How accurate do you suppose FitBit is?
Lyndonbearsmommy
Posts: 1,083 Member
I have a FitBit flex that I use. How accurate do you suppose the calories burned are?
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I have the fitbit one and I find it to be very accurate. It pretty closely matches up with what mfp tells me0
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I recently did a test since I wanted to calculate my TDEE using my actual numbers. I added up my calories eaten and added 3500 calories for each pound lost over 30 days. I got a TDEE of 2683 calories. For the fun of it, I took the same 30 days and added up the TDEE calories Fitbit says I burned and got a TDEE of 2776. I would say that coming in with a difference of less than 100 calories is pretty accurate.
The more you wear it, the more accurate it will be. I have had mine for over a year so it has a lot of data to use. I have a flex and wear it 24/7 unless it is charging.0 -
Thanks!0
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I recently did a test since I wanted to calculate my TDEE using my actual numbers. I added up my calories eaten and added 3500 calories for each pound lost over 30 days. I got a TDEE of 2683 calories. For the fun of it, I took the same 30 days and added up the TDEE calories Fitbit says I burned and got a TDEE of 2776. I would say that coming in with a difference of less than 100 calories is pretty accurate.
The more you wear it, the more accurate it will be. I have had mine for over a year so it has a lot of data to use. I have a flex and wear it 24/7 unless it is charging.
Wow, this is brilliant! I want to try this. It will be good motivation for tracking every single item of food that goes into my mouth!0 -
I recently did a test since I wanted to calculate my TDEE using my actual numbers. I added up my calories eaten and added 3500 calories for each pound lost over 30 days. I got a TDEE of 2683 calories. For the fun of it, I took the same 30 days and added up the TDEE calories Fitbit says I burned and got a TDEE of 2776. I would say that coming in with a difference of less than 100 calories is pretty accurate.
The more you wear it, the more accurate it will be. I have had mine for over a year so it has a lot of data to use. I have a flex and wear it 24/7 unless it is charging.
Wow, this is brilliant! I want to try this. It will be good motivation for tracking every single item of food that goes into my mouth!
I wanted to switch because my exercise is consistent from one week to the next and I liked the idea of averaging out my daily calories so I don't have days with too many to eat and other days with too few. I am more than 2/3 of the way to goal so I figured it would be a way to transition into maintenance too. Yes, you do have to make a point of being as accurate with your weighing, measuring and logging as is humanly possible. Also, to even out things like water weight fluctuations, etc. you should do it for at least 4 weeks.
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I think mine is WAY off- If I was burning about 1950 a day like it says, while eating 1450, I would be losing a pound a week and I definitely am not.
I only use it as a step counter and to get my 10k a day however I like.0 -
Depends on the type of Fitbit. I felt my Ultra was spot on and was comfy using the numbers it gave me for my TDEE. I changed to the Zip and I don't feel the TDEE it gives me is accurate because I'd be losing more weight (eating 1800ish and TDEE is 3000, so should lose 2# a week but barely losing 2# a month), but I do believe the step count is correct.0
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Depends on the type of Fitbit. I felt my Ultra was spot on and was comfy using the numbers it gave me for my TDEE. I changed to the Zip and I don't feel the TDEE it gives me is accurate because I'd be losing more weight (eating 1800ish and TDEE is 3000, so should lose 2# a week but barely losing 2# a month), but I do believe the step count is correct.
I have a flex. This is my problem, my concern for the accuracy. I haven't lost weight in 3 weeks. I typically don't trust the calories burned so I try not to eat any exercise calories back and I don't log my other exercise. According to the calories burned vs calorie intake, I'm at anywhere from 500-1000 calorie deficit per day. I have the range because I do not own a food scale and am well aware that that could be a large discrepancy in my food loggin. I'm purchasing a food scale, but wasn't sure how much I should rely on the calories burned from FitBit.0 -
I have a flex and find it seems reasonably accurate. I don't tend to eat back calories it gives me though unless I am hungry. I think that until you are as accurate as you can be with your food logging its more likely that the food logging is the problem not the fitbit. I guess once you are weighing all your food and are pretty sure what your intake is for a couple weeks, you might be better able to judge how well your fitbit is estimating.0
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I found the Flex and zip models to be under by about 200 calories on average. My Surge is pretty darn accurate.
Surge 30 Day Avg Burn (can be found on Fitbit profile page): 2457
30 Day Avg Intake (also found on Fitbit profile page): 1919
30 Day Avg Deficit: 538
Expected loss based on Avg Surge Burn: 4.6xxx lbs
Trend weight loss: 4.6lbs (calculated by trendweight.com)
If you look at my scale weight for the same time period as the 30 day burn is calculated from there is a 5lb change.
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I trust my zips steps, the calories it gives me is what I'm struggling with...
I was happy eating around 1600 calories before getting my fitbit, but now I'm more used to 2000 calories because of those big fat exercise calories I can't resist eating back!! I rarely ever eat them all back, just most of them
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This is what you do, everyday you put in excel how many calories your fitbit tells you you burned, and you also input the calories you ate. Do this for a month, now you can see how much weight you SHOULD have lost according to fitbit, and how much weight you ACTUALLY lost.
