HR zones changed and I'm getting too many AZM

[dobbyM]

My Fitbit Charge 6 was working reasonably well until yesterday when it suddenly changed the limits for the various zones.

The moderate heart rate zone is now 91 to 92bpm, vigorous is 93 to 94bmp and peak is anything over 95 bpm.

Since I have a slightly higher heart rate, this change means that almost all minutes are now zone minutes and the watch constantly congratulates me for my achievements while I'm just sitting around doing nothing.

Maybe it's just a coincidence but just before all this started the app crashed a couple of times.

I have restarted the watch and I verified that I have the latest version of the app installed.

What may be the cause of this? How can I reset the activity zone limits? I'd like to solve it because I was mainly using the fitbit to track active minutes.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[Triletics]

@Sachitra Check your HR zones. Recently some people reported that out of nowhere (which may be related to a recent update of the app) their zones have been reset to very low and narrow ranges and they get AZM with very little activity.

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi everyone, and welcome to our new members.

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention, as well as every step that you've tried. I understand how important the heart rate and Active Zone Minutes are to you, and I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. I've escalated this issue to our team so that they can look into it. Rest assured that once I have more information from them, I will update this thread.

In the meantime, please make sure to keep the Fitbit app up-to-date so the rest of your details can sync correctly.

@JohnnyRow, @gdio53, @LZeeW and @Triletics Thanks for your help.

[SunsetRunner]

Have you moved Fitbit to Google account?  If so, check your date of birth is correct in your Google account as Fitbit pulls data from there & works out your HR zones based on that.  This ridiculously high active minutes for doing nothing was driving me insane for a week & I stopped wearing tracker bc I got fed up of incorrect data on the app & tracker continually buzzing and telling me I’m an awesome athlete when I’m watching tv.  I trawled the net, uninstalled/reinstalled app, contacted Fitbit support (who just had me restarting tracker and clearing user data) and eventually realised my HR zones were much, much lower than they used to be.  No wonder I was always hitting 2x active minutes!    I’ve always had zones set on default and let Fitbit calculate.  I corrected my date of birth in Google account, refreshed Fitbit app a couple of times and hey presto, HR zones restored and hopefully that’s fixed the issue.  Good luck!   

[dobbyM]

Thank you so much @Soniclife , this finally did the trick! I changed the date of birth in my old Google account and suddenly the active zone limits are back to normal.

Not sure what happened 10 days ago to create this problem. Maybe the algorithm that calculates the zone limits changed to take into account the Google account's date of birth(?).

The active zone limits are a bit on the high side right now (slightly higher than they normally were) but it's still a welcome improvement compared to the situation of the last 10 days.

I'm really glad this was resolved, I had tried everything and was ready to stop wearing it. I hope this solution can also help other people with the problem. Thanks everyone who shared ideas and experiences!

[dtritten]

Thank you for this! It fixed everything! It had my birthday as 1900, so at 125, I wasn’t burning too many calories and every movement was a zone minute. Thanks again!!

[JohnnyRow]

@dobbyM  I see you chose @Soniclife the "best answer".  Does this mean that was your issue also - that you had changed to a Google account that had a wrong birth date, and now your problem is solved by fixing your Google birth date?

[dobbyM]

I did not change my Google account or my date of birth to create the problem. The problem just appeared around the 15th of January. 

 Maybe there was some update that changed the method of calculating the active zone limits, using, presumably, the Google date of birth instead of the one I had given in my fitbit  profile.

In any case, the issue was resolved after I corrected the Google date of birth.

[JohnnyRow]

Interesting.  Not questioning you at all, but I don't understand how using any birthdate could give the zones you were getting.  I haven't switched to Google Fitbit account yet but definitely something to watch out for.  I  do have a Google email account but don't remember ever giving an age; if I did, it was probably an outrageous lie.

[mUNDh]

Same resolve for me: came from the google account wrong age. 1 Jan. 1900.

Now here is the funny thing: I always give my true data in "serious / official" accounts; no way i could have there 1900. 

