Fit bit zip over estimating calories?

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briniepoo
briniepoo Posts: 73 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hi there

Just a quick question. I just bought my mom a fitbit zip and today, she walked 60 minutes, the fit bit said 5000 or so steps. Then it said that she burned 900 or so calories....am I alone when I say thats not right? Seems like a gross over estimation to me.

Anyone else got advice? Is it defictive?

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  • Phrick
    Phrick Posts: 2,765 Member
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    it takes into account BMR as well as calories burned by exercise. It resets at midnight and basically divides the day into 15 minute portions so for example since midnight tonight according to my Zip I've burned 199 calories - despite having only walked 154 steps in the last 2 hours and 37 minutes (it's almost 3am here). Part of that 199 calories burned (a very small part) is the calories burned from the 154 steps, the rest is the calories burned by breathing, having a heart beat, blinking my eyes, yawning...

    so no I don't think it's wrong, I think your understanding of how it works is faulty and I hope this helps clear it up :)
  • briniepoo
    briniepoo Posts: 73 Member
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    Ok, so its taking into account BMR, how do we find out what she burned then? Sorry if its a silly question, just not sure how to work it out.
  • Phrick
    Phrick Posts: 2,765 Member
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    Ok, so its taking into account BMR, how do we find out what she burned then? Sorry if its a silly question, just not sure how to work it out.

    I don't know that you can do it super easily with the Zip, but how I check when I'm curious is to go to my FitBit Dashboard on their website and then click "Log" and select Activity then you can select to view a Calories graph - it will show bars representing the 15 minute increments and if you hover on a bar it will say how many calories burned for that 15 minutes. It still includes the BMR calories for that particular 15 minutes' total, but they're minuscule (generally under 15 for a 15 minute period of being sedentary) so you can get at least a rough idea that way.
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
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    Activity trackers measure your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). When you set up your Fitbit, it had to guesstimate your TDEE since midnight. So your burn the first day is always messed up. I forget how many days it took for my calorie adjustments to straighten out. It got better, as if the system was "learning" my routine. So give it a while.

    Don't log any step based activity. Non-step exercise like swimming or spinning can be logged either in Fitbit or in MFP–it's up to you. If you choose MFP, you'll be asked for start & end times. Then MFP overrides your step data during that time.

    It will take trial & error to find which settings work best for you. Here's an explanation I posted to the Fitbit Users group: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/forums/show/1307-fitbit-users

    When you set up your MFP account, you specified an activity level: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/change_goals_guided MFP used your answer, plus your age, sex & height, to estimate how many calories you burn every day (your TDEE). Then you set your weight-loss goal, and MFP subtracted the appropriate deficit to calculate your daily calorie goal.

    Once you link an activity tracker to your MFP account (via the "Apps" tab at the top of every page), you start getting calorie adjustments. If your tracker says you burned more calories than MFP estimated, you get a positive adjustment (meaning more calories to eat). If you enable negative calorie adjustments and you burn less than the MFP estimate, you will lose calories. (But negative calorie adjustments will never drop your daily calories below 1,200.)
  • briniepoo
    briniepoo Posts: 73 Member
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    OK thanks! I shall send this on to my mother!

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