I ordered a Charge HR from Fitbit.com on Jan. 6. I just got an e-mail saying it won't ship until the end of March. So there aren't many people who can give you feedback about the Charge HR yet.

That said, I've had a Flex since Sept. 2013. I lost the weight & have maintained by eating back all my Fitbit calorie adjustments. So for me, my Fitbit burn is my TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). The only way to gauge the accuracy of your Fitbit is to trust it for several weeks, then reevaluate your progress.

MFP says to log exercise in MFP, but that's only a "serving suggestion." Food & drink (including water) only sync from MFP to Fitbit. But exercise syncs both ways, so you can log either in Fitbit (which I do) or in MFP—never both.

Exercise logged in MFP overrides your Fitbit burn during that time.

I have a Charge HR. What is it that you're not trusting? The calories burns?

I'm OK with mine.
But I'm an "average" user. I don't run marathons, I don't do HIIT, I'm not comparing the data to a HR chest strap. I walk and do Pilates and Yoga
At first everything seemed high compared to the data from my old One, but it makes sense that if my BMR is 1400 that I can easily burn an extra 600/700 calories without too much effort. What it really tells me is how under-counting the One was. I was easily doing 14,000 plus steps a day and "only" burning in the 2500 calorie range?
The heart rate really is making a difference.

With the HR you'll get calorie credit for the higher heart rate to keep warm when you go outside, etc. It takes effort to walk against a cold wind.
The One only gave us credit for the steps.

cwms3rd wrote: »

I guess the biggest difference is between my fitbit one and the charge hr. The difference between the two was big. With the one I was barely burning 200 calories and that was with daily walks. Lately I have been burning 600 calories with the hr and with the unusual cold weather I have not been able to take the walks. Thank you everyone for replying!

You are seeing burning 200 and 600 calories where exactly?

For the activity record for just the time of the walk?

Or are you talking about the MFP calorie adjustment for Fitbit - which is NOT just exercise and those walks, but the entire day?

MissPeppers wrote: »

I have a Charge HR and because I've set my MFP kcal goal to 1700 it adds kcal burn from Fitbit on top of that to correct my daily kcal burn. I don't log any activities in MFP because that would double the count.

What I've found that Charge does that is not entirely correct is to calculate my burn after an average person - because I have already lost 35 kgs my BMR is lower than average due to the weight loss. Knowing this I've set my body weight to 10% lower than it actually is to compensate in Fitbit to avoid fooling myself. The HR (when worn 24/7) will calculate all activities - I don't think it would be correct to log here.

Just so you are aware, so mis-information isn't spread.

You logging a workout manually on MFP, or Fitbit for that matter, or MapMyRide synced in, or whatever - would NOT double the count.

You would have to provide a start time and duration time precisely because it will REPLACE the Fitbit calorie burn.

Also, are you aware that all non-moving time is given BMR level burn already. BMR based on gender, age, weight, height.
It already lowers as your weight goes down. As of course does movement calorie burn.

My problem is that my FitBit calorie adjustment per step is double the amount of calories it should be.

FitBit gives me 1,000 calories for For 10,000 steps in MFP as a Fitbit calorie adjustment. It should be more like 500 calories from my research. Yesterday, 7200 steps gave me a Fitbit calorie adjustment of 734. Monday, 10964 steps gave me 1106 calories. I think these numbers should be halved. I am not logging my walking steps separately in MFP.

Is there anything I can do, or check to resolve this? I don't believe the calorie/walking-step numbers. I really like the Charge HR but if it's going to mess up my food budgeting, I will need to disable it.

It's not completely wacky. I have a Polar FT7 with a heart-rate chest band and cross checked the FitBit against it and the Elliptical Trainer at the gym. When doing actual exercise at the Fat-Burn or Cardio level, everything matches up perfectly.

Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
I've fiddled with Stride length, Activity Level, and Goals on both but can't get alignment.

MissPeppers wrote: »

heybales wrote: »

Just so you are aware, so mis-information isn't spread.

You logging a workout manually on MFP, or Fitbit for that matter, or MapMyRide synced in, or whatever - would NOT double the count.

You would have to provide a start time and duration time precisely because it will REPLACE the Fitbit calorie burn.

Also, are you aware that all non-moving time is given BMR level burn already. BMR based on gender, age, weight, height.
It already lowers as your weight goes down. As of course does movement calorie burn.

Are you sure about the double count? Because I had a way too high kcal burn when I logged on MFP. But thanks for clearing it up; I think I'll investigate and test this a bit further.

Absolutely, and easy to test.

Note the Fitbit stat of calories for the day.

Manually log a workout of 1 calorie and 1 hr.

Now look at the stats and the time graph for calorie burn.

