Differences Among Devices & Apps

[Fabienne]

I have found a great difference among several fitness monitors. I have done an experiment to show you the differences. I walked a particular route every day for 3 days. It's a circuit around my park which is 2.5 miles long. There is a very steep hill on one side and another smaller steep hill on the other side. I tried 3 different methods of tracking my calories and here is what I got:

1. The Apple Watch Exercise App with Polar Bluetooth Cheststrap---284 calories
2. The Apple Watch Exercise App with its own (wrist) heart monitor (no chest strap)--288 calories
3. The iPhone with Digifit App and Polar Bluetooth Cheststrap---503 calories

So, which one is right and how do you account for the differences? Did I do 284 calories of exercise, or did I do 500? What do I add to my calories for the day with each set up?

P.S. Usually with the chest strap and other devices (like the Polar Loop) I come up with numbers closer to the Digifit numbers than the Apple Watch numbers, in other words a lot higher for the amount of exercise. Fooling yourself isn't a good thing but neither is working harder than you need to.

 

[Fabienne]

For anyone who was puzzling about this, here is the answer. If you put on the Exercises App you will see when you stop it, that there is a lot of information about your exercise when you scroll down to the bottom of the final page. It tells you the extra calories from exercise, the calories you would have had to burn in that time just to stay alive (BMI calories) and what the total is. So, the watch is actually calculating all of the calories you are expending, but only showing the calories you produced through your exercise.