Calorie Terminology

Below are the definitions for the various terms related to calories found on Garmin® devices and in your Garmin Connect™ account. 

Active Calories

Active calories are the calories that you burn while moving throughout the day.

Resting Calories

Your resting calories are calculated using an estimate of your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). This is the number of calories burned for the basic functions for the body to survive like breathing and your heart beating. RMR is based on your age, height, weight and gender. To determine your resting calories, we slightly increase your RMR estimate to account for sedentary to light movement throughout the day.

Total Calories

Total Calories is a combination of your Active and Resting Calories.

Activity Calories

This value is the total of active and resting calories that are calculated during an activity recorded on your Garmin device. This number is specific to a recorded activity on your Garmin device that is uploaded to your Garmin Connect™ account. Manually created activities in Garmin Connect will calculate activity calorie burn based on your user profile information.

Calories Consumed

With a linked MyFitnessPal.com account you can track daily food intake and view calories consumed on Garmin Connect. See Related content for more information about MyFitnessPal. 

Calories Remaining

This is how many daily calories you are above or below a calorie goal. Calorie Goal – Net Calories = Calories Remaining.  

Net Calories

This value provides you with the difference between consumed calories and active calories.