Confused about fitbit and exercising

Mhvela
Mhvela Posts: 9 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
What I'm used to is logging my calories consumed. Then I log my exercising. Well, the fitbit zip is now suppose to be doing the exercise logging for me? I just did 75 minutes of aerobic dancing and I am getting like 120 calories burned if I go by fitbit activity. If I log my dAncing on fitbit manually it gives me 289 calories burned. If I log it on myfitnesspal I get something like 868 calories burned. This is so confusing. If I didn't have a fitbit at all then I would be logging 868 calories burned on mfp. It doesn't seem right that I workout and sweat and pant for 75 minutes and I only get 120 calorie burn. Especially not at my weight. I have at least 100 pounds to lose.

Replies

  • sami_83
    sami_83 Posts: 161
    You definitely need to tell Fitbit what activity you're doing so that it can log it accurately for you.
    This explains it in more detail: https://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/articles/413311-how-do-i-log-or-record-an-activity-

    Fitbit and MFP will have different calculators and it's all speculation as to how many calories you've actually burned. I don't know if it's possible to know unless you have a HRM.
  • jaz050465
    jaz050465 Posts: 3,508 Member
    Remember fitbit only picks up the steps so is ok for running. However, a HRM is still the most accurate method.
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
    It should do fine for dancing. Is yours not counting walking/running steps right, either? If you count 100 steps and see what it recorded, is it close to 100?
  • Mhvela
    Mhvela Posts: 9 Member
    What is HRM? It did count the steps, but that was still the calorie burn it gave me which I thought was a little weird.
  • TeaBea
    TeaBea Posts: 14,517 Member
    What is HRM? It did count the steps, but that was still the calorie burn it gave me which I thought was a little weird.

    HRM = heart rate monitor.....these are designed to count (cardio) calories by comparing your resting heart rate against your active heart rate (this would be exertion level).

    A FitBit is an "activity" tracker.....it counts steps.

    MFP cannot know your exertion level either.....often MFP gives generous calorie burns.
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
    Is 120 the calories the Fitbit site shows that you burned during the period you exercised? Or is it the "Fitbit adjustment" you see here on MFP? That latter isn't what you burned exercising. It's how much your total burn for the day per Fitbit exceeds your MFP goal 'calories burned from normal daily activities' (see your Goals page here).
  • rach503
    rach503 Posts: 86 Member
    HRM stands for heart rate monitor.

    I use a Fitbit Zip too, and it syncs with MFP like I"m guessing you have yours do also. I always log my exercise on Fitbit now, not MFP. There were issues (for me) when I would log something on MFP the times wouldn't sync properly so it wouldn't accurately reflect my burn. (Just my reasoning for logging exercise on Fitbit).

    WIth regards to the calorie estimation, once I purchased a heart rate monitor I was pretty shocked to see how far off the MFP calories burned estimations were. It was often about 30% higher than what my heart rate monitor said, and sometimes up to 65% higher. (As background, at that point I was already in pretty good shape.) I'd just use the lower estimate of the two, and I've found Fitbit tends to be more conservative than MFP.

    Good luck!

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