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Resting Calories completely off

resting calories aren't actually "recorded" by apple watch. Your daily resting calories are calculated by a formula based on your age, sex, height, and weight, then gradually accumulate evenly throughout the day.

So for example, if your resting calories are calculated to be 3,000, they will be always be 1500 at noon (halfway), and 3,000 at the end of every day. There is no variation.
 
acosmichippo said:
resting calories aren't actually "recorded" by apple watch. Your daily resting calories are calculated by a formula based on your age, sex, height, and weight, then gradually accumulate evenly throughout the day.

So for example, if your resting calories are calculated to be 3,000, they will be always be 1500 at noon (halfway), and 3,000 at the end of every day. There is no variation.
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Agreed resting calories are not recorded by Apple watch. But the calculation by Apple watch/activity app is incorrect. I have checked my resting calories with quiet a few health sites and apple calculates mine to be about 1000 cal higher than any other guide. At the rate I need to eat about 4000 calories a day just to maintain my weight.
 
Woohoo! According to this I can eat two whole pizzas a day and still lose weight.

THANK YOU APPLE! :)

11401370_10153300885313847_4656889433077551776_n.jpg
 
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Ray Hogarth said:
Agreed resting calories are not recorded by Apple watch. But the calculation by Apple watch/activity app is incorrect. I have checked my resting calories with quiet a few health sites and apple calculates mine to be about 1000 cal higher than any other guide. At the rate I need to eat about 4000 calories a day just to maintain my weight.
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I agree, I have the same problem.
 
It appears that my resting calories have trended downward over the last week or so with the watch. Wondering if it's adjusting itself due to some learning algorithm.

Anyone else notice this ?
 
Brian Sweeney said:
It appears that my resting calories have trended downward over the last week or so with the watch. Wondering if it's adjusting itself due to some learning algorithm.

Anyone else notice this ?
Click to expand...

Nope. My resting calories now say 3775, so it's getting higher. :(
 
As is the situation with most of you, I must agree about Apple's ill conceived resting calories figures.
I am 6'2 and 220# (down from 250 a few months ago). My typical breakfast and lunch is an orange or apple for breakfast and a power bar type lunch. (actually Probar meal bar) with a typical dinner. Im kinda all over the place there from Mexican to Italian. Sometimes it will just be a tuna fish sandwich with a handful of chips. ANYWAY, Apple app shows I burn 3800 calories a day.. I call BS on that one. If I took in that many calories a day I'd gain a few pounds a week. My typical is right at 2000 a day and its taken me almost 3 months to lose 30 pounds of my ultimate goal of 70 total pounds lost (180 the weight I was at when I left the military) I currently run 4 miles every other day at around 11 Min per mile (don't laugh! I'm overweight and a smoker)
 
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It is definitely coming in high. It is adding too much based on activity level. There should be an option to use the BMR with no daily calories added unless they are recorded by the watch. It seems it is taking your BMR adding the 450 or so from the activity level you select and then adding your recorded activity. If you subtract the activity level the watch preset to your total daily burned calories it should come out pretty close to an accurate number.

Apple needs to fix this.
 
Without looking at the actual WatchOS code, I really don't think anyone can say WHY the resting calories are too high. Sure, it COULD be that it's double counting activity level, or mixing up metric and imperial units, or just an inaccurate formula to begin with. But any error you can come up with that creates a ~25-33% surplus will LOOK like the problem. There are just so many ways to do that I think everyone has found their own smoking gun, so to speak. In my opinion, the issue is probably more complex than anything I've read here so far.
 
Just worked with AppleCare over the weekend and escalated the issue to engineers. They told me that it's a known issue and it will be fixed in upcoming software updates. Not the best news...but at least they know it and they're working on it. AppleCare reps were very helpful...even called me back to let me know what's going on.
 
I saw a Reddit post recently from someone who had Watch OS2 that said it looked like it was addressed there. He said his resting number dropped by about 1000 or so calories in OS2. Mine needs to drop another 500 on top of that in order to be close to what it should be (based on multiple calculators and other trackers I've used).

Wish they wouldn't make us wait for OS2 to get the fix.
 
midloman said:
I saw a Reddit post recently from someone who had Watch OS2 that said it looked like it was addressed there. He said his resting number dropped by about 1000 or so calories in OS2. Mine needs to drop another 500 on top of that in order to be close to what it should be (based on multiple calculators and other trackers I've used).