So my curiosity: why do I see 1900 there as year of birth and why this becomes a problem only after a Fitbit update ? The 16th of January we all started to experience the problem. Maybe cause they were reset-ed when accessed by Fitbit ?

Guess nobody cares about breach of data protection.

Maybe next time they'll be published by Fitbit online with our interests based on the Google account and we'll understand better how great things become.

[SunsetRunner]

Bc Fitbit calculates HR zones based on age unless you set your own custom zones.  it thought I was 123 and recalculated HR downwards in accordance.  I entered correct age, weight, etc into Fitbit when I first set it up but like yourself would have entered false info when setting up Google account years ago.  Interestingly it seems from this that regardless what birthdate we entered into Google we all ended up with same one - 1 Jan 1900!! 

[dobbyM]

I had definitely entered 1/1/1900 when I setup my Gmail account almost 20 years ago. It was an attempt for privacy, like saying to Google that my age is none of their business. At that time many people were still very wary of giving out their personal info.

[Mcav75]

It's looks like this needs to be added to an FAQ. Evidently a lot of people decided that they couldn't disclose their age to Google, and then forgot about it.

This is one issue that's not the fault of Fitbit, and it would be good to acknowledge that.

[dobbyM]

@Mcav75that might have been true had we not provided Fitbit with our personal info at the device's setup. It's unclear why they decided to disregard that date but it was not a well considered choice.

Obviously most people are going to be more truthful to a health app they volunteered for than to a random email service.

I do agree with you that the issue should be added to help/support materials as it's fairly common to give nonsensical answers to questions perceived as needlessly intrusive. Many people will be quite ancient going by their Google account date of birth.

[Mcav75]

Yes, people are free to inform/misinform as they see fit, including when setting up some "random email service". That also means having to accept the consequences, unintended or not.

Fitbit is moving people over to Google accounts because Fitbit is owned by Google. Fitbit didn't disregard anything, nor did the software. It simply used the data that you and many other users provided. The principle of Garbage In Garbage Out applies here.

[dobbyM]

Thank you for your reply. I'm a software developer. Part of a developer's job is making provisions for garbage input so that user experience does not suffer. There were ways to handle this in a more  seamless and user-centric way.

[Mcav75]

As a software developer, you should have known that your own garbage input was responsible for your garbage output. 

But seeing as you think there are more user centric ways to handle this, perhaps you should recommend them to Fitbit, keeping in mind that it is unlikely that they'd have permission to change the data entered into the fields on your Google account.

[mUNDh]

Man ... I am almost 70% and more sure i did not leave that 1900 year of birth.

Good, does not matter. Solved now with the help of the community and lack of care of Fitbit. 

Not sure why exactly on 16Jan they decided to change and look at the Google account and disregard the data they were using prior to this. Don\t they imagine that people born in 1900 are rare and doubtly running to buy crappy products in their 120th year ?

Good: now I fixed this (I used untill now the workaround with putting manually my max heart rate ) but i go again into the overestimated calories burned per day: with 100 Active minutes/day I see ~ 4000 Calories burned. That\s strong in the overestimate region: is not that easy to burn 4000 Calorie per day unless you do serios movement per day nor amateur stuff like me.

When he thought I was in my 125 he estimated ~ 25% Calories less than now (was showing 3000 Calories burned for same day).

Isn\t this strange and too bit out of the pen formula ?

Do you see the same ?

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi everyone.

Thanks for keeping me posted and sharing the steps that you've tried so far. As I mentioned before, I escalated this issue to our team so they can take a deeper look into this. While I'm glad that some of you got this sorted out, I understand your frustration and apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. We constantly work to improve our services, and feedback like yours helps us to make that happen.

In the meantime, please go to the Play Store and install the latest update of the Fitbit app. Once this is done, go to your profile and make sure your date of birth is correct. For detailed instructions, see this help article.

[DooBeeBeats]

I did the reset…it had had no effect. I have 30 AZM in my first two hours of waking up with no exercise involved. I was in a zoom meeting.

[Mcav75]

Have you checked your date of birth to name sure it's not 01/01/1900 or similar?