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"Active Calories" and calories burned from activities don't add up.

Former Member
Former Member over 8 years ago
I've tried reading through the threads but I didn't find one with this specific issue.

I have a FR235, OHR, all that lovely stuff.

I've noticed that my 'active calories' compared with what an activity says I burned are not the same. EX:

This morning I ran 4 miles and the activity says I burned 390 calories. Later, I went for a walk and tracked it, burned 50-odd calories. But garmin connect isn't adding those two up correctly.

390 + 59= 449.

Connect lists my active calories as 410 though? It may be a watch issue as the watch face itself reflects the 410 calories instead of the 449, but I find that odd overall.

Any one else experience this issue?

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  • 0 over 6 years ago
    Duuhhhh, Garmin don't know his to add up!

    No seriously, my experience is different.
    I have seen that prior to a cycle I had a calorie burn of 2000 say, 1000 active and 1000 inactive.
    After my cycle with a burn of another 1500 calories this wasn't reflected in the daily total.

  • 0 over 6 years ago
    Garmin has two types of active calories. One type includes your BMR. The other type excludes your BMR.

    The first type is shown in your logged activities, and in your Active Calories report in Garmin Connect.

    The other type is shown on your watch in the Calories widget as Active Calories and in the Total Calories report in Garmin Connect.

    So when you do a logged activity which shows 390 kcal, your Active Calories in the Calories widget will only increase with 390 kcal minus the BMR kcal you have burned during the duration of the activity.

    As far as I know, Garmin has not documented this difference anywhere, and I am not sure that the above is true for all their watches. But it is true for my F3 and F5X+.
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    That's odd, Allan.
    On my Forerunner 645 "active" calories shown in calories widget and shown in connect mobile app / connect online are always same, wether I did activities or not.
    To me it sounds more like a bug in the calories widget (or the watch?), because why should active calories be handled different on different devices?
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    Markus, as far as I can see, what you describe does not contradict what I wrote. Could you describe in more detail, exactly which calories in the watch and GC are the same? You will probably end up noticing that it is exactly as I have described.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago

    Yes!!! I’m confused also. Yesterday I did three seperate workouts (bike, run and walk) and the total combined calories of these 3 activities was 850 cal. However, the “Active calories”daily Summary on my watch was 330 cal which is vastly different!!! Can someone please explain?!! 

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago

    Yes!!! I’m confused also. Yesterday I did three seperate workouts (bike, run and walk) and the total combined calories of these 3 activities was 850 cal. However, the “Active calories”daily Summary on my watch was 330 cal which is vastly different!!! Can someone please explain?!! 

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member
    Can someone please explain?!! 

     already did explain it in a previous post.

    I can repeat it briefely and clearly:

    Total Calories burned during an activity = RMR for the time of the activity + Active Calories

    .

    And if you prefere having it explained in details, here you go:

    Garmin does not use BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate). They use RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate). It is slightly higher than BMR. If your RMR is 1800 kcal, and the activity took for example 85 minutes, the the passive part of the activity calories would be 85*1800/(24*60) = 106.25 kcal.

    The rest are the Active Calories, but the daily total of Active Calories include not only the logged activities of given day, but also any other kind of energy burned over the RMR - coming from all the physical and mental activity during the day. Hence the daily Active Calories are always higher than the sum of the active parts of Activity Calories (unless you do a 24hr activity).

    Please note, that you have to strictly differentiate between Active Calories (calories burned over RMR), and Activity Calories (all calories burned during an activity, including RMR).

    It is all explained on Garmin's website too: https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=lkl4cwCLlK7ox362uGQEV7

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to trux

    It would be good to have a setting so that in the activity it displays the extra calories burned by such activity excluding RMR. At the very least when I go inside the activity display Total Calories and Extra Active Calories separately.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Also experiencing this problem. Even when it’s only one activity the calories shown for the activity and the “active calories” is usually less

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to GlenysFrizzell
    GlenysFrizzell said:
    Also experiencing this problem.

    The values you see are correct. Please read the explanation in my previous post.