Charge 6 overestimates calories burned
glassyo
Posts: 7,739 Member
I originally posted this in the fitness category and also on fitbit.com (the one person who answered was no help at all...kinda condescending actually) so taking my last shot over here.
tldr: Is there a learning curve/tips and tricks to get the most accurate tdee out of the charge 6 or is it a wysisyg type thing?
(And, yes, I've most likely posted the same thing about other fitbits I had that overestimated calories but it's been 5 years since I last tried...I'm not counting the 1 day I had the inspire 3...and thought maybe things had changed.)
Original post:
I just got a fitbit charge 6 and, like all the non original fitbits before it, it's overestimating exercise calories. There's just no way in hell my tdee is 2900 with the exercise I do even if I rarely stop moving as opposed to my garmin which came in at 2400ish.
My fitbit stats are correct and so is the time zone. It's on my non dominant hand and I have that as a setting too (the garmin lives on my ankle because most of my walking is indoors now while playing on my tablets or working). My meal plan is set as sedentary.
It does well with counting steps. Fitbit was 46,000 and garmin was 98,000.
I have it set to automatically calculate stride length and I take a lot of teeny tiny steps because of the walking dvds I do.
I don't have it syncing with mfp since I still have my garmin syncing so I'm adding my eaten calories with fitbit manually.
Any tips or ideas? I have until May 17th to return it.
As always, please and thank you.
tldr: Is there a learning curve/tips and tricks to get the most accurate tdee out of the charge 6 or is it a wysisyg type thing?
(And, yes, I've most likely posted the same thing about other fitbits I had that overestimated calories but it's been 5 years since I last tried...I'm not counting the 1 day I had the inspire 3...and thought maybe things had changed.)
Original post:
I just got a fitbit charge 6 and, like all the non original fitbits before it, it's overestimating exercise calories. There's just no way in hell my tdee is 2900 with the exercise I do even if I rarely stop moving as opposed to my garmin which came in at 2400ish.
My fitbit stats are correct and so is the time zone. It's on my non dominant hand and I have that as a setting too (the garmin lives on my ankle because most of my walking is indoors now while playing on my tablets or working). My meal plan is set as sedentary.
It does well with counting steps. Fitbit was 46,000 and garmin was 98,000.
I have it set to automatically calculate stride length and I take a lot of teeny tiny steps because of the walking dvds I do.
I don't have it syncing with mfp since I still have my garmin syncing so I'm adding my eaten calories with fitbit manually.
Any tips or ideas? I have until May 17th to return it.
As always, please and thank you.
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Replies
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What does "tdee" mean, please?0
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looks like this group has gone dormant, or is everybody just in mourning for what they’ e done to food tracking on fitbit? starting all new is bad, especially when they count so differently!
where i am at present is my fitbit and mfp linked, and my smart scale linked to my fitbit only for weight only—it had defaulted to everything and then fitbit threw that to mfp and my base was waaay out of whack until i saw i could have the scale forward weight only, and disconnected it from mfp altogether. so now my scale just tells fitbit my weight; fitbit uses that to figure out my energy expenditure in some now mysterious fashion, sends that to mfp which adds in my food and sends it back to fitbit, rinse, repeat…
it all doesn’t make much sense for most of the day so i just look at mfp to plan and log daily foods and trust that they somehow catch up to each other by midnight. they did last night, anyway. if anybody has any enlightenment on this plan? it ‘s already appreciated.0 -
darkskiesgirl wrote: »What does "tdee" mean, please?
i think it means total daily energy expenditure?0 -
It does well with counting steps. Fitbit was 46,000 and garmin was 98,000. I have it set to automatically calculate stride length and I take a lot of teeny tiny steps because of the walking dvds I do. I have until May 17th to return it.
Yo Ms @glassyo ! Sorry I missed this and hopefully you've returned it if it wasn't working for you.
So... first question is: are you talking 46,000 steps in a day? Or a week?
If in a day we have identified the problem.
Because yes, if the step count is correct then a TDEE hitting the 3K range would not be unreasonable even for a tiny person -- assuming the steps cover the distance they are expected to cover.
Just for "a sense" of it. 10K steps would be MFP active or an activity factor of about 1.6. 15K would bring you up to MFP very active or an activity factor of about 1.8.
As you can guess this keeps increasing... and there is a lot of steps between 15K and 46K.
Now. There's some issues that trackers may or may not account for. The calories expended for the first 10K steps will not necessarily be the same amount as the calories expended for the last 10K steps.
But even more basic is that the automatic step calculation makes some adjustment for running vs walking strides based on your height, as entered, and your activity, as detected, but doesn't really have a way to account for extra tiny or extra long steps other than through a GPS run assuming that a GPS run is appropriate at your location
In other words this can't fly.
You either have to select a manual stride length that is more appropriate or over-ride the detection with a manual exercise giving length of exercise and distance.
Given that the second one isn't feasible it only really leaves you with entering a different stride length such that the TDEE becomes what you believe it to be.
Alternatively you can calculate a % of TDEE error by diligent tracking over month(s)... and automatically assume that the most recent error trends apply to your day.
My individualized personal finding is that my sub 15,750 days are bang on for TDEE. 20-25K step days are no more than 5% off. 25K to 30K days are probably a good 5%+ off unless the 30K was really intense (like a hike as opposed to grocery shopping)0
