Stop using your tracker for calories burned in your training sessions or on a daily basis

Trackers are great tools for motivation, step count – sleep – and even at that they are not accurate but they are not good for calories burned for a few reasons

1. Body composition – they don’t know your body composition. A heavier person will burn more calories compared to a leaner person as they have to work harder at any given task & therefore exert more energy, but a tracker doesn’t know that about you.

2. A 2020 study found that wrist or arm worn trackers (&.most people would wear wrist) varied in accuracy depending on the task being performed. When movement of the body is the only thing being measured it is less accurate than if a HR monitor or heat sensor was being used. – British journal of sports medicine

3. Trackers have being found to be out by more than 10% when measuring total daily energy expenditure (international journal of environmental research & public health)

4. Different brands vary with regards to different measurements (HR, sleep, distance etc) indicating that they all have their own algorithms for different activities, so if you were to wear a Fitbit & a Garmin tracker at the same time you will get a different result on each.

By all means use them for steps & motivation but don’t base your training around them, or your daily calorie burn and definitely do not link to your mfp & eat back calories burned – your just defeating the purpose of burning calories in the first place.