How accurate are your Fitbit calories?
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Christismylife
Posts: 93 Member
If you have a Fitbit (I have the charge 2) and have it sync to MyFitnessPal to calculate your daily exercise calories, how accurate do you find them to be?
I have my account set at the lowest activity level and my Fitbit syncs to add in exercise calories. I find the calories it gives me to usually be high compared to what I might have given myself for my exercise for the day. I wonder if this means the calculations are off or if I am more active most days overall than I realize.
I have my account set at the lowest activity level and my Fitbit syncs to add in exercise calories. I find the calories it gives me to usually be high compared to what I might have given myself for my exercise for the day. I wonder if this means the calculations are off or if I am more active most days overall than I realize.
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Replies
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I have my MFP set to lightly active. And my Fitbit give me no extra calories which I dont understand being I get 10k steps minimum/day and exercise 90ish minutes every other day.1
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Christismylife wrote: »If you have a Fitbit (I have the charge 2) and have it sync to MyFitnessPal to calculate your daily exercise calories, how accurate do you find them to be?
I have my account set at the lowest activity level and my Fitbit syncs to add in exercise calories. I find the calories it gives me to usually be high compared to what I might have given myself for my exercise for the day. I wonder if this means the calculations are off or if I am more active most days overall than I realize.
When I had a Fitbit i checked it by comparing it to real time data and found it to be within 100 calories. It takes a few months of use and syncing (and meticulous logging) for it to be accurate,
The Garmin I have now is accurate to within 50 calories.2 -
Mine is 200-300 over per day0
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Christismylife wrote: »If you have a Fitbit (I have the charge 2) and have it sync to MyFitnessPal to calculate your daily exercise calories, how accurate do you find them to be?
I have my account set at the lowest activity level and my Fitbit syncs to add in exercise calories. I find the calories it gives me to usually be high compared to what I might have given myself for my exercise for the day. I wonder if this means the calculations are off or if I am more active most days overall than I realize.
If your activity level is set to the lowest option, the Fitbit is giving you calories for more than just purposeful exercise. Basically anything you do during the day other than reclining or lying down will add up. You’ll get calories for walking to your car, folding laundry, standing for more than a couple of minutes, and grocery shopping, just for example.
That said: Fitbits are intended to be as accurate as possible...for walking. If you do a lot of other kinds of activity, it might be less accurate. I do a lot of indoor cycling, which my Fitbit always underestimates. If you drive on cobblestones, on the other hand, it’ll give you a suspiciously high rate of burn because it calculates steps based on jolting.
So try it for a month or two, see what happens to your weight when you eat what it tells you, and take things from there. 🙂4 -
I have a fitbit Charge 2 (so it has a HR monitor function) and I tracked my intake/TDEE/weight on 2 different spreadsheets for 4 months and my fitbit's TDEE estimates are spot-on!
But I use "TDEE - intake" method to track my deficit, it just seems clearer to me. I can't seem to sync my fitbit to mfp anyway. Mfp always tends to overestimate the amount of exercise I did based on my fitbit.1 -
Mine underestimates. Either that or my metabolism is really much better than it should be. I mean, I was over by 400-800 calories consistently for almost a year and only gained 10 lbs...1
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Mine is pretty much right on the money. I don't look at the remaining calories MFP tells me, I just use it to log the food and then rely on Fitbit for my burn (I shoot for 1000 calories under my total burn per Fitbit). I use Libra to log my weight and calculate weightloss stats, such as average daily deficit based on weightloss over the last x number if months and the average it tells me is just over 1000 Cal day for the past 3 months.2
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I wear a Fitbit Charge 2 and find it pretty accurate. I eat back all or most of the exercise calories it gives me and have lost consistently.3
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I've had my Fitbit synced since mid-2015 and have found it to be very accurate. I eat back 100% of my adjustments and lose/maintain as I would expect.2
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I’ve been using Fitbit since 2013 (as well as a food scale) and I have found:
Non HR models (Zip, Flex, & Flex 2): underestimated by an average of 200 calories a day
HR models (Surge, Blaze, & Ionic): have been much closer (within 50-75 calories) when I ran the numbers. It’s been awhile since I ran through the numbers, but I have been pretty lazy with my tracking lately too. Really need to tighten up my logging for a few weeks and run the numbers again.1 -
Christismylife wrote: »If you have a Fitbit (I have the charge 2) and have it sync to MyFitnessPal to calculate your daily exercise calories, how accurate do you find them to be?
I have my account set at the lowest activity level and my Fitbit syncs to add in exercise calories. I find the calories it gives me to usually be high compared to what I might have given myself for my exercise for the day. I wonder if this means the calculations are off or if I am more active most days overall than I realize.
