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Calories UP 15-30% since WatchOS 5!

Ok I was the original poster. I have a year of 3 mile runs to compare with the 3 mile runs after 5.0 on the S3 (with and without hard reset) and basically it is 20-30% higher active and total calories for the run. I have now replaced my S3 with a new S4 on 5.0 and the problem remains, WAY higher calorie burns across the board.

This is a bug. This isn’t a “tweaked” formula as I am showing total calorie burns of around 380 and active calorie burns 330 or so for a 3 mile run. For a man of my size and weight and with the times I run these numbers should be more around 270/320 or so based on many scientific studies. Fitbit, Garmin etc. all have slight variations but are in the ballpark and Apple used to be too but is now wildly out of sorts. I know this sounds small but these increased burns are being applied to everything so at the end of the day the burns are several hundreds of calories off which if you use the data for calorie weight management is really disappointing.

I assume this will be fixed in 5.1 etc. Is there a way to report this to Apple? I assume they know since it seems to effect everyone and I assume many Apple employers are runners and workout...
 
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In addition to my calories being way off on my series 2 following the upgrade to watch os 5 my distance tracking on the watch when I'm running with it without the iPhone has been giving me more distance for runs ever since the upgrade to watch os 4 and continues in watch os 5. Ive been running the same routes for the past 10 years and I pretty much know the distances spot on and the watch has been adding 0.02-0.05 more per mile every mile. So today I ran a 10 mile run which always has clocked in at 10.05 miles when I'm running with the phone and the watch. Today with the watch by itself it measured 10.30! Its really annoying and I've tried all the usual steps to resolve it and nothing works. Ive tried resetting the calibration, and re pairing multiple times. It was always spot on with watch os 3. I wish I would have never updated!!!
 
canyonblue737 said:
I assume they know since it seems to effect everyone
Click to expand...

There are several people in this thread that are reporting no difference, so it does not seem to effect everyone. But the fact that you're seeing an issue and several other people are too suggests that there is something going on, so you should contact Apple support. Don't assume that Apple's aware of it, because you may be in the minority (if it was impacting most users I think we'd be seeing a lot more posts about it).

https://support.apple.com/watch

The website's different for each region but there should be an option at the bottom called Contact Apple Support. They may have some troubleshooting steps to try and they may want to collect diagnostics info that they can provide to engineers.
 
canyonblue737 said:
Ok I was the original poster. I have a year of 3 mile runs to compare with the 3 mile runs after 5.0 on the S3 (with and without hard reset) and basically it is 20-30% higher active and total calories for the run. I have now replaced my S3 with a new S4 on 5.0 and the problem remains, WAY higher calorie burns across the board.

This is a bug. This isn’t a “tweaked” formula as I am showing total calorie burns of around 380 and active calorie burns 330 or so for a 3 mile run. For a man of my size and weight and with the times I run these numbers should be more around 270/320 or so based on many scientific studies. Fitbit, Garmin etc. all have slight variations but are in the ballpark and Apple used to be too but is now wildly out of sorts. I know this sounds small but these increased burns are being applied to everything so at the end of the day the burns are several hundreds of calories off which if you use the data for calorie weight management is really disappointing.

I assume this will be fixed in 5.1 etc. Is there a way to report this to Apple? I assume they know since it seems to effect everyone and I assume many Apple employers are runners and workout...
Click to expand...
Apple.com/feedback report it as a bug and let them investigate.
 
canyonblue737 said:
these numbers should be more around 270/320 or so based on many scientific studies. Fitbit, Garmin etc. all have slight variations but are in the ballpark and Apple used to be too but is now wildly out of sorts.
Click to expand...

watchOS 4 used to be close to Garmin.. much less HR reported than chest strap (from the YouTube video I saw the test which sometimes show 15-20 BPM less), now watchOS 5 is very close to chest strap. That’s one where the difference could come from.
Don’t know about your watch but I’m happy mine is very close to chest strap (520 active calories for chest strap vs. 524 active calories from watch HRM). Day to day the red & green ring seems to move a bit faster but nothing alarming. I’m sure these calculations are being adjusted all the time.
 
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matrix07 said:
watchOS 4 used to be close to Garmin.. much less HR reported than chest strap (from the YouTube video I saw the test which sometimes show 15-20 BPM less), now watchOS 5 is very close to chest strap. That’s one where the difference could come from.
Don’t know about your watch but I’m happy mine is very close to chest strap (520 active calories for chest strap vs. 524 active calories from watch HRM). Day to day the red & green ring seems to move a bit faster but nothing alarming. I’m sure these calculations are being adjusted all the time.
Click to expand...

I didn’t have those issues between 4 and 5 and anyway I almost always use a chest strap or sometimes a arm band optical HR these days. The issue wasn’t HR, it was identical runs showing radically different calories with 5.0... seems they fixed it in 5.0.1 is the rumors. I’ll run with 5.0.1 in the morning and post the results.
 
