apple watch workout is way off on calories

So why use the word occasionally originally.

There are two numbers it gives you: the move calories and the total calories. I've tried calibrating them against another activity watch, which I've worn for 1.5 years and which is pretty accurate (i.e., over a period where I neither gain and lose weight, and where I've counted food calories carefully, the total calories used my old activity watch gives me is approximately equal to the food calories.)

I find the Apple Watch tends to give slightly less credit for exercise, but much more credit for resting calories, with the result that it reads 250 - 500 cal/day higher, or in other words probably too high.

Contrary to what I've read elsewhere, the resting calorie number is uses for me is absolutely constant, and way too high for my height, weight and age.

I definitely think whatever numbers Apple has programmed into its calorie counter should be tweaked.

Please go to https://www.apple.com/feedback/watch.html to report this problem.

If Apple gets enough people writing in they will address this in a software update sooner rather than later.

I just did. Thanks!

No, I have to disagree - the app is way off and I have watched the videos and I can't find any way to tell the watch what my weight or age is so it can get better. Apple could substantially improve the app if it let us enter basic setup info and if we could tell it what we are doing. When I am on my leg press machine it has no idea what I am doing so there is not a way it can be accurate. When it summed my resting and working calories the total was still only 1/3 of the real total. I am 58 and weigh 195 and my workout is 1 hour up a 12% incline on a Woodway treadmill at 4.4 mph. That definitely burns more than the 140 calories that the app shows. The pulse rate is right and it matched the woodway at 150-160 throughout the workout. I am looking for a much better app.

I too have to weigh in here. The not only the active calories calculated from activities but also the resting calories are WAYYYY off.

I am a personal trainer at a gym. My gym's primary focus is on body composition and driving biometric data and comosition results. I regularly measure not only my weight, but also my lean muscle mass and body fat percentage using Valhalla scales. The workout app calculates my caloric burn at about 50% of what actual is. It appears to give no credit for intensity level of the workout. Here is an exact example: today I did a brisk walk outside with my husband for 36 minutes at 4 Mph. I then did another 30 minutes on a treadmill at 15% incline for 30 minutes at 3.2 Mph. The watch's total calculations for the outdoor walk were 297 with average heart rate of 97. The watch's calculations for the indoor "hike" was 229 with an average heart rate of 134. My actual calorie burn for my indoor walk was 338. It cannot calculate certain activities correctly. Furthermore, you cannot edit or adjust the workouts to teach it the correct burn. This needs adjustments.

Meanwhile, most days it says I am burning a total of 3500-4500 calories and I just barely hit my move goal of 750. That is ridiculous and I am not burning anywhere near that number of total calories. If that was the case, my 1500 calorie deficit would either have lost me 5-10 lbs or put me in the hospital from mal nourishment. Until then, at minimum, this thing could allow me to adjust my move goal on the fly because expecting me to run a 10K everyday in addition to my weight lifting is unreasonable and unhealthy.

I too find the Apple watch to be under counting the calories burned on a high intensity elliptical workout. I have used the Polar FT80 with chest heart rate monitor and it calculates my calories burned to be 559 for 50 minutes (last workout0 whereas my Apple watch calculated 350.

My Polar FT80 has a fitness test and resting heart rate test so i believe this to be more accurate. Even when i look at total calories burned on the Apple Watch it is still way under.

The Apple Watch also jumps when monitoring my heart rate, it can go from 90 to 152 then down to 50 - during a strength training workout whereas my FT80 continuously monitors my heart rate accurately - any advise?

Also, Apple need to add more workouts, e.g. for strength training as all you can enter is "other" which it says it is similar to a walk!! NOT

I am NOT happy about this.

Corry

Just a quick update on mine - it has been getting better. Last night I walked 4.25 miles on the Woodway and the "watch" recorded 3.2 which is a good improvement from the 1.4 miles to 4.2 miles the night before. One thing Apple needs to do is let the developers who are really smart have direct control of the instruments. I have an iPhone app that uses the built in microphone to listen to my heart and determine blood pressure without a cuff. So yes there are other programmers who will make sure this is an amazing tool for the future.