You logging a workout on MFP that Fitbit already had a calorie burn for could indeed increase your daily total though.
Fitbit could have estimated you burned 400, MFP database entry could have said 600.
That would have caused 200 cal increase.
Perhaps Fitbit had a better handle on your speed, or maybe it didn't, and you logged treadmill stats.

kampturnhoth wrote: »

My problem is that my FitBit calorie adjustment per step is double the amount of calories it should be.

FitBit gives me 1,000 calories for For 10,000 steps in MFP as a Fitbit calorie adjustment. It should be more like 500 calories from my research. Yesterday, 7200 steps gave me a Fitbit calorie adjustment of 734. Monday, 10964 steps gave me 1106 calories. I think these numbers should be halved. I am not logging my walking steps separately in MFP.

Is there anything I can do, or check to resolve this? I don't believe the calorie/walking-step numbers. I really like the Charge HR but if it's going to mess up my food budgeting, I will need to disable it.

It's not completely wacky. I have a Polar FT7 with a heart-rate chest band and cross checked the FitBit against it and the Elliptical Trainer at the gym. When doing actual exercise at the Fat-Burn or Cardio level, everything matches up perfectly.

Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
I've fiddled with Stride length, Activity Level, and Goals on both but can't get alignment.

You are trying to associate things that aren't, and do math with them.

Your calorie adjustment is merely the difference between Fitbit's daily burn, and what MFP thought you'd burn with no exercise at activity level you selected.

Don't even waste time trying to break it down per step, not useful.
Because those steps were different paces, impacts, and therefore different calorie burns too.
You can't do the math you are attempting and get any meaningful results.

Now, totally on Fitbit, steps does translate into distance, and distance and time is pace along with weight is calorie burn.

You got a known distance, or even the distance Fitbit thought you walked, and pace and time?
http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs.html

cindytw wrote: »

I don't have a Charge HR, but what I ended up doing with my Flex was to put my MFP settings to sedentary, then let the Fitbit add the calories. That seemed to be more reasonable to me. I also put my net calorie goal to the lowest so that when it added it wasn't outrageous.

This is what I did as well.

NancyN795 wrote: »

heybales wrote: »

You got a known distance, or even the distance Fitbit thought you walked, and pace and time?
http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs.html

I have a question about that calculator. I'm not particularly concerned about getting an exact calorie calculation - I figure if my FitBit gets me reasonably close, I'm happy - I'm just curious.

That calculator has an entry for "Grade". My question is, how do I calculate that? If MapMyWalk says that I took a 2.84 mile walk with an elevation gain of 218 feet, and the walk was "out and back" rather than a loop, then I know that the first half of the walk had an average grade of 3% uphill and the second half was an average of 3% downhill. How do I enter that in the calculator? Do I enter 0, 1.5 (averaging the uphill climb over the whole walk), or 3? (All options give me fewer calories than MapMyWalk and FitBit do.)

Couple studies have found that going down the same grade as up uses 55% of the energy, or calorie burn, if the pace is maintained. Normally, going down goes faster though.
So if the up 2.91% took say 229 calories in 22 min, the down 2.91% takes 126 calories in same 22 min. Same distance/time Flat would be 206 calories. Used my weight in that math.

So for decent accuracy, take total elevation gained (218 ft), take times 1.5, and figure out average gain over the whole route.

So pretend the total elevation gain was 327 ft over the whole 2.84 miles.

heybales wrote: »

NancyN795 wrote: »

heybales wrote: »

You got a known distance, or even the distance Fitbit thought you walked, and pace and time?
http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs.html

I have a question about that calculator. I'm not particularly concerned about getting an exact calorie calculation - I figure if my FitBit gets me reasonably close, I'm happy - I'm just curious.

That calculator has an entry for "Grade". My question is, how do I calculate that? If MapMyWalk says that I took a 2.84 mile walk with an elevation gain of 218 feet, and the walk was "out and back" rather than a loop, then I know that the first half of the walk had an average grade of 3% uphill and the second half was an average of 3% downhill. How do I enter that in the calculator? Do I enter 0, 1.5 (averaging the uphill climb over the whole walk), or 3? (All options give me fewer calories than MapMyWalk and FitBit do.)

Couple studies have found that going down the same grade as up uses 55% of the energy, or calorie burn, if the pace is maintained. Normally, going down goes faster though.
So if the up 2.91% took say 229 calories in 22 min, the down 2.91% takes 126 calories in same 22 min. Same distance/time Flat would be 206 calories. Used my weight in that math.

So for decent accuracy, take total elevation gained (218 ft), take times 1.5, and figure out average gain over the whole route.

So pretend the total elevation gain was 327 ft over the whole 2.84 miles.

Thanks! I don't actually go downhill faster than uphill right now - I have bad knees. I can walk uphill all day but going down I have to be very careful. But, that still gives me a guide to work with.