I always took the "calories burned" displayed on my smartwatch with a grain of salt because I read they're inaccurate. I never eat back my exercise calories so I wasn't too bothered, but as a data nerd, it's really starting to really grind my gears.
I recently bought a Samsung smartwatch because I was curious about my daily activity. For example, according to my watch, 50 minute walk at moderate 3mph/4.8kmh speed apparently burns 320 kcal (21F, 5'3"/160cm, CW=GW=122lbs/55kg). Online calculators consistently give me 190-200 calorie range for the same activity.
My watch explicitly says it is not double-counting exercise calories, the displayed value is supposed to be the calories burned by exercise alone.
The real value is about half that shown on my watch. Why. These companies make watches for active people, there has to be at least one scientist there who can write an algorithm that accurately calculates burned calories.
So what is the point of making them so inaccurate? Is it to motivate people to move around more because they feel better when they see high numbers of burned calories? I'd say it's detrimental for most of the population instead, and they would take it as an excuse to treat themselves for exercising, because their watch said they burned 200kcal in 20 minutes of walking in casual pace.
I am genuinely perplexed. If anyone has answers, I'm all ears.
[link] [comments]
source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/i10yd1/who_tf_benefits_when_smartwatch_companies_make/
No comments:
Post a Comment