Interestingly, now as we look back at Apple and a lot of their start in this type of product direction started with Apple Super bowl ad showing how everyone was mindless and just doing what IBM to their customers back then and now here we are and apple has all of us standing in lines to get our next Apple device and Apple has decided what we can have and not have and what we can do and not do with our Apple products. There are a LOT of similarities. Maybe next year IBM will redo the ad and show Apple as the one with all us mindless drones just taking what they give us:)

I really would like to turn the fitness apps over to people that are a lot better at it. Just making the graphics look different is NOT the same as employing different strategies on the instruments.

Good to see this thread, since I was very puzzled that the Watch shows just Active calories during a run, reports Active and Resting Calories when the run is complete, and forwards the total of both (I think!) to the Health app on my iPhone, where it appears on the Active Calories graph!

Query: Resting Calories on the iPhone reports 'No Data'! How do I get it to report the Resting Calories figure taken off the Watch? (When I ask it to Share Data it doesn't show any apps to connect to.)

Second Query: How do I get the iPhone to report JUST the Active Calories figure off the Watch on its Active Calories graph?

Third Query: Why oh why does the iPhone Health app keep all the calorie readings it receives from the Watch? Thousands of them! (Try it for yourself: Click on the Active Calories display, choose 'Show all data', and... wait till they all download. Surely all that's necessary is a running total to put onto the display? Is this filling up my iPhone memory?

I asked an Apple Support chap all this and he was immensely emabarassed, and said he'd pass my query on to the people who write the software...

It's off for me as well, but I know it is off because I'm using a power meter and am directly measuring the amount of work done. My ride this morning reported 576 kJ of work, which is approximately 576 kcal. Apple watch reported 440. Average heart rate and speed are close and differ probably because of timing issues (I missed starting the garmin for the first 30 seconds) and the garmin omitting time stopped from average speed.

Mike

Spinning is regularly off, despite efforts at calibration. 30 minutes of medium intensity (half the time out of the saddle) registers anywhere between 170 and 190 calories for me, a 150lb man getting upwards of 170bpm.

I agree that the calories are way off, even combining resting and workout calories--especially using the "other category". I do a lot of resistance training and zumba classes and the calorie data I receive is a joke. This feature was one of the ones I was super excited about when I purchased the watch and I'm pretty disappointed.

I have calibrated my watch and I wear it as snug as I can stand it. I don't have tattoos.

I finally took a very short run using both my watch and my iphone which was connected to my Digifit app and HRM. Amazingly, the calorie count was within 10 calories of each other.

The only thing about the watch that was irritating is it told me my pace was a minute and half slower than my Digifit app. I am slow enough and somewhat lazy so I like to watch my pace when I run because I tend to keep slowing down. Most likely if I had just used the watch and paired it with my phone it would have given the correct pace. But I am addicted to the graphs and data coming from Digifit, which has not yet come out with an apple watch app.

Of course apple tracker gave me almost 3400 calories burned for the day because the resting calories are over 2000! What a joke! My doctor could not believe that apple would be that irresponsible and give such an inaccurate calorie count.

Hi All - 3rd day with my Apple Watch and first time I went out for an outdoor run with it to calibrate it and like a lot of others, my actual calories were way off. I also used strava at the same time to see how the calculations between the 2 compare and here's what happened:

Strava - 4.6m, 850 cals

Apple Watch Activity (Outdoor Run) - 4.48m, Active Cals 492 (Total 591)....so a variance of -259 calories and -0.12 miles.

Must say, the distance measurement was close enough and much better than the indoor run I did yesterday - ran 6.6 miles on the treadmill and watch only measured 4.5m! Calories were also way off!

I'm hoping as the "watch gets to know me" ⚠, the measurements will get better, if not, I have just wasted over £300 as I did buy the watch with the primary aim of using it as a fitness tracker.

I don't think you wasted £300. But, it is currently not accurate in calorie count. This, I am confident, is software that can, and will, be fixed. Soon, I hope.

George