Obese walkers and fitbit burn

jelleigh

I'm trying to get a feel for how accurate my fitbit burn is and (as per my other thread) I think it's going to take awhile to get enough of my own data to see trends.
So for others who might have a similar lifestyle, how accurate do you find the fitbit calories burned?
I am 5'8" and 196 lbs. I walk an average of 12-14000 steps a day but not very briskly. I might make it to the gym once a week and do a C2K on the treadmill on a 3.5 incline followed by a small amount of weightlifting. My fitbit says I'm burning an average of 2500 calories a day, or 300 more than MFP expects as I'm set to lightly active. My calorie goal is 1470 for 1.5 lbs per week loss. I'm down 4.7 lbs so far this month but no idea how 'real' that is.
Edited for my typos

PAV8888

12 to 14k would be the upper reaches of active if not very active for many people on MFP. Are you getting a higher number than that from your Fitbit? It sounds to me as if it is putting you in the active level approximately... which sounds about right!

How close you track to the numbers you will know from your trend after a few weeks....

jelleigh

Wow ok I wouldn't have expected just walking to put me into the active category. Most descriptions say you have to be doing deliberate exercise or intense sports like 3-5 times a week. I walk a lot but it's all at work at the hospital and its in small bursts of I would say moderate pace. I don't think my heart rate every really gets up. Like my fitbit doesn't recognize it as 'active minutes'.

Deviette

jelleigh wrote: »

Wow ok I wouldn't have expected just walking to put me into the active category. Most descriptions say you have to be doing deliberate exercise or intense sports like 3-5 times a week. I walk a lot but it's all at work at the hospital and its in small bursts of I would say moderate pace. I don't think my heart rate every really gets up. Like my fitbit doesn't recognize it as 'active minutes'.

MFP works slightly differently to other calculators. Deliberate exercise is counted separately and so the activity is supposed to just be from your every day actions. For most people this is basically how much they walk around at work.

I don't really have very similar stats to you, however I would say that historically I've found my fitbit calculation to be pretty accurate. And looking at the numbers you're saying, that does kinda sound like it's in the right ball park. At the end of the day it will always be an estimate so don't take the numbers as red, however it only takes a couple of months of data to give you a pretty good idea of how accurate it is.

NorthCascades

jelleigh wrote: »

Wow ok I wouldn't have expected just walking to put me into the active category. Most descriptions say you have to be doing deliberate exercise or intense sports like 3-5 times a week. I walk a lot but it's all at work at the hospital and its in small bursts of I would say moderate pace. I don't think my heart rate every really gets up. Like my fitbit doesn't recognize it as 'active minutes'.

Your car burns gas whether you drive slowly like a grandmother and the RPMs never get very high, or if you're driving like a maniac at breakneck speed. Heart rate really doesn't mean anything for calories.

heybales

jelleigh wrote: »

Wow ok I wouldn't have expected just walking to put me into the active category. Most descriptions say you have to be doing deliberate exercise or intense sports like 3-5 times a week. I walk a lot but it's all at work at the hospital and its in small bursts of I would say moderate pace. I don't think my heart rate every really gets up. Like my fitbit doesn't recognize it as 'active minutes'.

That would be an activity level description of a non-MFP site dealing with TDEE which includes exercise since it's TOTAL Daily burn.

I'll add that's it's not so much the steps when dealing with calories, but rather the distance those steps leads to.
Because distance and time and weight lets calculating calories with very good accuracy occur.

Oh - the 1470 eating goal is if you were truly only Lightly-Active with NO exercise being done.

But it sounds like neither is true - you are more active, and do exercise.

So take the full adjustment that MFP tells you.

Only improvements - confirming Fitbit has your distance correct at your average daily pace. Not grocery store shuffle, not exercise pace. Mid-point, like maybe 2 mph, for 1/2 to 1 mile.

Create a workout when you do that on the treadmill (it will seem very slow) or a track so you have Fitbit stats available afterwards. Start and stop it for right when say 1 mile is reached.
Now you can see what Fitbit saw for distance, perhaps it's right on exact, and how many steps you took.
If not a little math for stride length.
You can correct your stride length in Fitbit now and increase accuracy for all those daily steps.

As weight is lost, that will likely change as form allows perhaps farther stride. Maybe not.

PAV8888

Fitbit sometimes doesn't recognize work-related steps if there's not enough of them in a row or of they're not emphatic enough.

It sounds to me that your steps are emphatic enough and enough at a time so that your Fitbit recognizes them.

They might even be fast enough so that they would amount to a MET 3 activity such that Fitbit would normally consider it as part of your active minutes.

But since you are at work you probably stop at less than 10 continuous minutes.

And Fitbit counts active minutes only at the 10+minute mark, following the CDC's ten minutes at a time approach for active living.