaining, trusting the numbers, even though at first blush, they seem unreasonably high for a petite female with a desk job... but because I average 15k steps/day I'm definitely not Sedentary and my approach with a moderate deficit seems to have benefited me in keeping my NEAT fairly high.

merifey

WinoGelato wrote: »

How many total calories does FitBit say your are burning on average?

On average, my FitBit says that I'm burning around 2700 calories a day. I've logged all my food for today in MFP and it's telling me I have 500 calories left to eat whereas my FitBit app is telling me 100. So I'm still confused as to how MFP and FitBit are suppose to work together.

WinoGelato

merifey wrote: »

WinoGelato wrote: »

How many total calories does FitBit say your are burning on average?

On average, my FitBit says that I'm burning around 2700 calories a day. I've logged all my food for today in MFP and it's telling me I have 500 calories left to eat whereas my FitBit app is telling me 100. So I'm still confused as to how MFP and FitBit are suppose to work together.

Most people do not look at FitBit for food calories or calorie adjustments. They set the two up with consistent goals and settings, log food in MFP, exercise in FitBit, and let the two systems work out the math with their different algorithms. They likely won't ever match, so trying to figure out why or how they are different is going to drive you nuts. Just take the calorie adjustment on MFP, and if you're skeptical, start out with eating only about 50% of the calories at first, then monitor and adjust based on whether you are losing at your targeted rate or not.

Do you have negative calorie adjustments enabled, so that if you have a less active than normal day (or even first thing when you wake up) you'll see a downward adjustment of calories? This, along with patience and a bit of trust, is one of the best things you can do when using a FitBit synced with MFP.