Depending how you measure, exercise can come up with different calorie counts.
Especially if you are doing slow, easy exercise, there is a difference between the total calories consumed and net calories burned. For example, if I walk for an hour and use 400 calories, but I'd use 100 calories in an hour laying in bed. So is this 300 calories or 400 calories?
Especially if you are doing fast, hard and short exercise, you burn calories from excess post exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC. If I run an all out quarter, I may only burn 25 calories while I am running, but I burn another 50 calories above and beyond resting metabolism after my run before I catch my breath and recover.
Does anyone know if the watch includes these in the either the measurement of the actual exercise or the "active" calories for the whole day?
As far as EPOC, I believe the watch does not include this in the actual exercise but does include this in the active calories for the day. The watch does report calories the instant you hit stop, which leads me to believe it does not include calories you haven't burned yet. But it does use EPOC to calculate TE, which is also immediately available. I believe EPOC is included in the active calories as I have measured very large amounts of active calories without any actual activity - this happens the day after a very hard workout, or when I am sick, and correlates well to the amount of measured stress.
As far as net vs total, I believe running and walking include total calories for the activity, but only net calories for the day. But this is wildly inaccurate for other activities. On a weekend, I might use the 'strength' activity for 3 hours while lifting weights. Now, I am not lifting weights the whole 3 hours - I am cleaning the house and doing laundry and other errands between sets, which is a reasonable amount of calories above resting. I don't do this for calorie tracking, I do it so I can see the recovery timer and know how long it has been between sets. After I am done, I see 600+ calories for the 3 hours and I have no idea if this is net or total calories for the 3 hours. But my active calories barely go up, maybe 50 calories! I don't burn anywhere near 600 calories in 3 hours of rest, so I don't see how both those numbers could possibly be accurate, regardless of how many actual calories I burned or how it is measuring.
