Same steps. Different Calories?
Options
AKTipsyCat
Posts: 240 Member
Yesterday Fitbit gave me over 1000 extra calories for walking a little over 10k. Today I walked just about the same number of steps- but it gave my like 267? The HECK?
1
Replies
-
Correction. MFP gave me wildly different calories for the same steps.1
-
So MFP is only using the info supplied by Fitbit - Total Calories burned.
Forget the calorie Adjustment - what was the Fitbit Total Calories burned for each day?
Did you enter in workouts manually into MFP?0 -
I've seen this, too! It's driving me crazy! This morning, my epic workout had me with a calorie adjustment of 650ish, which changed to 41 by midday. Normally, I'm used to a 100-200 difference by the end of the day, but not this dramatic.
It seems like heybales is onto something as the calorie adjustment it's giving is solely based on the difference between Fitbit's projected burn and MFP's. This isn't calculating how many additional calories above the normal base one could eat and still maintain their target deficit.1 -
It's actually Fitbit's reported daily burn at whatever time it synced across.
MFP then calculates the rest of the day at the MFP activity level rate of burn.
Those 2 are added together - existing and projected.
That total daily estimate and MFP's own daily estimate is where the difference is found.
Fitbit has it's own daily estimate that isn't used.
The FAQ in the stickies shares the math if one enjoys that.0 -
This is now driving me nuts too. It's just started messing up for me this past week.0
-
I had this happen today vs yesterday. Yesterday was ~5200 steps by the end of the day and a 469 calorie adjustment. Today was ~5600 by 6 pm and only 149 calorie adjustment so far. And, my walk today was a lot more brisk than what I did yesterday.0
-
virginiajharris wrote: »I had this happen today vs yesterday. Yesterday was ~5200 steps by the end of the day and a 469 calorie adjustment. Today was ~5600 by 6 pm and only 149 calorie adjustment so far. And, my walk today was a lot more brisk than what I did yesterday.
Since it's not merely steps that causes the adjustment, but rather distance - what was the distance for each day?
And thinking about the day - does the compare of distance make sense if one is greater by decent amount compared to other?
Brisk doesn't matter - distance does.
Unless one day HR-based calorie burn was used, and it was inflated.
Other day step-based calorie burn was used, and it was truer.
And make sure you tap and hold on that Calorie Adjustment - is the time stamp of last sync actually current, and if so does the calorie count match what Fitbit had then?
If you really want to know why the difference - there are other things to look at like the Activity Record on Fitbit.
And you didn't manually log a workout on Fitbit or MFP did you?0 -
Tuesday was 5186 steps, 2.21 miles, 7 floors, 2,594 cals burned (most of it came from a leisurely walk around the downtown area of my town, it wasn't even sustained enough for the Fitbit to capture it as 'exercise'). Wednesday was 5959 steps, 2.56 miles, 4 floors, 2,070 calories burned. And ~2 miles of that were me taking a walk on our river trail (with stops to admire the sunset, pet someone's dog, stick my feet in the river, etc).
Monday was 8357 steps, 3.59 miles and only 247 "exercise calories". Sunday was 1.63 miles, plus an hour of pretty relaxed yoga and I got an adjustment of 412. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency. Saturday, 2.6 miles, 797 calories.
I did double check the sync time, because I was like "there is no way this is correct", but it didn't change, even by the end of the day it only gave me 128 exercise calories total, vs the (what I think was inflated( 654 the day before).
I don't manually log exercise. The closest I'll get to manual logging is adjusting my exercise (so, changing it from generic workout to Zumba)0 -
So the data on Fitbit sounds suspect then.
Floors doesn't matter, not used in calc's for calories - only distance or HR calculated if HR high enough for long enough the device went to that mode.
2.21 & 2594
2.56 & 2070
Unless there is something that stands out on that Tue, like a large chunk of time with higher than normal HR - indeed the Fitbit is in error.
That may be the reason for MFP having bad math on others days. That's a Fitbit issue though, not MFP.
Unless you notice the time of the last sync on those adjustments is early in the day and therefore not a full adjustment containing data for the whole day.
Sync time should show 11:59pm - if it doesn't - sync issue at the minimum on those days. Perhaps the Fitbit issue too, whatever that is.
When dealing with Fitbit support - they don't care about the MFP adjustments or anything here - only discuss the distance (not even steps) and calorie burn.
If HR device, confirm it saw your HR for the whole day. There is odd chance a device sync failed later in day and your account was left assuming for rest of the day since last good sync.1 -
I know from using various different apps and devices over the years that the speed of which I was walking was the reason for for the amount of steps and calories burned.
I can walk the same walk different days but they can have different amounts of steps and calories.
The speed that I'm walking is one cause.
And bags carried if have have shopping etc or pushing a child in a pushchair.
This also matters as to the weight in the chair adding extra if heavy bags are on it.
Also if you walk the same distance but different place one walk can be slightly up hill.
You can get the same amount of steps walking about the house but different days doing different types of movement will cause different calorie burn.
I could walk up and down my stairs and garden several times in two different days but one day will be calm and relaxed but the other is running up the stairs, rushing around and walking a out my garden carrying a heavy watering can.
Both those days will have very different calories used.
The weather makes a difference too, I walked in the summer in burning hot sun sweating and breathing heavily. This caused nearly double the calories used compared to a much cooler day.
Unless it's having a glitchy day, it's more likely that the days was just different in the ways I've described.
But of course outside of speed, what I've explained is HR Fitbit related.1
