I Tested Apple Watch's Calorie Burn (vs Sports Lab)

Apple Watch, Garmin, WHOOP, and Oura Ring's calorie burn versus a metabolic test at a sports lab in New York City (HSS and Elevate Performance). How accurate are my calorie burn data on fitness trackers in comparison to these sport science labs?

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** Timecodes **
00:00 - I Tested Apple Watch's Calorie Burn (vs Sports Lab)
00:19 - Running Test 1
01:25 - AIM7 Article on Wearable
02:43 - Running Test 2
03:30 - BetterHelp
04:29 - Weight & Tightness of Watch
04:56 - Stanford Study on Calories Burned
05:28 - Cycling Test 3

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[becomingresilientwithJustin]

Literally have been trying to find a video that does exactly this! Why aren't there more videos doing this? It's crazy, I was curious which would be more accurate

[ThanksYep]

The average of the four wearables was actually really close to the actual calories burned.

[warpig]

I still rely on my Apple Watch, whether close to accurate or not I went from 230lbs in late February and to 148lbs now in September. I’ve been pretty happy with what my watch has been tracking so far

[notthatserious]

I’m on a cut right now and I use a calories tracker app. But I always leave an extra 300 cals on the table after each week to account for caloric discrepancies in nutrition labels and calorie expenditure 👍

[Samcheyanne]

This makes so much sense why my defecits were only slightly effective, also I wish everyone would stop promoting better help 😭 All my psych professors have said it is awful and literally anyone can call themselves a therapist on this app, legally...

[certifiedalchemist]

I love this dude. Going through all this hassle to provided valuable information.
Keep it up my man, you are doing great!

[shubham_srt]

just started watching this video, already want to comment thanks for this, it has been a question in my head too for a long time!

[sublimetulii]

I lost 80 lbs in 8 months while wearing an Apple Watch Series 7 & learned quickly that the watch was inaccurate because I weighed myself in the morning & at night. I just now set my calorie goal to be 1, 600 & know that I actually burn more like 1, 200+ calories which is my true goal anyways. While I know it’s inaccurate, it still keeps me driven to reach that number, which has still made me healthier & more active & to be honest I’m completely ok with. Monitoring my sleep habits at least gives me some kinda data that I can go off of that I know when I had a good night’s sleep versus when I didn’t & has changed my sleeping habits to be better. I wish there were more accurate wearables, but for me it’s helped achieve my goals & live healthier so I can’t complain that much.

[matthewbell]

Shervin goes so hard to make sure his videos are rigorous and transparent - he's an absolute G

[kylek]

I've noticed the difference in calorie algorithms myself, each brand has its own set of values -- Fitbit tends to be on the "low side" (compared to other devices, not a lab) when estimating calories, and a lot of that seems to come from their look-up table where they use the exercise assigned (e.g. Ice Hockey has a different value than Power Walking) to adjust the rate of burn. Garmin skews higher and aligns with things like Wahoo and Polar.

One thing I'm not positive about, but I suspect Fitbit's algorithm might be EXCESS calories you burned over basal metabolic rate, whereas some of the others appear to be cumulative. When you subtract your expected BMR from some of the higher ones, they tend to align with Fitbit.

Best approach? Use this as a "relative" metric. If the watch says you burned +1000 calories above average, you were probably more active than usual .. or operating a jackhammer (tends to throw them off).

[griffduncan]

You can still use the watch as a consistent barometer. I.e., at the start of my diet I was eating 2300 calories + whatever apple gave me from my daily workouts. I kept monitoring my weight and found 1900 calories + whatever weight loss my watch gives me is the sweet spot. I’ve lost 13 lbs in 2 months doing that

[JayRock_]

I’ve usually always take my calories burned with a grain of salt, I just love tracking workouts in general to see trends in my activity and focus on areas I can improve. I love being able to see my paces on long runs, HR is definitely something I wish was more accurate though without having to buy a chest strap.

[wideopenmx]

I noticed my garmin epix heart rate measurement would jump all over during workouts…probably due it moving around on my wrist too much or changes in angles doing push ups etc. I synced my Polar H10 chest strap to the watch and after doing that it was perfectly consistent throughout the whole workout. Having consistent heart rate data the whole workout is key for the watch to do it’s calculations correctly.

[mpayne]

Are the Apple Watch calories you displayed the “Active Calories” from the workout or “Total Calories”?

[fran]

Thank you for everything you go through to provide these tests, I hope you realize how helpful you are :)

[rikadreamer]

I want to thank you so much for this information. I was using my Apple Watch to figure out how much I burn versus how much I eat to lose weight. I was always frustrated on why I wasn't losing. The answer was that Apple gave me a higher calorie burn rate versus the actual amount. I know people say never eat back your calories... But I love food. So I learned it's best if I take off my watch and focus on calories in. You've got yourself a new subscriber!

[answeredthatforyou]

hey, thanks for this video. can you see how accurate calorie counters are at restaurant? Like at Chick-Fil-A!!!!

[alextowle]

Your videos are consistently amazing. They have the quality of a channel with 10 - 50x the subs. Idk if that’s your goal, but you’re gonna get there if you just keep it up.

[natea]

Your videos are mind bogglingly good. Every video tops the previous. Hope you keep gaining subscribers you deserve it!

[hilas]

For everyone who dont know: You have to adjust for example your weight in the health app. Because the apple watch literally will need it to calculate the calories you burned correctly. So just adjust every week your weight in the app. (<-- heard this fact in another apple watch video)