Change to Resting Calorie calculation?

So last night, before I went to bed, I checked my calories burned on my Vivofit. It was close to 2500. This morning after I synched to Garmin Connect, my recorded data tells me I burned a total of 2007 calories for the day.

WT? How did I lose 500calories overnight?

When I look on the app, it tells me I only burned 1444 resting calories. Is Garmin trying to tell me that's my BMR? Because it's not.

Up until 2 days ago, I notice that it was a constant number (which is very close to my actual, measured BMR). But the last 2 days, it is sitting in the 1400s.

Has there been a change to the way Resting Calories are calculated?

Can someone please explain this to me?

I noticed this the last two days also on the Fenix3. But it seemed to only cut out only a few hrs of resting calories. Over those two days I also powered off the watch before bed one day and had it on the charger for over an hour.

Did you do either of those? Or have the watch on all the time? I'm wondering if powering off and/or charging it - the watch stops counting resting calories for that time.

I have a Vivofit. It is on all the time (I didn't think there was an off switch).

I did notice that it seems to not be registering any/much movement after 8pm or so.

I know my battery is getting low but I figure that as long as it keeps telling me the time, then it must be fine. That also does not account for the fact that when I checked it before switching to sleep mode that it says I burned 2500cals but then I wake up, sync, and it tells me I somehow lost 493 cals overnight?

It's just weird.

Makes me want to go back to Fitbit.

I have a Vivofit. It is on all the time (I didn't think there was an off switch).

I did notice that it seems to not be registering any/much movement after 8pm or so.

I know my battery is getting low but I figure that as long as it keeps telling me the time, then it must be fine. That also does not account for the fact that when I checked it before switching to sleep mode that it says I burned 2500cals but then I wake up, sync, and it tells me I somehow lost 493 cals overnight?

It's just weird.

Makes me want to go back to Fitbit.

Can you see today's current resting cals? Divide those by the current total minutes elapsed today and you'll get a number which should be calories burned per minute.

Then multiply that number by 1440 which should give you an entire day's BMR.

Does that number then look correct? If so you're on track. So something else is causing it to stop counting.

Hi everyone. Check to see if the time zone changed. This is what happened to me for some unexplained reason. Exactly as you report.

You can see this by looking at the today view in GC. If the time zone changed there'll be a little red clock next to the date.

I think Garmin is tinkering with how calories are calculated. At least for me, with my 235, it's been highly inaccurate and basically worthless. It's the new HRM devices I think which they haven't figured out yet.

Tz is correct for me. I scrolled back several days and see thus has happened before. I think it's when the watch is turned off or charging it might not be calculating resting calories.

Today its calculating correct based on total accumulated resting calories and time of day.

Just to clarify, your time zone will probably look fine when you go and check. It's just that at some point it switched (and you lost time) then corrected itself when you got to the next day. That's where the missing calories went.

See below:



There's nothing i did here to cause the missing HR data or the time zone change alert (no charging or fiddling with settings on the 235 or GC). For some reason GC decided to slice off a few hours of my day after i synced my run through my iPhone (like i've done ~5 days a week since getting it without problem, except for the day before as well with the same behaviour).

This might be the reason others are finding a lower resting calories on random individual days. Or not ... just my experience and i suspect Garmin has been doing some tweaking on their back-end.

Just to clarify, your time zone will probably look fine when you go and check. It's just that at some point it switched (and you lost time) then corrected itself when you got to the next day. That's where the missing calories went.

See below:



There's nothing i did here to cause the missing HR data or the time zone change alert (no charging or fiddling with settings on the 235 or GC). For some reason GC decided to slice off a few hours of my day after i synced my run through my iPhone (like i've done 5 days a week since getting it without problem - except for one other time recently with the same behaviour).

This might be the reason others are finding a lower resting calories on random individual days. Or not ... it's is my experience and i suspect Garmin has been doing some tweaking on their back-end.

Interesting and thank you for clarifying. I can confirm I have the red clock indicating tz change too yesterday and day before where resting Cal's were lower than expected!

Did you by chance charge the watch or power it off during that time?

Interesting and thank you for clarifying. I can confirm I have the red clock indicating tz change too yesterday and day before where resting Cal's were lower than expected!

Did you by chance charge the watch or power it off during that time?

Actually what caught my eye with this post was that the same thing happened the day before as well, and because i've been trying to figure out how calories are determined i noticed the lower resting calories for the last two days myself, then tracked it to the TZ issue / missing data.

The day before i did charge it, but the TZ bug only seemed to appear about half an hour after i put the watch back on. So i'm thinking this isn't it. See below.



Just to add, you can see from my 24th Jan HR graph that soon as the (23rd) day ticked over everything started recording properly again. So a new day does appear to bring new beginnings in Garmin-land. Also, steps behaves the same (missing data etc); just using HR because it's clearer.

Good to know thanks again.

I hope they are tweaking the resting Cal's. Not sure if you use mfp but garmin and mfp calculate resting cals slightly different (garmin seems to be. 05% lower) so this adds to negative calorie adjustments on mfp from what I've noticed.

Yep i use MFP and GC unfortunately screws everything up. I'll often get an extra 500+ active calories in a day walking a standard 7500 steps, on top of the 1950 resting (but should be ~1600 based on my stats!), that then transfer over to MFP and give me targets there that i just don't believe.

Over on the 235 forums a few of us have figured out it's probably because Garmin is using the HR data and not steps to calculate non-activity daily steps calories, and because the sampling frequency on the new devices is so low (Garmin's way to save battery) an inaccurately high measured HR can stick around for 30-120 minutes. It's the equivalent of the calories you'd burn if you were swimming for that time! But of course you're just walking to catch the train or whatever.

So it's all messed up and right now i just delete the non-activty calories coming from Garmin into MFP. But i hope they fix this, because you've got to be able to trust the numbers. Especially when it comes to how many calories you're eating in a day to manage your weight/health.