I'm not sure what's exactly has happened but in the last 2 weeks my active calories have been crazy high but it only seems to be incorrect for non-recorded activity. For example today was a light day for me, no runs or workout I walked 5000~ steps (reported 2.2miles) and apparently that equated to 620 calories burned? I did an hour gym workout yesterday and for manually recorded activities it seems to record calories perfectly fine. I've even tried lowering the activity level number in settings but it hasn't changed anything. There's been numerous updates recently maybe one of them messed with it, has anyone else experienced similar?
I noticed the same yesterday. 1000 active calories from 14,000 steps. I'm sure something has changed. And around 7000 of those steps came from an run activity adding another 300kCal. So infact around 1000 active calories for only 7000 steps!
It's weird like it seems to be reporting roughly 100 calories burned per 1000 steps. If that were true I'd have wasted away when I was doing 30-50k steps a day in summer. I've tried restarting the device and messing with settings but nothing has changed. I'll try contacting support and seeing what they say
It's my impression Active Calories are based on Heart Rate.
Basically if your heart rate is "elevated" you'll consume more calories and it doesn't matter why it's elevated. So, if you are fighting off a minor illness, in a warmer environment, or any other factor is causing your heart rate to be a bit high you will see more active calories in a day. For me a heart rate of about 106 bpm will get me about 70-80 Active Calories per hour, so If I spend four hours running a Lathe or working on my car that adds about 320 active calories to my day.
You can also gain some Active Calories at the gym just walking around. Because after doing 7.5 mph for an hour on an Elliptical with a heart rate of 150 bpm it's going to remain elevated to some extent for a few hours after that exercise. In addition in a time span under about 5 minutes that heart rate will be above 95 bpm unless you are a true long distance athlete. I've been doing some tracking of this and if I am doing a variety of different exercises at the gym the higher heart rate BETWEEN actual formal exercises leads to those Active Calories being recorded. For example if I do an hour on an Elliptical Trainer and record that activity, then do a bit of weight lifting "off the books", then do a couple of miles on a treadmill my total calories during that entire time span will be HIGHER than if I were to add the calories for the Elliptical to the calories for the Treadmill. Some days I'll hit the gym and do something like 800 calories of Cardio along with some weight training and when I leave the gum I can have a total active calorie count of 1200-1300 calories. BTW, I in the past I have used the Bike Indoor application to record the calorie consumption for the weight lifting and when I did this it pretty well jibes with the Active Calories recorded when I am "off the books". Since these "off the books" active calories don't seem to go down as something that would degrade the VO2 max I no longer bother with actually setting an activity because there have been too many occasions when I forgot to turn the application off.
Now, that said I am also inclined to believe that the Cadence Lock issues with the wrist heart rate monitor on the 235 can also lead to some inflation of the Active Calories. I had a day a month back where I spent 4 hours running a Lathe to trim some length off a heavy wall tube for a prototype and that activity involved a LOT of repetitive arm motion with my left hand where I wear my 235. That day I charted over 2000 Active Calories at the end of the day and during that 4 hour session on lathe my heart rate was spiking to about 170 bpm during that entire time. Note, as well as I know how I respond during high intensity exercises I expect that my actual heart rate while working on that lathe was much closer to about 100 bpm. IMO if a drummer were to wear a forerunner 235 while playing the drums I suspect that he would get credited for about 220 steps per minuted and have an indicated heart rate of 220 bpm. Cadence Lock is the reason I put on a chest monitor every single time I am going to do an activity where I want an accurate trace of my heart rate.
I have been trying to get Garmin to acknowledge this issue for months with no luck. With so many stats tied to the HRM and it being completely inaccurate, everything else is skewed. Calories, intensity minutes, heart rate max/min, heart rate averages, badges earned, etc.
Consuming that amount of calories would make u fat
True or not Garmin bases it's calorie estimate based on your heart rate. Granted, age and weight also factor into these calculations but if you treat those as "constants" the calorie estimate for an individual will be based on that individuals heart rate.
My experience has shown that the wrist monitor is fairly accurate when we are relatively inactive. However when we start doing any activity that will result in the watch moving on the wrist the heart rate becomes more of a guess than an actual reading. While a chest monitor is subject to salt buildup in the strap leading to incorrect readings I've found that when kept clean they are the only truly accurate heart rate monitor I've used. In additions on the rare occasions when I either didn't want to fuss with the chest monitor or plain forgot it that wrist monitor can take as much as 5 to 10 minutes to establish a "lock". I've also had enough occasions when I regretted not taking the time to put on my chest monitor.
I have been trying to get Garmin to acknowledge this issue for months with no luck. With so many stats tied to the HRM and it being completely inaccurate, everything else is skewed. Calories, intensity minutes, heart rate max/min, heart rate averages, badges earned, etc.
Same here. My "active calories" are off since last April since I changed from vivofit2 to my 235 with hrm on and tracking. I'm over by at least 1000 calories per day and sometimes 2000-3000 calories. If that were the case I'd be dead as I only eat 2000/3000 calories per day (depending on my actual activity). They said it's because my HRM goes above a certain threshold and they say the algorithm is correct. If I turn the HRM off, the active calorie counts are back to what I experienced with my vivofit and vivofit2. What is more irritating is that this incorrect data is synced to myfitnesspal and it tells me I can eat an extra 2000/3000 calories making the program about useless. If it were not for my experience with my vivofit/vivofit2 I would probably weigh an extra 50lbs if I actually consumed what mfp and garmin calculate.
I think it's just straight up bugged, i'm perfectly well right now, yesterday was a light day 5.4k steps no gym or run very chill day and 830 active calories burnt? Maybe I should just turn off the 24/7 hr
