Have you measured your stride yet? I had the same problem until I plugged in my measurement. You may have to play with that a couple of times to get it accurate. I still have a problem with it counting floors I don't climb. This happens mostly during my running days.

As for the calories, not only is it counting your active cals, but also calories burned according to your BMR. Hope this helps!

In 2 hours said I walked over 2600 steps and burned over 900 calories
This is obviously wrong.
When wearing my HRM doing what I did in those 2hours I would have burned a maximum 600calories

Also when walking it only counts my steps correctly if I walk slow. If I walk fast it nearly doubles the amount of steps I really took.
Say I walked ten steps fast it says 18
When I walk ten steps slow it says 11

Wats wrong do you think?

The 900 calories burned was your total for the day so far (unless your fitbit was blinking when you saw it or unless you saw that in a fitbit activity record for that 2 hours).

Mine is pretty accurate at counting steps. So your fast walking, is it actually the steps that were double or *the distance*? I would actually expect your distance to be about double. While the fitbit defaults do work for a lot of people, if the height based default stride is long for your personal stride then it will result in a farther distance than you walked. And compounding this, if you walk at a fast enough pace or there is a lot of impact in your steps then it may decide to apply the "running stride" (which typically is a bit long if you are not really running and maybe if you are.) You can fix these by calibrating your walking and running strides. I suspect it may switch me to running if I walk faster than 3.8 miles per hour.

Bu if your actual steps are off... Were you logging a distance number on your walking? If so that does change your steps sometimes depending how you did it. Also, the key question is where are you wearing your fitbit? placement of it can effect accuracy.

I would test with 100 steps. And then give it some time to catch up, faster steps sometimes do not show up instantly and one by one, sometimes there is a short delay and it will add a bunch at once. I think it does this when it gets hot, sometimes. For me it is actually more likely to miss very soft, gliding, slower steps like in my Hula dance class it usually gets the faster steps. After calibrating, my distance is usually very good compared to every source I compared it to. And my calorie burn is usually pretty close to my heart rate monitor for step-like activities. And my step count usually is close to what I manually count out when I check though it isn't always 100% the same.

Sleepwalking! lol

I find it odd that when I wake up in the morning it has steps registered when I've not even gotten out of bed!

That is crediting you for a portion of your bmr from 12am until you woke up. It is actually how it is supposed to work. All personalized calorie counting type diets use an estimate of your bmr + a guess at the activity you might do to determine your calorie allowance. MFP does this and gives it to you all at once. The main difference with fitbit is because it is an activity tracker, it doesn't need to guess at your activity (though you can fine tune it by logging certain things if you want) so it doesn't need the activity multiplier but it does still need the calories you burn existing. It estimates that in much the same way other plans do, but it gives you credit for it minute by minute as they day goes on (along with any activity calories). So when you see a burn when you were not moving, that burn is pretty much a portion of your bmr for that time period. For the "average" sedentary person, bmr is about 80% of your total calorie burn for the day so over hours, it will be a pretty significant number.

For personal reference, if you are the type that likes to test numbers... You can use a bmr calculator like the one on this site listed under "tools" then divide the number it gives you by 24 to have an idea of how many calories you would likely burn in an hour at rest. You would want to recalculate when you have a birthday or gain or lose weight. But it can be helpful to have an idea of the minimum you are likely to burn in an hour.

Sorry for resurrecting this old thread. Your fitbit shouldn't say you have done some steps first thing in the morning when you haven't. Calories burned yes but steps no. Mine does this sometimes too. Weird.

I have read that it detects changes in altitudes in 10 foot increments which is why hills are accounted for.

Ack~
I just got a FitBit Zip for my birthday and it's WAY OFF...
I mean - some serious calibration is needed here or something.
Where do you do that or did I get a dud?

so is mine. I walk 5.3km every day and it only logs 3.3km - this happens every day ! I have entered in my stride length, I have taken it back to the retailer and been given a replacement - same thing.. I bought a Garmin - same thing. I went back to my replaced fitbit and still the same thing. I have no idea who to fix this.

Michelleellem wrote: »

so is mine. I walk 5.3km every day and it only logs 3.3km - this happens every day ! I have entered in my stride length, I have taken it back to the retailer and been given a replacement - same thing.. I bought a Garmin - same thing. I went back to my replaced fitbit and still the same thing. I have no idea who to fix this.

This problem is fixable. It sounds like either your walking or running stride (or both) are incorrect. If you set it yourself, you set it too short. If not, fitbit's estimate is too short for you personally. If the fitbit defaults are in place it will say zero in your settings (just so you know as sometimes people look and think that it is really set to zero). Fitbit estimates a stride length based on your height, gender and possibly the device you use. Sometimes it guesses right, sometimes not (if you actually take bigger or smaller steps than average for your height and gender).

I had to calibrate mine. I tried a few methods that didn't work for me, before finding one that does. The best for me was doing laps on a track (or other flat, measured route) and plugging my fitbit and actual numbers into a formula. I wrote a blog post describing it, since calibrating my fitbit distance is usually accurate or within .1 mile. slysamgettingfit.blogspot.com/2014/08/how-to-calibrate-your-fitbit-stride.htmlhttp://

Oh the formula I used is inches in a mile. You would probably need to convert to have metric numbers. I know there is a metric formula out there that uses the same method, I just don't know that formula.

This might also apply to your Garmin if it is tracking steps (depends on the type you have).