Wish they wouldn't make us wait for OS2 to get the fix.
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I'm glad to at least hear that, though. I wish they'd release it, too...but right now the calories don't help me at all when they transfer into my fitness pal.
 
I'm probably late to the party, but it seems like this issue is finally fixed.
 
Yes, my calorie count has been fixed. It went from 3000 plus to 1700 plus. The only thing I have found is that the calories given when taking a spin class are about 50 to 100 off, as well as doing a hard hiit class. But I can live with that. The 3000 calories a day was ridiculous.
 
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Yes, it looks like Apple brought its calorie calculation in line with other devices and software I use. I do not totally trust anyone has this totally right. My Garmin GPS watch and Fitbit have always been similar, so I kind of trust them because they reinforce one another.

Since the wOS2 and iOS9 updates, the total calories on my watch have been within 3% of what my Garmin 910XT estimates. This is completely solved for me. (One of the runs was only 1 calorie off-- The AW read 701 and Garmin read 702.)
 
I agree, resting calories calculation is fixed. It is always close to what I expected from common calculations, and what I experienced over the past 3 years counting consumption and exercise points with Weight Watchers. Not only that, it actually changes from day to day, rather than being just the same number all the time. It can vary by more than 100 calories per day, and it correlates with my daily activity. 5 days a week, while I am at the office the calculation is consistently in the middle, Saturday when I am extremely active it goes up more than 50 calories, and Sunday when I'm resting it goes down more than 50. I'm not sure if the variation comes from activity though (as this is supposed to track calories burnt at rest rather than activity), or if it is tracking my digestive system, where calories eaten also follows that same general trend over the week. Since I do not enter calories eaten into my watch or phone I am kind of wondering on what basis my resting calories can vary. Maybe my resting heart rate is a little higher when digesting more food? Any body know?

Also, I agree that now that the resting calories are well in line with expectation I notice some error in the active calorie estimation. Not bad. Maybe 1.25X? It was never enough to complain about compared to the resting calorie error, and maybe it's still not. Frankly, I am not confident I am tracking precisely enough to positively say the active calorie count is off. With Weight Watchers we do not track fruits or veggies, and though I do try to account for those calories informally, it's a source of error big enough to unbalance my weekly input/output equation by almost the same amount that (I think) the Watch active calorie count is off.
 
I'm looking to buy another Apple Watch (I had one when they were first released but changed my mind and returned it)

It's good to see that the resting calories have been fixed but I'm still confused as to why people are reporting seeing different resting rates daily. I don't understand, as BMR/ RMR doesn't change - except when you weight changes.
Does anyone know why this is?
 
That does seem a bit dodgy, doesn't it. Maybe Apple's developers are smarter than the world's scientists and physicians.
 
stoomc said:
I'm looking to buy another Apple Watch (I had one when they were first released but changed my mind and returned it)

It's good to see that the resting calories have been fixed but I'm still confused as to why people are reporting seeing different resting rates daily. I don't understand, as BMR/ RMR doesn't change - except when you weight changes.
Does anyone know why this is?
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Well, I can't say I know what Apple is doing for all their calculations but the most basic formula takes you age/weight/height in the equation but the more accurate ones add in your activity level (among many other options) which is an estimation that we are allowed to put in when figuring manually. It basically asks how often/much you workout and that does a small variable of the above numbers times 1.0 up to 1.5.

If Apple is using these numbers, it could be using the total exercise or exercise time to get the additional variable.

For example. My resting calorie shows 1950 and that is spot one when I didn't exercise or exercised very little. It seems on days I worked for an hour or two and have a high move calories, the number for resting calories seems to go up.

I do remember Apple posting all of the experts they hired in the fields of exercise and fitness and health fields who could be on the team determining calories/resting calories and activity levels. Of course, resting calories ultimately is a guess and we need to include activity level, the type of food we eat for thermal effect and the precise type of exercise and muscle mass. It all needs to be in the formulas to be the most accurate.
 
Can I ask, for men around a similar weight to me ~200lb, what your resting calories (not active calories) are coming out with at the end of the day?

My RMR on the various calculators on the net are around 1800.
 
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