In this brief guide we will discuss “How does Google Fit track calories?” and provide you with more tips on how to keep an eye on your calories.
How does Google Fit track calories?
Google Fit uses your age, gender, height, and weight information to calculate a Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). BMR is the number of calories your body needs to function at rest.
Calories burnt at BMR are due to internal body functions such as breathing, digestion and blood circulation, etc. Google Fit adds the calories you burn during exercise with BMR, and gives you a number of total calories burned.
Generally, there are two types of calories that you can watch over the day, calorie intake and calories burned. Keeping a close eye on these two parameters can help you gain, lose or maintain your body weight.
What is the relationship between weight and calories?
If you are planning to lose weight, it is important that you burn more calories than your calorie intake. Studies have shown that 3,500 calories are the equivalent of one pound. In other words, cutting down 3,500 from your calorie intake or burning an extra 3,500 calories will result in reducing one pound of body weight.
How to view calories in Google Fit?
Open the Google Fit app, you will find your fitness activities on the Home page of the app. Below the activity ring, you will see Distance, Move Min Calories. This shows an estimate of the distance covered with your step count, the time you were active and calories burned.
Tap on Calories to view a breakdown of your calories burned throughout the day. Tap on Week or Month to see the average calories burned throughout the day.
How accurate is the Google Fit app in tracking calories?
The Google Fit app only gives an estimate of the calories you burn throughout the day. The app bases the calories burned information on your BMR. This is a generalized method for calculating the calories burned and is essentially just an estimated value.
The real number of how many calories a person burns throughout the day is based on genetic factors, exercise level, environmental factors, etc. However, it can still be useful to have an approximate number of calories you burn based on your activity level.
It is easily arguable that even if the number of calories burned is inaccurate, it is off by the same amount each day. The number of calories burned will be higher on days your activity level is higher and lower on days you spend most of your time on the couch. Hence, having daily progress on calories burned is still useful.
How can I track my workout using Google Fit
To get the most out of how many calories you burn during a workout, track your workout with the Google Fit app
- Open the Google Fit app on your phone.
- Tap the Plus Sign in the lower-right corner.
- Tap Track workout.
- Tap the dropdown menu at the top if you want to track other workouts.
- Tap the activity type you’d like to track.
- Tap Start workout.
- Tap the pause button near the bottom of the screen.
- Tap the stop button in the lower left corner of the screen.
At the end of the workout you can view the calories you burned during the time of your activity.
Conversely, if you don’t use your phone while engaging in a workout, you can still add your activity by following the steps
- Open the Google Fit app on your phone.
- Tap the Plus Sign in the lower-right corner.
- Tap Add Activity
- Choose the Activity type from a drop-down menu.
- Select the Date and Start and Ending time.
The app will automatically deduce an estimated number of calories you burned from the workout time length.
How to track steps with Google Fit?
Tracking your steps with Google Fit is effortless. The app automatically detects your movement and adds steps to the step count. If you go for a walk, the step count is automatically tracked and Google Fit also shows how many calories you burned while walking.
Stay healthy by burning more calories
Since Google Fit offers a wide range of activities to track from, you can easily view the number of calories you burn by logging in your activities. Knowing the number of calories you burn can be a great motivator for you to stay fit.
There are other fitness apps that do the same job as Google Fit, some might be better at calculating calories while Google Fit is a great platform where all health information stays in one place.
What more can I use to track my fitness activity?
There are also smartwatches and a number of third-party apps that monitor your health activity, and can easily be linked to Google Fit. You can import data from these apps to Google Fit to view all your health stats in one place.
For example, the Fitbit is a fitness tracker that you can connect to the Google Fit app. The information on activity such as your step count will be directly fed to the Google Fit app. An increased step count will automatically result in Google Fit displaying an increased number of calories burned.
MyFitnessPal is another example of a fitness app that calculates calories. MyFitnessPal is a great platform that logs in both your calorie intake and the calories you burn during exercise.
It can record your calorie intake at breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks and calculates a good estimate on how many calories were consumed throughout the day. This has an added benefit as compared to Google Fit which only tracks the calories you burn.
However, MyFitnessPal does not use the phone’s sensors to track your step count and other activities, which still gives Google Fit the upper hand at keeping a record of your fitness activities. There may be many other apps that suit the user to their specific needs but as far as accessibility goes, Google Fit is very easy to use.
Conclusion
In this brief guide we discussed about “How does Google Fit track calories?” and provided you with more tips on how to keep an eye on your calories.
