[r_klancer]

My favorite anecdote (so far) from working at Fitbit is that until 2017 or so you could log "Starting a fire, indoors" as an activity.

In the early days the web app allowed you log arbitrary activities; it would tote up the calorie value of all of them. Where did they get the activities? From a public domain list of activities and their caloric value--compiled by U.S. government economists starting in the 1930s when they wanted to estimate the caloric needs of Americans to make sure there was enough food for all the hungry farm workers and factory laborers during the Depression.

I was there the day we removed that database and ceremonially typed in "starting a..." and there was no longer an autocomplete for it.

[themodelplumber]

Wow, that's pretty fascinating, I love little history details like that, too.

I find it interesting just how many calorie-estimation models there are for different purposes. I once lost at least a week and a half of weight loss effort when I inadvertently changed the TDEE estimation model from So-and-So's Model over to Whozit's Model. I remember it being really annoying to troubleshoot that...anyway thanks for sharing your experience.