My Fitbit total calories for the day are HUNDREDS below my BMR

I have found Fitbit to be very accurate. Maybe it is just not syncing or is defective somehow. Call the manufacturer.

Sounds like equipment failure. My suggestion is to contact your insurance company to find out how to get one that works.

Privatesandbank wrote: »

I’m really hoping someone has a solution... I have restarted/reset my Fitbit and I’m hoping to not have to factory reset. I’m tall, heavy and EXTREMELY active. My BMR is almost 2000 and with exercise (underestimated at light to moderate activity, but really I’m heavily active) I’m burning a total of around 2400-2600 most days. Consistently I’m losing on 2000 calories. My Fitbit was working according to plan and matching my weight loss and other calculators. All of a sudden it’s showing I’ve only burned 1300 calories BY 5 PM.

I’m about to return this thing. I only got it because it was free through a health insurance program. I’m hoping I don’t have to return it as it was working great before it suddenly started low balling my calories to the extreme.

ALSO I DID CHECK MY STATS. They are correct. What gives? TIA!!

Here's an issue that occurred few years ago - of course it was system wide issue so effects hundreds of people that happened to update within a certain window.

But perhaps bug started again and effected you because you recently changed weight.

Your physical stats are converted to metric so they can be used in all the formula's going on within the device.

Your setting of US or metric merely converts or not for display to you.

They had an issue where the weight in pounds was not converted, but straight copied as kg, causing opposite issue of way too much calorie burn. Math worked out perfectly and proved what happened.

Height did not seem to have the same issue at that time - but there's been a time or two where the math seemed to indicate they had a day's worth of issue on that.

Fix after they fixed their end was to re-enter weight in kg, sync device since that's where the math is done first, then switch back and re-enter in pounds.

May be something similar, perhaps with height.
One little issue of failure to call a subroutine is all it takes on an update.
And as soon as device has new figure, it's very happy to keep using it.

If you don't use metric, perhaps enter stats as metric correctly converted, and sync and use for a day and see if it looks better.

nooshi713 wrote: »

beulah81 wrote: »

nooshi713 wrote: »

I have found Fitbit to be very accurate. Maybe it is just not syncing or is defective somehow. Call the manufacturer.

@nooshi713 What model do you have? Also, did you custom set your stride length?

I have a Zip and I did not customize my stride length. Maybe I should though.

@Privatesandbank I apologise, I don't mean to take over your thread. I have one more question.
@nooshi713 Thank you so much! I also have a Zip. I know you're maintaining. So, when you say yours is very accurate, do you mean you eat 100% of Fitbit's adjustments and maintain?

Privatesandbank wrote: »

OMG GUYS... I found the problem..... I am shocked how stupid it is. So I had put my birthdate in accurately. For whatever reason Fitbit listed me as “women in 30-39 age range” which I’m clearly not as I’m in my 20s. I moved the birth date back a couple months to test it out and boom... my calorie count went up hundreds... I am actually kind of mad? Like I’m happy I fixed it but I’m confused. Would a woman 10 years older than me (all other things being equal) really burn SEVEN HUNDRED less calories? With the same muscle mass and the same height and weight?! That’s insane. I will respond to posts now and thanks to everyone for commenting!!

They don't know muscle mass. Only gender, age, weight, height needed for formulas.

There are assumptions built into the formulas about muscle mass.

And no - 10 yrs difference should only be about 50-75 calories per formula depending on BMR or TDEE figure - so there is something else going on with those settings.

Or you are reading some other value that is displayed besides what you have burned in total.

If merely changing the DOB made this change instantly - then I think you are looking at something else.

Because the BMR based on those stats is used on the device for everything it calculates BEFORE it syncs it up to your account - where you were making changes of DOB.

Where is the field you are reading for calories, and what is it called exactly?

You should get a screen shot and include here.

yirara wrote: »

Privatesandbank wrote: »

PAV8888 wrote: »

What is it showing at 8:40pm? Is this a case of not synchronizing?

What is it showing on the watch itself? Your fitbit dashboard? Ultimately, if the fitbit is wrong you will end up having to call Fitbit support.

If the synchronization to MFP is wrong, I would suggest waiting a full day (it often fixes itself overnight) or disconnecting from both sides and re-connecting again. However, disconnecting and reconnecting is often the start of a never ending repetition of the process, so it is easier to just let it be for a day or so until it catches up!

