Active Calories Wrong After Update to 15.0

Hi! Same issue here with the Forerunner 935. Only since the recent update.

Same issue here with my Fenix 5s. I’ve noticed it regularly since mid December (previously, it would only happen once or twice). I have iOS 13.3 . For example, I burned 450 calories in my Garmin-recorded workout, but the app says I only have 385 active calories so far today. I restarted my phone, unpaired and paired the device, and even deleted/ re-downloaded/ re-logged  into the app. Still incorrect.... very frustrating. Garmin needs to provide a fix ASAP.

Kimb_H said:

For example, I burned 450 calories in my Garmin-recorded workout, but the app says I only have 385 active calories so far today.

This is because the recorded calories in an activity is the sum of your resting calories and your active calories during the activity.

If you don't believe me, try recording an activity where you sit on the couch for 6 hours. I suppose we can agree that this couchsitting activity should not cause an increase in your active calories count of the day - and it won't. However, in the recording of that activity, you will see a calorie count of several hundred calories - of which almost all will be resting calories. 

This is not a new behaviour. When I started looking into how calories were calculated on my Fenix 3 a couple of years ago, it was exactly the same.

And as far as I know, it is not Garmin-specific behaviour either. I have read the same about some other watches. I could wish that only active calories were registered in an activity, but apparently that is not the agreed norm.

Hi there I've experienced same thi g with the calories. The active calories excluding workouts , are added like crazy. In a day without workouts and few movements I reahed 3400 calories in total. Usually I was doing around 2000 in a similar day. 

I think the update did something to the algorithm. 

lightkey said:

Hi there I've experienced same thi g with the calories.

That is not the same thing. It is actually the opposite. The OP's complaint is that he gets too few active calories.

“The recorded calories in an activity is the sum of your resting calories and your active calories during the activity.”

This is not entirely true. For example, after a run my Fenix 5 will report the “active” calories burned during the workout immediately after ending the workout. This represents the number of calories above my base metabolic rate that I burned during the activity. I ran 6.5 miles the other day and my Fenix 5 reported I burned 711 active calories during the 46 minute run. Upon uploading the activity to my Garmin Connect app my active calories for the day after the run were just over 300. Was my base metabolic rate during those 46 minutes 411 calories? Of course not. The calculation of the summation of active calories for the day after the software update is flawed.

I spoke with a member of the Garmin staff about this and they agreed it was now being calculated wrong. His idea was that since I had so many activities stored on my watch that it was preventing the software update from fully functioning properly (far-fetched but he had no other ideas). He asked me to delete the stores activity folder on my watch and see if this fixed the problem. It didn’t.

Come on Garmin, you can do better than this. I’ve owned my Fenix 5 for almost 3 years and never had issues with total daily active calories summation until now.

1964179 said:

“The recorded calories in an activity is the sum of your resting calories and your active calories during the activity.”

This is not entirely true.

Well, it is true for how it works on the Garmins I have owned.

1964179 said:

This represents the number of calories above my base metabolic rate that I burned during the activity.

That is not how it has worked on the Garmins I have owned. Delete the words "above my base metabolic rate".

Not the case with me. I ran a 40 minute 10k this morning and burned 700kcal, at the end the active calories in my watch was only 300kcal. My BMR Is about 90kcal per hour, so if the 700 is accurate (and it's consistent with my Fitbit) then I guess the active calories should be more like 640 or so.

TLDR, it's still not adding up... The problem being if you're trying to balance nutrition for race training, I've no idea of correct calorie consumption now. 

theluckyme200 said:

Not the case with me. I ran a 40 minute 10k this morning and burned 700kcal, at the end the active calories in my watch was only 300kcal.

In your watch?

So why are you posting in the GCM forum?

I can't rule out that some watch models have faulty calorie calculation. But in that case you should post in the forum for that watch, not in in the GCM forum.

My active calories are roughly half those earnt. Run activity showed over 400 cal then walked over 10000 steps total active cals 380 for the day. This is since last update. Using Fenix 5