Fitbit glitch?

PAV8888 wrote: »

Your Fitbit adjustment is not an exercise adjustment. It is a complete day tdee adjustment. Your exercise may have been the same but quite possibly the rest of your day wasn't.

It really is not that big of a deal to have the occasional red day!

I understand how the adjustment works and what it represents. I’ve taken 14000 steps today and Fitbit is giving me under 200 calories for an adjustment. Usually with that many steps over the course of a day I get more than 600. The steps are right, the calories are wrong. But I checked and they’re wrong on the Fitbit app too.

[quote="

It really is not that big of a deal to have the occasional red day![/quote]


I know this is true but I’ve worked really hard on logging accurately for 10 weeks. I really wanted to keep my data reliable. I know one day can’t throw everything, but it irks me to break the streak!! I’m just hoping it’s back to accurate again tomorrow.

PAV8888 wrote: »

Double check the times of your various exercises.

Have you change time zones recently? This seems to always throw Fitbit and mfp off for me for that one day.

Edit the particular exercise that seems to have mis-registered on Fitbit not on mfp, and adjust it as appropriate.

look through your list of exercises on Fitbit and make sure that none of the mfp exercises have remained behind over writing your Fitbit detected activity.

Give up scream and shout and call Fitbit tech support asking for help if none of the above seem to work!

I'm assuming you're working on the Fitbit web site as it seems to be more authoritative than the app, at least for me.

Thanks for the tips!

I did change time zones... I switched into EST for about 24 hours and now I’m back on central time. That’s interesting to know that can throw things off!

I can’t figure out how to adjust the workout through Fitbit. But I did see the source of the error. Today’s run is showing up as burning about 1 calorie/minute (even less at moments) while my runs on other days show up as between 10 and 11 calories/ minute!

I’ve restarted my Fitbit so perhaps tomorrow it will be back to normal. Fingers crossed!

Here are two screenshots showing approximately the same amount of activity, but totally different affect on calories.

heybales wrote: »

So your Fitbit gave you 67 calories for the workout then.

Running 4 miles and walking one though - Fitbit giving 500 sounds rather inflated - that one sounds incorrect actually.

Could it have been using HR-based calorie burn and read a very incorrect HR prior.

And now it's missing the HR readings and giving a small calorie burn.

What if you manually add the workout on Fitbit's site instead, using it's database entry, but matching the start/duration time of the existing Activity Record?
Don't worry, it's not double entry even though the Activity will stay the same, your manually added Workout Record will overright the daily data.
How many calories did the database method estimate with total distance and time?

I agree that 500 sounds inflated. When I first started using the Fitbit, I left 250 calories on the table every day (didn’t eat then back) since it seemed so high. But after 10 weeks of consistent logging and Fitbit wearing, I was losing .5 lb/week more than my expected rate, so I realized it was shaking out to be dead on.

The issue isn’t inaccuracy in general. It was this one day where the same workout was giving me way different results. From Fitbit.

I do think it was the time zone change issue mentioned above. I noticed it tracked my sleep inaccurately as well. I restarted my Fitbit last night and I think today all’s well again. I also managed to trick MFP and Fitbit into letting me have the calories from the run by adding the run manually to yesterday’s log through MFP and then completing my day again. The calories are still there lol!

Thanks for the suggestions and tips everyone.

PAV8888 wrote: »

emilysusana wrote: »

I did change time zones... I switched into EST for about 24 hours and now I’m back on central time. That’s interesting to know that can throw things off!

Fitbit can be set to change times zones with your phone. MFP has to be changed manually. In the interim things get confused and the adjustments out of whack.

Haven't worried about it enough to do more than observe that my travel days tend to be a little bit off. I suspect that MFP doesn't handle the shorter/longer day correctly.

That said, if the exercise itself didn't record correctly, you then know your answer. You could "crib" from a previous exercise and manually adjust it.

I don’t know what you mean by “crib” nor do I know how to manually adjust. I messed with it a lot last night and couldn’t see any mechanism for adjustment. I did figure out how to add a run through MFP and then close out my diary for that day before it started deleting from my Fitbit adjustment. I guess maybe that got Fitbit and MFP to stop communicating about yesterday? Anyway, all’s well that ends well. Thanks for the insight about the travel. My biggest fear, that my Fitbit was forever broken or going to forever withhold hard-won calories, seems to not to be coming true!

PAV8888 wrote: »

You could create the same exercise on Fitbit. You could have used as a template (calories, distance) your past Fitbit exercise. Your manual entry would have adjusted the detected entry.

You achieved same by entering it on mfp (if you look on Fitbit you will find your MFP exercise sitting there)

Your Flex absolutely detects shuffling all day from hard walk via accelerometer and step cadence (and time between steps and jarring on landing)

Arguably the lack of HR data may make it more accurate and less prone to overinflate.

I’ve somehow missed how to manually adjust or enter a workout on Fitbit. Is this through the app or the website? I’ll check it out again and try to figure out how to do it. Could come in handy if ever I forget to wear my Fitbit for a workout.