Your FitBit isn't just giving you more calories for exercise...it is adjusting your calorie target based on all activity in comparison to your activity level setting. Most people I know aren't truly sedentary, even with desk jobs.
My FitBit jives pretty close with my own data3 -
You may like to read this: http://berkeleysciencereview.com/fit-fitbit/
Consistency with how you use the data is what is important.1 -
I've had a Fitbit Alta HR since last December and have been manually keeping track of calories in and out (Fitbit vs Actual Weight Loss/Gain) daily and monthly. I have found that my Fitbit has been consistently 400-500 calories overestimating each day (calorie burns between 2050-2400 while my manual calculations based on actual weight gain/loss are closer to 1600-1900). I never rely on it for daily calorie burn - my manual calculations are much closer to reality.
I'm not sure why mine are so far off - wish they were right - I'd love to eat 2400 calories/day!1 -
It's not just exercise, it's giving you back calories for all your activity even walking around or whatever you do during the day. Even as an office worker I still always got at least a couple hundred extra calories (without any actual exercise) and yes it was always pretty accurate as far as I could tell.1
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I have a Garmin forerunner and I am really doubting the calories it gives me. How do you get it to track more accurately? I have MyFitnessPal set to my estimated BMR so that all calories clocked back through walking and excercise should be eaten. But it’s telling me to eat 2800 calories! I barely make 5k steps most days (very busy desk job and I’m trying to improve by walking on my 1/2 hour lunch break now) and I lift weights 3x a week. I’m definitely obese in my hip waist measurements (waist is 102 across my navel but my hips are 99! BMI 21). I want to lose fat and increase my lean muscle mass so I’m completely lost.0
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I also have the Fitbit charge 2. I read a study that says they're +- 20% innacurate if I remember correctly. Beats the whole point of having one right? Others are pretty much the same. I wouldn't adjust my calories based on its readings, you'll end up overeating if it's giving you high readings currently. I would just use it as a general indicator of whether you burnt more or less calories that day and +- how much.
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Julian5656 wrote: »I also have the Fitbit charge 2. I read a study that says they're +- 20% innacurate if I remember correctly. Beats the whole point of having one right? Others are pretty much the same. I wouldn't adjust my calories based on its readings, you'll end up overeating if it's giving you high readings currently. I would just use it as a general indicator of whether you burnt more or less calories that day and +- how much.
The 2 studies that I have seen have shown bad accuracy because they strapped a unit that expects to spend up to 2 weeks getting some figures from the wearer before accuracy improves - onto someone for a workout or half a day of usage.
Total mis-application and ignorance of how they work. So invalid studies.
I'll bet the average person (not tons of step activity, not a lot of hard workouts if any) can be within 10% accuracy.
Their food logging is likely to be out by more than that.
They can be tweaked and used better too though to improve even if not the average user.5 -
I have a Garmin forerunner and I am really doubting the calories it gives me. How do you get it to track more accurately? I have MyFitnessPal set to my estimated BMR so that all calories clocked back through walking and excercise should be eaten. But it’s telling me to eat 2800 calories! I barely make 5k steps most days (very busy desk job and I’m trying to improve by walking on my 1/2 hour lunch break now) and I lift weights 3x a week. I’m definitely obese in my hip waist measurements (waist is 102 across my navel but my hips are 99! BMI 21). I want to lose fat and increase my lean muscle mass so I’m completely lost.
So you set your MFP eating goal to be your BMR estimate?
Since it's pace and weight that results in calorie burn, distance not steps is ultimately the important factor.
If you did or it thinks you did walk a big distance with 5K steps, and you weigh a lot - then big calorie burn for daily activity level of things.
If it shows in your Connect stats that it kept thinking you are doing workouts (if auto-workouts is enabled), and using HR-based calorie burn for low-level things - then inflated calorie burn.
While weight lifting using HR-based is inflated, 3 x weekly for 30-45 min is likely not that inflated.
Have you ever walked a known distance, high school track using correct markings for 1/2 mile or more, to confirm it reports the correct distance?
Might have to adjust stride length. And it should be avg daily pace, not grocery store shuffle, not exercise level pace.0 -
I've been using one for 3 weeks and so far the math is working pretty closely -- they estimated 2.5 lbs a week with my usual daily deficit and that's exactly what I've lost each week. So, at least going by me, works pretty darn well so far.1
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I'm using the daily burn data from my charge two and my MFP logging to calculated theoretical weight loss. And then comparing that to my actual loss. I'm coming in with a difference of around 20kcals per day (using data from the last 4 months).
So, yeah, for me it's pretty accurate.0
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