It was showing like 1500 TOTAL calories for the day. My BMR is about 1900 because I’m tall, fat, young and I walk like 10 miles a day plus workouts. It was insane lol

Yeah, tell me about it. The average TDEE calculator gives me a measly 1540kcal per day because I'm quite a bit past 40. Well, getting close to 50. My actual TDEE is around 1850 though (yeah, I'm an office plant). My Fitbit only kind of works for me because I have a high maxHR and a rather low minHR, and this stupid thing gives me much higher calorie burns, thinking I'm super active when I just get up to get a fresh cut of tea

You might test as others have if it's really HR causing that - just have a day of normal activity (planned) and disable HR readings for work and see how it compares to other days.
You can create an Activity Record for each day's chunk of matching time, and compare all the stats.

It's not supposed to slip into HR-based calorie burn unless a workout is going on, and auto-starting a workout isn't supposed to happen without increased HR and steps for a minimum amount of time (don't recall what it is now).
Plus a workout would show up under exercise if that was done.

yirara wrote: »

as soon as hr gets tracked i get crazy burns, like 300cal for 30 minutes walking. The burns are also massive when I’m at the office and get up to get a tea every now and then, but low when I just sit around and forget about the tea.

@yirara: Does your particular Fitbit model not let you set a custom HRmax, and/or track your HRmin? This is a sincere question. I have a HRmax substantially but not astronomically higher than 220-age, and a reasonably low but not rare HRmin. (Age 64, HRmax around 180 (vs 156), HRmin usually high 40s/low 50s.) With these stats, which it knows, my Garmin model (Vivoactive 3) underestimates my TDEE routinely by several hundred calories. Your HRmax/min may be much more unusual, so I'm curious about how that affects accuracy for various devices.

OP, I know this is a digression: I hope you'll forgive me.

Privatesandbank wrote: »

Guys idk what to do I’m about to smash this thing. Now it’s broken again... it’s saying 1200 calorie burn TOTAL including exercise and BMR (my bmr is minimum 1600) for the whole day... it’s wildly inaccurate. I’m going to be returning it

by definition fitbit cannot be giving you a TDEE reading below your BMR, unless there is an egregious technical issue with your account.

Even if it detects NOTHING it should be giving you a reading equal to BMR. If support cannot intervene to resolve, then yes, I would return and delete the account.

Alternatively I would consider creating a new fitbit account and asking them to transfer the fitbit to the "new owner".

deannalfisher wrote: »

Honestly ignore your Fitbit if it’s wrong - mine consistently tells me I only burn 1500 cal a day yet I maintain on 2700

Wow! Second report of Fitbit giving back BMR or near BMR numbers, right? 1500 day in total is basically BMR or near BMR with almost no activity detected. Is it just not detecting your steps and activity @deannalfisher ? Or is it detecting them but not giving you calories for them? Have you asked support?

deannalfisher wrote: »

Admittedly covid19 has me much less activity than normal but fitbit istelling me with 4000 steps; 5’3” and 165lbs tgat I only burned 1350 cal today...

Is the 1350 by midnight or to this point of the day? How many hours left?

4000 is just about at the top end of sedentary, i.e. about an activity factor of 1.2 to 1.25 for the day.

BMR of about 1338 (random age used). Means "expected" calories if all day ends at 4K steps would be 1675ish

Based on your 2700 maintenance... you would be looking at an activity factor of about 2x BMR... which would be very very active... or you being an outlier

Based on what I remember you posting, I believe you're a higher burning outlier (like Anne) with either Fitbit not detecting all your movement, or you registering as high "active" or low "very active" in terms of activity in the 12K step range (so BMR x 1.7 approximately), but burning at BMR x 2.

Which means that you would be looking at an approximately 18% correction of what your fitbit gives you as your calories and could adjust based on that if you felt like it.

yirara wrote: »

Another funny number: roughly 19km walk through forests, flat landscape, Fitbit gave me a whopping 1560kcal for that! I think these are gross calories, thus lets take the bmi off. https://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/ gives me a bmi of roughly 1400 (small, not heavy, old-ish). Thus for this 4.5h trip it would 262, thus 1300 net calories for this walk. Nope.

How far off using a gross calculator since Fitbit is correctly telling you how much you burned doing whatever you did during that chunk of time?
Usually it's walking/running calculations are right on if it got the distance correct.
The problem is when it slips into HR-based calculations and you were barely into decent range for that estimate.

https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs

Because 288 cal an hr does seem low for walking.