If you expected to lose 6lbs that month and lost 5. It's off about a pound a month. About 115 calories a day. Reduce your calorie goal by 115. Of course there are other factors such as water weight and stuff, but I think this is as close as you're going to get.
That's a great idea! But it involves maths and data collection, something I must force myself to do, rather than run in the other direction
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Awesomeness! Thank you :bigsmile:
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I have a Fitbit Charge and I find it to be VERY accurate. I've compared it with MFP's suggestions, and suggestions from using Fitness Frog and other TDEE calculators, and they all match up. I'm set on MFP to lose .5 pounds a week, but I seem to be losing 1 lb a week for the last 5 weeks. (I'm set to sedentary, and I pretty much eat back all of my exercise calories.) So far, so good!0
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christinev297 wrote: »
Yes, trust! And I recommend enjoying your food and your exercise! I'm not one of these 1200 calories type of people. I like to eat and I seem to eat about 2k or more a day. And I'm still losing. But I'm also pretty active because I like to be. I feel grateful for being able to be active, you know? Enjoy the journey.
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christinev297 wrote: »This is what you do, everyday you put in excel how many calories your fitbit tells you you burned, and you also input the calories you ate. Do this for a month, now you can see how much weight you SHOULD have lost according to fitbit, and how much weight you ACTUALLY lost.
If you expected to lose 6lbs that month and lost 5. It's off about a pound a month. About 115 calories a day. Reduce your calorie goal by 115. Of course there are other factors such as water weight and stuff, but I think this is as close as you're going to get.
That's a great idea! But it involves maths and data collection, something I must force myself to do, rather than run in the other direction
If you go to the Fitbit website on your profile page, your 30 Day Average Burn and 30 Day Average Intake are listed.
Hmmm...just realized the profile page rounds my height up. Weird. I wonder if they do that for the calorie burns or if they use the height that's actually in my settings.
So take:
30 Day Avg Burn - 30 Day Avg Intake = 30 Day Avg Deficit
30 Day Avg Deficit * 30 = Total Deficit for 30 days
Total 30 Day Deficit/3500 = Expected loss
I then compare the expected loss to what I actually lost. If the expected loss is higher than what actually happened, I do a bit more math to see about how much it was off on a daily basis. If it's a small amount (less than 50 a day) then more than likely my logging was off. I will put the blame on my actual logging because I'm not perfect and I do eat places where I sometimes have to take a WAG at the calories. April was the perfect example of that. Good grief. I think I ate at this Asian Buffet every other weekend or something and who knows how many calories I consumed those days.0 -
I recently did a test since I wanted to calculate my TDEE using my actual numbers. I added up my calories eaten and added 3500 calories for each pound lost over 30 days. I got a TDEE of 2683 calories. For the fun of it, I took the same 30 days and added up the TDEE calories Fitbit says I burned and got a TDEE of 2776. I would say that coming in with a difference of less than 100 calories is pretty accurate.
The more you wear it, the more accurate it will be. I have had mine for over a year so it has a lot of data to use. I have a flex and wear it 24/7 unless it is charging.
I'm glad to see that someone is actually trying to verify their calorie burns instead of just assuming that whatever is in the database is correct.0 -
christinev297 wrote: »This is what you do, everyday you put in excel how many calories your fitbit tells you you burned, and you also input the calories you ate. Do this for a month, now you can see how much weight you SHOULD have lost according to fitbit, and how much weight you ACTUALLY lost.
If you expected to lose 6lbs that month and lost 5. It's off about a pound a month. About 115 calories a day. Reduce your calorie goal by 115. Of course there are other factors such as water weight and stuff, but I think this is as close as you're going to get.
That's a great idea! But it involves maths and data collection, something I must force myself to do, rather than run in the other direction
I am not sure if fitbit has an export function where you can export your data of the month. I am using a bodymedia fit(just started using it again). You can export the month data, it tells you how many calories you burned per day in excel. You can also do the same thing with myfitnesspal. using the export website...
https://www.designbyvh.com/myfitnesspal-export-data/#.VV6STka6HlA
Just takes roughly 30mins once a month.
Thanks! I did calculate the calories burned for this month per fitbit and caloric intake and it was 20,000 deficit since May 1st (the exact number is at work so that's roughly what it was). I remember it being 975 calorie deficit per day which isn't accurate since I've lost no weight since then. Guess I just need to wait for the scale.0 -
Great thread with some fantastic tips. Now, what fitbit to get...haha jumping on OPs post because I think I'd like one too.0
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shadow2soul wrote: »christinev297 wrote: »This is what you do, everyday you put in excel how many calories your fitbit tells you you burned, and you also input the calories you ate. Do this for a month, now you can see how much weight you SHOULD have lost according to fitbit, and how much weight you ACTUALLY lost.
If you expected to lose 6lbs that month and lost 5. It's off about a pound a month. About 115 calories a day. Reduce your calorie goal by 115. Of course there are other factors such as water weight and stuff, but I think this is as close as you're going to get.
