How accurate are fitbits

drivingahead
drivingahead Posts: 47 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I have a fitbit charge 3 and was just wondering how accurate they are? And also how accurate the exercise stats are on fitness pal..I've done 35 mins of exercise today.....rower, running and x trainer and its put me down as having burnt 700 calories given I'm 333lbs and 6ft does this seem reasonable? My fitbit says today I have burnt over 4000 calories and I have consumed on my fitness pal 2300 and I accurately weigh everything. Any tips or advice would be great x

Replies

  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,260 Member
    Trust your Fitbit for now.

    Evaluate your net calories eaten and your weight trend progress after 4-6 weeks for women who have monthly hormonal fluctuations and 2-4 weeks for everyone else. If using a Fitbit connect trendweight.com to your account to get your weight trend, and use that number in your calculations.

    Your results will give you an error value compared to your Fitbit TDEE.

    This error will be caused by both logging and estimating errors and may change over time.

    However it is a good indication of how much you can take as a given the calories that your Fitbit tells you you spend.

  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    It will vary.

    For some they underestimate. For some they overestimate. Then there are people that it comes close to their actual numbers.

    Give it a few weeks and:
    - Avg Fitbit Burn minus Avg Total Intake = Avg daily deficit
    - Avg deficit * # of days used to find avg = total deficit
    - Total deficit/ 3500 = expected loss
    - How close does your actual weight loss match the expected?

    I am one who finds that:

    Models without HRMs will underestimate by an avg of 250 calories a day.

    Models with HRMS are close enough that I lose/maintain/gain as expected. (Though still slightly under as I get away without tracking everything)

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