Exercise calories way too high?

With 20k steps, it does not look high if you're heavy, but does look a bit high if you're not heavy. 700 definitely does not look high for 20k steps including running even for a lighter person. You under-estimate how much non-exercise calories you can accumulate outside of intentional exercise. 20k steps, in reality, is 3-4 hours of movement.

Fortunately, this can easily be calculated and adjusted. For the past couple of months, how has your weight been doing with your current calorie intake and what fitbit predicts your activity to be? Have the MFP predictions for your weight been close to correct? If yes, then your fitbit estimates are close to correct. If not, you can tweak how you handler the fitbit adjustment and eat less/more of it depending on your calorie and weight data for the past month or two.

Cat_A_89 wrote: »

So I had a pretty productive day. Two 30 min walks and a 30 min run, all great and good about 20k steps yay, but my exercise calories seem way too high for that. I have my fitbit linked and dont manually put in my workouts just use my watch to track them and today it says I have 1400 exercise calories! That seems way too high. I sometimes eat back like 50% calories but evem today 700 seems too much

Out of comparison - how many calories did your Fitbit say you burned yesterday in total?

Cat_A_89 wrote: »

WinoGelato wrote: »

What are your overall stats?
Are you trying to lose weight? How much? What rate of loss did you choose?
What activity level did you select?
Do you have negative calorie adjustments enabled?
Is today an anomaly or will you continue to see these kinds of step counts and burns?

Im 5'2 female 177 pounds started at 225 I have it set to 1.5 pounds loss a week have it at lightly active. I believe i do have it enabled. It's only been recently that Ive strived to walk between 15 and 20k a day. Last week I had a total of over 100k steps and have seen 1+k exercise calories more often over the last few weeks

The math is correct then for what Fitbit is feeding MFP then.

The question is - is Fitbit seeing correct distance?
Because that is where the calories come from unless going hard enough that HR is up and it switches to HR-based calorie burn.
Which it may be doing - at the side of the range with best potential to be inflated calorie burn too.

Ever walked a known distance 1/2 to 1 mile at 2 mph and confirmed Fitbit saw the distance correctly?

Because with that many steps - accurate distance matters on walking level movements.

Cat_A_89 wrote: »

heybales wrote: »

Cat_A_89 wrote: »

WinoGelato wrote: »

What are your overall stats?
Are you trying to lose weight? How much? What rate of loss did you choose?
What activity level did you select?
Do you have negative calorie adjustments enabled?
Is today an anomaly or will you continue to see these kinds of step counts and burns?

Im 5'2 female 177 pounds started at 225 I have it set to 1.5 pounds loss a week have it at lightly active. I believe i do have it enabled. It's only been recently that Ive strived to walk between 15 and 20k a day. Last week I had a total of over 100k steps and have seen 1+k exercise calories more often over the last few weeks

The math is correct then for what Fitbit is feeding MFP then.

The question is - is Fitbit seeing correct distance?
Because that is where the calories come from unless going hard enough that HR is up and it switches to HR-based calorie burn.
Which it may be doing - at the side of the range with best potential to be inflated calorie burn too.

Ever walked a known distance 1/2 to 1 mile at 2 mph and confirmed Fitbit saw the distance correctly?

Because with that many steps - accurate distance matters on walking level movements.

Im pretty sure the distance is close to accurate Ive checked the mile mark from my house on google maps and its pretty much the same as when my fitbit tells me Ive ran/walked a mile. The steps seem to be fairly accurate too. My samsung health app and my fitbit have around 100 step difference for my run today

There's a reason why I asked about 2 mph.
Running is it's own stride length setting.
Walking though has to cover the range from grocery store shuffle to exercise pace - so it's best if the stride length setting is right in the middle of potential paces - usually 2 mph will do it.
That way it can adjust both directions as needed for best chance of accuracy.

If exercise pace is right on - you are almost guaranteed that your daily level pace for vast majority of steps/day is inflated - so inflated calorie burn if you have lots of daily steps outside workouts - and most do.
Use a high school track for a mile - just make sure you know the mile marks on a likely metric track.
Google maps not that accurate.
I figure if spending time to do it best once, really do it right as possible.

Though - probably want to do it again after losing 20 lbs. Stride usually changes when carrying less weight.

thanos5 wrote: »

@heybales ...if the treadmill says i went a mile, but fitbit says i went 1.5 miles, are my strides set up too short or too long in fitbit? for some reason the math eludes me on this.

Stride too long.

If you can set an Activity record for that time - or it already did, then you have steps, and you have distance.

5280 feet / steps = decimal feet per step (like 2.7)

In stride settings, you got the 2 ft, take 12 x decimal part (like 0.7) for the conversion to decimal inches (8.4).

Not sure if the app uses inches only in setting, in which case decimal feet x 12 for total inches.

Be aware a treadmill with shocks can mess this up a bit, as well as doing a test walk on a beach or soft ground that absorbs impact.

Softened impact would read as shorter strides and be given shorter distance.

So actually someone doing a ton of steps trail walking on soft ground would be underestimated distance and calories.