That's a great idea! But it involves maths and data collection, something I must force myself to do, rather than run in the other direction
If you go to the Fitbit website on your profile page, your 30 Day Average Burn and 30 Day Average Intake are listed.
Hmmm...just realized the profile page rounds my height up. Weird. I wonder if they do that for the calorie burns or if they use the height that's actually in my settings.
So take:
30 Day Avg Burn - 30 Day Avg Intake = 30 Day Avg Deficit
30 Day Avg Deficit * 30 = Total Deficit for 30 days
Total 30 Day Deficit/3500 = Expected loss
I then compare the expected loss to what I actually lost. If the expected loss is higher than what actually happened, I do a bit more math to see about how much it was off on a daily basis. If it's a small amount (less than 50 a day) then more than likely my logging was off. I will put the blame on my actual logging because I'm not perfect and I do eat places where I sometimes have to take a WAG at the calories. April was the perfect example of that. Good grief. I think I ate at this Asian Buffet every other weekend or something and who knows how many calories I consumed those days.
Agreed. No need for spreadsheets or math beyond dividing by 3500. For the record, if I am as accurate as possible about my intake I find my fitbit amazingly accurate about my burns as evidenced by my weight loss or gain.
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Lyndonbearsmommy wrote: »I have a FitBit flex that I use. How accurate do you suppose the calories burned are?
You can learn more in the Fitbit Users group: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/1290-fitbit-users
The only way to gauge the accuracy is to trust your Fitbit for several weeks, then reevaluate your progress. I lost the weight & have maintained for ten months—so by definition, my Fitbit burn = TDEE.0 -
Yeah, I figured that out. Having ovaries which give me a lovely 3# water gain every month means I have to lose 5# in order to get a 2# loss. I'm back to the weight I was a month ago because of that stupid hormonal gain.Depends on the type of Fitbit. I felt my Ultra was spot on and was comfy using the numbers it gave me for my TDEE. I changed to the Zip and I don't feel the TDEE it gives me is accurate because I'd be losing more weight (eating 1800ish and TDEE is 3000, so should lose 2# a week but barely losing 2# a month), but I do believe the step count is correct.
If you're eating 1,800 calories and fitbit says you burn 3,000 calories. You should have lost 10lbs in a month. It's off by 8lbs. it's off by about 935 calories a day.
3000-935 = 2065
2065 is roughly your TDEE.
It's just irritating to be doing so much and have not much to show for it. I'd like to think walking 30k steps a day would impact more. I keep reminding myself it's better than sitting on my butt all day.
When the Zip and One were first out, Fitbit had a blog post comparing the calorie burns of the 3 devices (Ultra, Zip, & One). The One and Ultra were fairly comparable, while the Zip was 20% higher with calorie burns. This is from memory as the post has been either deleted or something.
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I find my flex to be fairly accurate, matches up well with MFP once I increased my activity level (averaging more than 12000 steps a day is definitely not sedentary like I had mine set at) and I eat back the calorie adjustments on MFP. It helped me lose weight predictably and has made the transition to maintenance pretty seamless.0
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Having ovaries which give me a lovely 3# water gain every month means I have to lose 5# in order to get a 2# loss. I'm back to the weight I was a month ago because of that stupid hormonal gain. It's just irritating to be doing so much and have not much to show for it.
Weight loss is not linear. Take measurements and progress photos, too.
Have you synced your Fitbit account with Trendweight.com? It's free, and it shows your trend without all the "noise" from water weight.0 -
I've been maintaining while eating back every Fitbit calorie for about a year now.0
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Yes, for 3 years. Been keeping photos and measurements for 3.5 years, since I started. I understand about fluctuations, but understanding doesn't make them less annoying. You can look at my Trendweight and know when I'm ovulating.editorgrrl wrote: »Having ovaries which give me a lovely 3# water gain every month means I have to lose 5# in order to get a 2# loss. I'm back to the weight I was a month ago because of that stupid hormonal gain. It's just irritating to be doing so much and have not much to show for it.
Weight loss is not linear. Take measurements and progress photos, too.
Have you synced your Fitbit account with Trendweight.com? It's free, and it shows your trend without all the "noise" from water weight.
The bottom pic shows how May is going. Lowest weight on May 8th (155.4) and over the next 12 days, I gained up to 158.8. When my weight was a stable 156.8 for 3 days is my ovulation. If nothing else, I've gotten the good-old Rhythm Method of birth control down pat, lel.
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If it's accurate (relatively speaking) that's even more frustrating for me since I haven't lost any weight. I must be doing something completely wrong and just don't know it. (I did eat cookies yesterday...)
This week it's been:
1388 intake (s/b 1906 per MFP-base calories are 1200) Burn: 2358
1211 intake (s/b 1885) Burn 2337
1392 intake (s/b 1829) Burn 2281
1565 intake (s/b 1585) Burn 2037
That's pretty average for me. My highest calorie burn this month was 2555 and lowest was 1786. Highest calories 1662, lowest 935.
Even if there's about a 20% inaccuracy of logging because I don't have a scale, there is still a deficit, right?0
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