How Legit Are Apple Watch Numbers?

springlering62
springlering62 Posts: 9,284 Member
edited December 2024 in Fitness and Exercise
Ok. I’m just absolutely confused. I feel like my Apple watch is more hindrance than help because I don’t understand how or what it’s reporting,or trust its accuracy.

How do you read the numbers on the Apple Watch fitness app? Are these calories burned over and above TDEE? Who set the 670 calorie movement goal or is it some kind of default? Or did it set itself based in my initial entries of height, weight etc? How accurate is the calories it’s counting? This just seems excessive.

My activity for today was a thirty minute morning stretch (not activated as an excercise), a brisk one hour walk, a 75 minute hot power yoga class, a 75 minute yin stretching class (also not activated as an excercise), and a 60 minute hot pilates class. My total steps today was 19,349 for a total of 9.91miles (including this morning’s walk.

I’m just puzzled because I never have any problem hitting the 670 calories or the 10,000 steps, even on days I don’t feel like I’m doing much at all.

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Replies

  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 9,284 Member
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  • Duck_Puddle
    Duck_Puddle Posts: 3,237 Member
    It sets the goal based on your setup. Every week or 2 (or so?) it’ll review your actual activity and suggest a goal based on your actual activity.

    If you’re consistently meeting/exceeding 670, it’ll likely suggest a higher goal.

    As for TDEE, you can’t get that on the watch itself (as far as I know). The easiest place to find it is on the Activity app on your phone (separate from the health app and the watch app. It shows the same info that’s on the activity screen of the watch, but you can swipe on the “move” section to see total calories burned.

    My Apple Watch gives me workout totals consistent with every other tracker I’ve ever used. It gives me a TDEE that is a little higher than trackers that have shown to be “correct”.

    I find my move goal to be reasonable as I have to really make a solid effort to reach it on days I don’t workout. Ultimately it encourages me to move enough to meet that goal so I guess it’s legitimate for me.
  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    The move goal is your activity calories. Apple splits up the calories burned between Active calories and Resting calories. The combination of the two is your estimated TDEE.

    What you described sounds like a very active day. And 10,000 steps is generally considered to be Active.

    The goal is likely set by your stats and will be adjusted overtime based on your activity. Mine was set to 500 to start. I haven’t hit it most of this month and as a result it lowered it to 450 today. Now when I can exercise I can easily hit 500, but I’ve been under Drs orders to not exercise most of the month. Without my exercise I am lucky to hit 5,000 steps a day.

    I’ve noticed exercise minutes get added if I am doing something that elevates my HR to a certain point. Some of my walks don’t get counted as exercise because I don’t turn on exercise mode and my HR doesn’t get high enough.

    As for the calories burned, it’s a similar to other trackers I’ve owned. I had a Fitbit before it and there is less than a 100 calorie difference between the TDEE numbers. Fitbit was accurate enough that I would lose/maintain/gain as expected based on its calorie burn (well technically it underestimated since I could get away without logging about 200 calories a day).
  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 9,284 Member
    edited February 2019
    Thank you for the info. I’ve been paying more attention to closing the rings than understanding what they were, and although I’ve been following the MFP numbers, it appears MFP is only giving partial credit for calories due to syncing problems. I didn’t start really looking at the numbers til last week, simply because I used the watch face as my avatar.

    I think I better start eating back some of the calories. The dietician who recommended MFP to me told me not to, however, in all fairness, she was looking at an obese pound woman who was claiming she wanted to lose weight, and had probably heard that song and dance before. I’ve got less than four pounds to go now til “normal” BMI.

    I have a follow up scheduled, but she can’t work me in til the end of March.

    20,000 steps not uncommon- and there was SUN yesterday for the first time in weeks. Doggone it, I went out to soak some up, since the rain starts again tomorrow for another week. Ugh. Need to get off my bottom and go do the same again right now!
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