I recently got an Ultrahuman Ring, I also have an Apple Watch and i’m kind of sorta trying to figure out the whole “calorie deficit” thing
I’m trying to understand what it all even means
for example I went on a walk today
Active Calories: 184CAL
Total Calories: 269CAL
Comments
Total would be including your basal metabolic rate (the energy you use just existing, breathing, doing basic amount of activities a person does, your brain operating/being concious) and the active would be the portion that was specifically from additional physical activity (the tracked workouts)
You burn calories just by existing—brain, heart, lungs, etc. This is added to your workout to get “total calories.”
“Active calories” are what your ring thinks you burned in a workout based on your increased heart rate factored into height/weight.
Your body is constantly burning calories while at rest – thinking, breathing, digesting food, keeping your cells alive, all of this requires energy (i.e., calories).
Your body burns extra calories while active; exercise means your muscle cells are far more active, and thus consuming more energy; they are supported by your heart and breathing supplying oxygen, and the increased supply also requires more energy.
It’s worth noting that both of these values, on wearable tech, are in “wild guess” territory. It’s laughable that they try to give you accuracy to the calorie; the honest answer would be “Active Calories: Between 30 and 300 CAL Total Calories: Between 50 and 500 Cal.”
Anything more precise than that is a complete fabrication. There have been many, MANY studies on wearable calorie trackers and generally speaking, the actual calories burned is going to be somewhere between 20% of what it tells you, and 200%.
If you want a more accurate measure of calories burned, there are multiple free estimate calculators online which will give you more precision than a wearable device.
Your body burns a lot of calories just by not doing anything. Your heart and lungs burn calories all the time to pump oxygenated blood around your body, your stomach burns a lot of calories digesting your food, your liver and kidneys burn calories filtering out toxins from your blood and your brain and nervous system burns a lot of calories to send signals around your body. This is your base metabolism or resting calories burned. It is the calories you would burn even if you stay in bed all day sleeping.
Then you have active calories which is the calories your muscles use because you do an activity, and the extra calories your heart and lungs burn because of your increased burn rate. This is the calories you can control through activity. You can not do much with your base metabolism, but you can increase your active metabolism by being more active.
According to the app, you would have expended 85 calories in the time you spent walking had you chose to sit around and do nothing instead. The active calories are the calories it says you expended by walking. So adding the active calories to the 85 calories that would’ve come from your basal metabolic rate, you get the total calories expended, which is 269.