Your Applewatch, FitBit, Polar… SUCK for Tracking Calorie Burn

New Study Discussed:

Systematic reviews:

REPS-Research Explained in Practical Summaries

[clinthansen]

Well that study didn't test my Garmin watch, so I'm going to assume it's 100% accurate. Now, what should I have to eat back the 900 calories I burned walking from my car? 😅

[tauraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

My fitbit said i burned 4k calories in 3minuites and im chosing to believe that thats my truth

[markdubrovskyi]

For me, the best part of Apple Watch in terms of fitness is not the calorie tracker (god knows it sucks), but the fact it constantly annoys me into taking a walk or doing additional physical activity. Also gamification with the “rings” is nice.

[christianhunger]

Certain activities are tracked more accurately than others. Walking and running are pretty accurate on the Apple watch. Other activities, like weight training are wildly out. I always subtract 50% from my weights workouts. Overall it is still useful to track calories expended on a smartwatch not for the accuracy but more for seeing trends in personal activity levels.

[roisinokane]

My Fitbit estimates my daily calorie burn at almost exactly what the Carbon app estimates my current maintenance at. I absolutely love it. I do t use it to calculate my calories but as a great tool to motivate me to increase my NEAT.

[ramicohen]

How do you suggest we estimate daily calorie expenditure? Any tricks or hacks to at least get a “reasonable” number? Maybe a follow-up video for this?

[TheOlsonOutfit]

I found it a lot more accurate to track my caloric intake as closely as I can, and then compare that to my average weight throughout the week. Adjust as necessary

[darietto]

i use fitbit from 4 years non and i realized that the best way to track calories out is not using any preset expecially for the weights because it oversteem a lot if you want to use the "weights" preset consider a 20/25% less in your daily calories tracked. it is accurate for walking and everydays activities.

[phxx]

They are not accurate but mine is very consistent, which provides an accuracy of its own given that I compare it against a TDEE spreadsheet. My fitbit weekly average is around 500 calories over this number with only minor variations because my weekly activity level doesn't fluctuate that much (routine).

All activity trackers are useful as a fixed point to judge your relative activity level and maintain that goal IE 8-10k steps a day.

[kw]

I agree that smartwatches are shit for counting calories, but surely if it says you burned 500 and you actually burned 200, this is overestimating rather than underestimating?

[mfmonthefmf]

My Garmin is fairly accurate, I've lost 15 pounds using it alongside Chronometer for calorie tracking. The Garmin actually shows less energy burn than my Strava app (which is paired to a Polar chest strap). I thinking maybe people don't properly configure/update their profile settings (Hight, Weight, Age, etc)

[coletcyre]

What I prefer to use the 'metrics' in the watch, is often like how we talk about bodyfat percentage tests. None of them are truly accurate, but if you are consistently trending your numbers up, you are in fact being more active. So even if 10k steps on my Apple Watch is actually 6k, 6k is still more than the 3k* average I used to have.
Same methodology with the Move ring. I don't count the calorie number to prove that I burned a number of calories, I use it note that I have been more active than my original baseline. Doing this also eliminates the mentality of using the number to guess how much more I could eat and still stay in a deficit.
The only metric I do not care for is the exercise ring, since that drastically increases the Move ring's number when you start an exercise on the Watch. Having said that, walking at a decent pace seems to trigger it naturally, but doesn't drastically effect the Move ring.

All in all, track calories, use the watch to motivate you to move more. Or don't use it. It's pretty much just an expensive toy anyways.

[justinzabinski]

...Okay cool. So how do we accurately track it?

[dialamark]

What is the best way to track how many calaroies we burn after an activity?

[rockymountainskies]

Option #3- people are underestimating their calories by an average of 40% according to research. 40% of total daily consumption is WAY more impactful than 40% of a 60min cardio session.

[r.t.hannah]

For 2 years I used my garmin Vivoactive 4 to track my calorie expenditure. I found that while it may not have been accurate, it was very consistent throughout that entire time.

In the beginning I just monitored my intake with a food scale and weight every day and adjusted food intake weekly.

If I actually only burned 2000 instead of 2500, I would notice this on the weight scale in a week or two and adjust accordingly. Then I knew that to burn 1lb my daily intake needed to average roughly 600-800 less per day for a week.

I lost like 20-25lbs in that two year timespan doing this. It didn’t matter that the actual calorie burn amount was wrong on a day to day basis. For what I did, it was just very consistent especially. Especially the two week averages. They were always spot on.

[krsans]

At 1:10 you say the research said that watches UNDER-estimated calorie burn by 28-93%, but then you go on to say that when the watch says you burned 500, you only burned like 250. If the watch UNDER-estimated the burn, then, in fact, you would have burned closer to 1000 calories when your watch showed 500. You then go on to reference a newer study, but only mention the variance coefficient, but fail to mention if the watches mostly under- or over-estimate the burn. Most viewers will likely assume that the same under-estimation applies since you didn't specifically mention it. However, because you erroneously talk about how this under-estimation translates into LESS burn than the watch says, they will likely think that it also applies to the findings in the newer study.

So, the quality of this video is actually quite poor, because a critical part of your analysis is wrong. However, I would like to add that I do agree with your point that people not losing weight or even gaining weight when they believe they are in a deficit, are, in fact, not in a deficit, and that's because of the laws of thermodynamics.

[noahrecker]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding or you misspoke, but you mention 1:12 that they underestimated expenditure? Wouldnt this imply they burned more than the watch predicted?

[jw]

So outside of using like your app, tdee calculator etc, I’m assuming the best way to determine if you are actually burning enough calories compared to what you are eating, is to just weigh and pay attention to body composition?

[curtpopejoy]

I pay zero attention to calories burned. It's pretty much the same every day so I just adjust the food.