Basal Metabolic Rate Calculation

So this was the reply I received.

QUOTE

The watch shows calories from a user's BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate - an estimate of the amount of calories needed at rest so that the body can function) in addition to calories burned from exercise. This is why the watch will show calories before any exercise is done.

Please know that the watch calculates calories based on:

• steps taken
• activities the user has performed (running, swimming, etc.)
• profile information (gender, weight, height, and age)

Notes:

• Heart Rate is not taken into account for burned calories
• Manually entered activities are not shown on the ScanWatch, even though they appear in the app
• If an activity detected by the ScanWatch is modified in the Health Mate app, the calories will be updated on the app, but not on the watch
• This results in a variance between what is shown on the ScanWatch and what is shown in the HM app

UNQUOTE

So I take this to mean that the watch (and presumably the HM app) apply your baseline BMR to your reports. So my baseline BMR (if I was lying completely still and doing nothing) is esteemed to be about 1,700 cals per day. The reality is no one (except perhaps someone in a coma) does this. In reality my BMR is probably nearer 2,200 - 2,300. So the HM app starts with a deficit of 500 - 600 calories.Then they say the heart rate has no impact on counting of burned calories, so only logged activity is counted towards calories burned. 

But this what BMR is (calculating your height, weight, age and gender). It is often used interchangeable with Resting HR (aka RHR). It is the calories your body requires at rest, just to function (breath, blink etc). You seem to be confusing BMR/RHR for daily caloric intake, which takes your activity levels into account, adding calories to the BMR (it would be higher then, of course). So, yes, your BMR will be lower than your daily caloric needs based on activity level (light, moderate, intense).

I hope this helps!

Hi Axfan. Thanks for the contribution. No I'm not confusing BMR and RHR. Yes I understand that BMR will be lower than (daily) Total Energy Expenditure (TEE). That's precisely my problem. The ScanWatch shows BMR and does not attempt to estimate TEE. To be honest you don't need the ScanWatch to tell you your BMR there are plenty of online calculators for that - and by definition (unless your weight fluctuates a lot) your BMR is the same day to day. For the watch to be useful you really need it to estimate TEE. To do this it would need to approximate what energy you are expending across the day by reference to your Heart Rate (not just RHR). All the ScanWatch does is estimate energy expended during designated 'exercise'. Well that is not that helpful as I will expend more energy when I take a shower, wash the dishes, etc. than my BMR. But I don't intend to designate every action I take during the day as exercise. FitBit do manage a measurement which approximates to TEE and this is more helpful if you are calorie counting. It would be relatively trivial (it seems to me) for Withings to allow Customers to opt either to see BMR or TEE, or indeed both.

Even though this is an old chain, I’d like to contribute:
I do not have the ScanWatch yet, Santa didn’t bring me one. However, I have been studying the HealthMate app and comparing it to SportsTracker. I also played with the integration to YAZIO nutrition tracker.
It took awhile to figure things out, but eventually I did it.

The total calories is indeed BMR + burned calories from your activity. Instead of showing the total BMR in the app at once, BMR seems to be growing during the day and reaching the total BMR only at midnight.

Active energy consumption is (almost) undependable on heart rate. It is based on mass, time and distance, in other words mass and speed: the einsteinium Ek=0,5mv2. (To get accurate TEE we need to measure VO2 but that is a bit more complicated lab-work.)
Estimated BMR and TEE are close enough.

To measure active energy, HealtMate is using either phone GPS for distance and watch (or phone) for steps/distance AND the watch for detecting the type of movement automatically.
Depending on type of movement, active energy is estimated a bit differently because e.g. running consumes more energy than walking because there is more up/down movement - you are lifting your body off the ground higher than when walking.

Transferring the active calories of HealthMate to Yazio gives similar end results of the daily TEE to those with Sports Tracker, even though the numbers in the apps are shown differently. It did take a while to figure this out because of how HealthMate uses BMR in the process and Sports Tracker not.
I’m using Sports Tracker with Suunto HR-belt. Getting some of those numbers to HealthMate is another story but it’s possible.

So, HealthMate is a great cardiac health tracker when used with Withings wearables, whereas Sports Tracker works for sports performance tracking and YAZIO for nutrition tracking.