"Calories burned" vs Work (kJ)

Bump. Same problem. This cannot be correct. For example tonight it said I burned 1417 calories on a 1291 kJ ride. 

Hi, just found this thread & I'm having the exact same issue. 709kj but 810 calories. It's fine with my Garmin Fenix watch but my Edge 530 is giving 10% great calories than work (my wife's edge has exactly the same issue). Both Wahoo Systm & Strava's calories match work kJ to Kcal. This is clearly an issue, anyone found an answer to this yet? Cheers

Since some month ago Garmin has changed calories calculation.
Now they add „metabolic calories“ to the activity calories.

Metabolic calories are the ones you burn sitting and doing nothing - about 1 kCal per kg weight and hour.
If your weight is 75 kg they add about 75 kCal (they call it Cal) to your activity calories.

Thanks for that, just been complaining to Garmin on a 'chat' & he didn't even know that.

Thanks again 

dougiereid said:

Hi, just found this thread & I'm having the exact same issue. 709kj but 810 calories.

BTW, besides that the Basal Metabolic Rate BMR, respectively the Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) that is included in the burned calories during an Activity, 1 kJ is not equal to 1 kcal ! 1kJ is 0.239006 kcal. 

Well done Trux, but as the human is around 25% efficient, we burn a lot more than we put in. so 1Kj of energy put in takes us about 1 calorie. https://www.trainerroad.com/blog/calories-and-power/

dougiereid said:

but as the human is around 25% efficient

That's only very rough estimation. The efficiency depends on so many factors (your physiology, food, technique, equipment, type of the exercise, weather, terrain, psychical mind, state of the road and pressure in your tires at cycling,...), so that it is impossible to factor it in this way. It can be anywhere in the range of 1% to ~60%. However, as stated already by others, this is not your only problem. The main problem is that you forgot that your body burns around some 80 kcal per hour (depending on your physiology), even if you do absolutely nothing, and those calories are included in the calories burned during an activity. In other words Activity Calories = RMR*time + active Calories

mcinner1 said:

kCal (they call it Cal)

BTW, there is often a misunderstanding in using the calories units.

Correctly, 1 Cal = 1 Calorie = 1000 calories = 1000 cal = 1 kcal.

In contrary 1kCal would be 1000 Cal, or a thousand Calories, what is a million calories, or a Mcal (mega calorie)

In other words, the uppercase C factors the calories by 1000. However, when speaking about nutrition calories, the meant units are practically exclusively always Calories (1000 calories, abbreviated as kcal, not kCal).