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Mmhhh I agree with some you who say that HR is more precise now. But it shouldn’t modify the burnt calories...

Well. Last night I updated the watch, I’ll report here but the change log only said about exercise ring (minutes) bug and not for activity ring (calories). Let’s see...
 
UPDATE!!!!!!

**watchOS 5.0.1 COMPLETELY FIXES THIS ISSUE.**

I just ran another 3 miles with 5.0.1 and immediately you can see both active and total calories are down 20-30% and right back in the ballpark of every other version of watchOS prior to 5.0!

Awesome!
 
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canyonblue737 said:
UPDATE!!!!!!

**watchOS 5.0.1 COMPLETELY FIXES THIS ISSUE.**

I just ran another 3 miles with 5.0.1 and immediately you can see both active and total calories are down 20-30% and right back in the ballpark of every other version of watchOS prior to 5.0!

Awesome!
Click to expand...
Mine is still off for my running. Not sure what’s going on. At least it’s not ticking up the exercise minutes all day anymore.
 

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It is way easier to close my move goal since I got my 4. I wish this meant I would be losing more weight but somehow I think that will not happen. The update did not seem to help. My exercise today was only about 25-30 mins and my watch thinks I burned 462 calories. I would have expected closer to 350.

One thing to note though...I returned my 4 and got a new 4 today so I wonder if the new one will be different. I haven’t exercised with it yet.
 
tl01 said:
It is way easier to close my move goal since I got my 4. I wish this meant I would be losing more weight but somehow I think that will not happen. The update did not seem to help. My exercise today was only about 25-30 mins and my watch thinks I burned 462 calories. I would have expected closer to 350.

One thing to note though...I returned my 4 and got a new 4 today so I wonder if the new one will be different. I haven’t exercised with it yet.
Click to expand...
It’s not the 4 dude. It’s the software. My series 3 has the same issues. It’s ridiculous how broken activity tracking is right now. This happened a couple years ago and updates fixed it
 
My series 0 was consistent overy the past 3 years. Now on my series 4, I’m getting exercise minutes for simply walking to my car from the house. Also, my calories are counting up like the watch is giving out candy. I started Browsing the forum a little over 5 mins ago and it already gave me 2 calories. When I went to sleep last night around 1am, it had 22 calories on it. Now when I put the watch on at 7am, within 10 minutes it shot up to 32 from just walking around my bedroom. The calories seem to just be adding on by doing nothing at all. Seemed fine when I got the watch on os 5, since 5.0.1 it seems like it’s giving way more credit than is due.
 
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dictoresno said:
My series 0 was consistent overy the past 3 years. Now on my series 4, I’m getting exercise minutes for simply walking to my car from the house. Also, my calories are counting up like the watch is giving out candy. I started Browsing the forum a little over 5 mins ago and it already gave me 2 calories. When I went to sleep last night around 1am, it had 22 calories on it. Now when I put the watch on at 7am, within 10 minutes it shot up to 32 from just walking around my bedroom. The calories seem to just be adding on by doing nothing at all. Seemed fine when I got the watch on os 5, since 5.0.1 it seems like it’s giving way more credit than is due.
Click to expand...
Just curious, what was your total daily burn before and after getting your new watch? Mine since Watch os 5 has been up 500 calories. Just crazy
 
dictoresno said:
My series 0 was consistent overy the past 3 years. Now on my series 4, I’m getting exercise minutes for simply walking to my car from the house. Also, my calories are counting up like the watch is giving out candy. I started Browsing the forum a little over 5 mins ago and it already gave me 2 calories. When I went to sleep last night around 1am, it had 22 calories on it. Now when I put the watch on at 7am, within 10 minutes it shot up to 32 from just walking around my bedroom. The calories seem to just be adding on by doing nothing at all. Seemed fine when I got the watch on os 5, since 5.0.1 it seems like it’s giving way more credit than is due.
Click to expand...
Same. Mine started with os 5. Same with 5.0.1 for the calories but the exercise minutes have slightly decreased. I’m on a series 2.
 
Ghost31 said:
Just curious, what was your total daily burn before and after getting your new watch? Mine since Watch os 5 has been up 500 calories. Just crazy
Click to expand...

On average, I would usually hit 350-550 by the end of the day. Depending on what I was doing, I could hit a little more. But my last two days with my new series 4, I’ve hit 643 and 722 without doing anything different. Hell, I can be pretty stagnant at work for the most part too.
 
I have the opposite problem - my total calories on S4 are extremely low compared to what it used to be, even with 5.0.1. Updated from a S2.
 
Mine is still the same. I hit my move goal — granted, it’s just my baseline with the new watch and I’m hoping the watch will suggest that I raise it, since I’m interested to see how that works -- about 20 seconds after hitting my exercise goal, same as it always has been. (Where "always" means a week. ;) )
 
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