Active calories count too low

Former Member over 5 years ago

I'm so confused about the active calories count showing on my Garmin Connect lately. I wear a fenix 5s. In particular, there was one day when I walked around NYC all day long, a total of ~12 miles. It shows that my active calories count is 76. On any other day while I'm mostly working at my desk, my active calories count can easily be 250 (not from active exercise like running or cycling) just from walking around the building/getting coffee, nowhere near as much walking as 26k+ steps. My partner wears an Apple watch and his watch said that he had burned 1000+ active calories over the course of the day. What gives??

Calories count for skiing is also (imo) wildly off. I was on the slopes for 4 hours the other day and it says I only burned 200 calories. That's way too low for even just 4 hours of consistent movement, let alone skiing.

Top Replies

All Replies

0 Konttorininja over 5 years ago

Calorie counting seems to be broken since 15.00 software update. Some of us are getting too high active calories and others too low. Unfortunately Garmin have not commented the issue..

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Konttorininja

Thanks for letting me know. Weird that it would behave in different ways for different people (too high vs too low). Hope they fix this soon because I'm tempted to switch over to the Apple watch. I payed too much for such bad supporting software :/

0 RonHi over 5 years ago

I'm so confused about the active calories count showing on my Garmin Connect lately.

In you post you showed screen shots of 3 elliptical bike sessions and another for the total active calories for the day. What was the calorie count for each?

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to RonHi

Those were moveIQ events. It thought I was ellipticalling when I was actually just walking around. So I don’t have calories for those since they weren’t actual recorded events.

0 Alexanderdeath over 5 years ago

Same thing for my wife's 5S. For example today she did a 2 hour session of intensive bodybuilding and the 5S retained only 63 active calories! At 12 noon we exchanged our watches: she put on my Vivoactive3 and I put on her 5S. At 7:45 p.m. the Vivoactive that my wife wore showed 100 more calories (while we did housework together at home and we played with the children) while her Fenix 5s that I wore displays 73 calories (i.e. 10 more calories only)!

0 RonHi over 5 years ago in reply to Alexanderdeath

Alexanderdeath said:
At 12 noon we exchanged our watches: she put on my Vivoactive3 and I put on her 5S. At 7:45 p.m. the Vivoactive that my wife wore showed 100 more calories (while we did housework together at home and we played with the children) while her Fenix 5s that I wore displays 73 calories (i.e. 10 more calories only)!

Could you check the user profile on your wife's watch and see if her information is accurate? Age, height, weight etc., just curious

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

Just wanted to chime in on this. Last week we were for at least 4-6 hours per day on the slopes in Winter Park, CO. Each time my active calories were just about 300 calories. This can't be right! Even my body told me that I'm done for the day

+1 Conchubar over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

Getting annoying problems too for the last week or so. After syncing the activity e.g. running has a sensible calorie spend but it is not being reflected in the calories in/out section but instead just treats it as normal steps so a much lower calorie spend. MFP recognises the activity calories correctly but is now ignoring any additional steps calories. Really annoying.

+1 4229694 over 4 years ago

I have just bought garmin 6x pro, am frustrated with the calories count, yesterday i went for a 2 hours50 ride, 74k and the calorie count was 217cal !!

But today with 33mn swim it's 349 cal

0 Former Member over 4 years ago

I have a Fenix 5X and the calorie count for cycling seems to be way too low. For instance, during 1 hour cycling at 12 mph, the calorie burnt is only 212, a value lower than for 2 mile run at 6.7 mph. Calories burnt during running and walking seem to be alright.