I’m work security in a 20+ story building, when I do my rounds I walk up the stairs to each floor and my new smart watch I got myself today is now telling me I am walking a little more than phone normally says I do. As for the calories it’s saying I’m burning nearly double what my phone pedometer says I do, how accurate is this data? Just to clarify, my phone’s pedometer does have my weight and height so it can better track my performance.
In: Technology
Your smart watch tracks your heart rate so it’s more accurate for calorie count as calories burned is more closely related to heart rate not purely steps taken. As for the accuracy of the step count in one vs the other. I’d say the watch is more accurate because the accelerometer in the phone is naturally less sensitive so your screen isn’t constantly flipping from slight tilts.
They’re not that accurate, especially if it didn’t ask you your age weight and height.
But as long as they’re consistently inaccurate they can help, start weighing in at a consistent time in a fasted state (first thing in the morning after peeing is most popular) and track your weight and calories consumed. Now you can figure out how many calories a day you need to maintain body weight, if your weights going down over a period of about a week your in a calorie deficiet. If it’s going up your in a calorie surplus (well ignore possible muscle gains for now)
Combined with what your watch Says you burned you now get a better idea gaging your fitness for the day, number go up? Eat a little more OR don’t and the weight will come off faster. Number go down? Reduce portions at dinner.
It’s going to vary wildly from person to person in most cases.
Anecdotally, I’ve ran the numbers (tracked intake and weight for multiple weeks) and found out that the Apple Watch is *almost* dead on. Like, within maybe 5% or less on average. And it seems to be consistent with its accuracy as well. Steps were similar. I haven’t done a ton of comparison stuff with steps as I don’t worry about them too much. But the bare minimum spot checking I’ve done shows that it seems to be pretty close, for the most part.
That said, I’ve also met people who have done the same and said that their watch was way off for them.
Bottom line, using a fitness tracker watch can help give motivation for being active but the real accuracy for tracking intake and steps comes the old fashioned way.
Track intake, track weight. Keep a running average. If weight isn’t going down, reduce intake by 5% or so. Do that for a week and see what your weight does. Once it starts going down, just keep the course until you either hit a goal weight or it stops going down again. Then adjust from there.
As for steps, as long as you’re using the same device to measure steps, the inaccuracies will average out in the end.
The calorie burn numbers from watches is an interesting problem. It basically uses your age, heart-rate, weight, height, etc. to figure out your calorie burn. Heart-rate is the biggest part of this formula. (If it didn’t ask you for any of this other data — then the formula is basically junk).
But there’s a catch…. You burn calories just sitting around doing nothing. For example, just laying on the couch taking a nap, you’re going to burn 70 to 120 calories an hour.. This is called your “resting metabolic rate” (RMR). Fitness watches tend to INCLUDE THIS NUMBER in your total calorie burn data they show you!!!!!!!!
This means if your watch says you burned 200 calories doing a workout, you ACTUALLY only burned ~100… Because you would have burned the other 100 even if you were taking a nap. “Active calories” vs. “Total calories” (Watches like the Apple Watch actually DO report these numbers separately — but even then… they’re wrong.)
Here’s how you can know they’re wrong……. Put your watch into “Workout mode”… Now go lay down and watch TV. Look at the total calorie burn it reports. Yup… it says you burned calories while you were laying down doing absolutely nothing.
Side note, I know it’s pronounced “pe-dom-eter”, but I can’t help but pronounce it “pedo-meter” which always gets a few giggles from my MIL
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