This is Why Your Fitness Tracker Isn’t Counting Calories Accurately

This is Why Your Fitness Tracker Isn’t Counting Calories Accurately

Math has given us a lot of tools, but getting a machine to measure the calories you’re burning is tricky business.

If you have a fitness tracker and you’re relying on it to keep track of your movement and your heart rate, you’re in luck. A recent study out of Stanford University indicates that many trackers do this quite well.

But if you’re using your device to try to lose weight or maintain your current size, you might want to think again. Apparently the technology embedded in your Fitbit or Apple Watch that’s used to calculate how many calories you’ve burned isn’t actually up to par, yet.

In the study, researchers looked at the Apple Watch, Fitbit Surge, Basis Peak, Microsoft Band, PulseOn and Mio Alpha 2 and Samsung Gear S2 to see exactly how accurate each device is at measuring the energy you burn each day. To do so, 60 volunteers ran, cycled and walked while wearing the devices.

Amazingly, the study uncovered the fact that all the devices are at least 20% off if not more, when reporting your calories burned.

Why?

Almighty Algorithms

Fitness trackers are inaccurate when it comes to counting calories expended.

As one researcher pointed out, it’s hard to tell precisely why fitness trackers are so inaccurate in the arena of counting calories expended as manufacturers keep the algorithms they use a secret. Companies also update their systems constantly, and so knowing where the error is coming from, as an outsider, is next to impossible.

But another part of it is the fact that different people burn different amounts of calories depending on their size. Your height and weight, heart rate and amount of body fat can make you burn far fewer or far more calories than your neighbor while doing the same exercises.

What’s best practice? Don’t ditch your device, as it can be a great motivator and of course there’s more to it than counting calories expended. That being said though, know your fitness tracker’s limits.

If you’re not losing weight and think you should be, or you keep on losing or maintaining and you’d rather be gaining, try an alternative approach.

The honest truth is that your device could be giving you false information.

Photo credits: Vera Verano/Bigstock; avemario/Bigstock

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