How Active Minutes Works

[Hurssar]

My fitbit has not recorded a single active minute all day.  I logged my treadmill time and have been out running errands all day.  It's odd as previous day with simular activity I logged activity minutes easily.  The only difference in the week I've had it, was that I charged it last night.... since then no activity minutes logged...

Moderator Edit: Updated Subject For Clarity.

[RobertoME · Accepted solution]

Hi there @Hurssar, good to see you have joined our Fitbit Community. Active minutes would not match the time of your exercise since only accounts for those minutes where you invest more intensity (for more details see: Active Minutes Update & Clarification).

Although I'm sure you are aware of this, so make sure your tracker is syncing correctly all your information at the end of the day, some activities like regular errands, can produce interruptions in your movements, causing periods of time that wont count for your active minutes. To explain better this I quote the following information out from our help articles: "The more calories you burn the higher your MET value, so therefore the more calories you burn the higher your total active minutes. Assuming you're active for at least 10 minutes at a time, green spikes on your calorie graph typically indicate that you’re earning active minutes."

Also if you manually logged your activities some users have mentioned a decrease in active minutes after logging an activity, which can occur if what your tracker recorded was more intense than what you logged.

Hope this information helps and keep me posted if the issue persists.

[BethMO]

I feel there's a flaw in the programing somewhere.  My dashboard shows some 3 + hours of active minutes so far in January.   Yet when i go into my 'Workplace Community', all that shows is some 90 minutes.  And many of my co-workers numbers look low, they're movers & shakers compared to me.   Perhaps this is only isolated to this single community, but  doubtful.

[Danielle_UK]

Maybe I'm missing something but I don't get it. I did a 45 minute workout today, which I Iogged by starting a workout using the button on my Charge 2, but I've only got 9 active minutes. Yesterday,  I did a 30 minute workout but only got 23 active minutes. I understand if the activity has to be above a certain level for 10 continuous minutes to count, which my workouts may not have been since they were interval training, but then HOW can I have 9 active minutes if an activity under 10 minutes doesn't count?! I'm so confused right now! What I want to know is the total time I exercised each day: workouts and walks of over 10 minutes all combined! 

[RobertoME]

Hi there @BethMO and welcome to our Community @Danielle_UK.

@BethMO I recommend to review your online-Dashboard under your exercise history to evaluate your graph for the day is giving you active minutes. I've seen in some scenarios the tracker can pick phantom steps causing this issue. Most of the time this issue is due to the location where you left you tracker, if there is a constant draft of air or small vibrations, your tracker may think you are walking when you are not giving you active minutes and steps.

@Danielle_UK in your scenario, you are right when you said the activity in general has to be above of 10 minutes, but your tracker is always reading your movement, so active minutes also can be accumulative for the entire day. Also if your activity  was short but you were able to reach a high intensity pace you will achieve also active minutes. for more details please take a look at this post: Active Minutes Update & Clarification.

Hope this helps. See you around!

[Danielle_UK]

Thanks Roberto.  It clarifies a little  it but it seems a bit arbitrary. A workout of 30 minutes duration doesn't get logged as active minutes but several brisk walks might?! I looked at the clarification but that just confused me more because it said it has to be above 10 minutes to count but one day I had 9 active minutes?! How can that happen if only exercise over 10 minutes counts?! What qualifies as "high intensity"? 

[RobertoME]

Hello @Danielle_UK, as you mentioned on your previous post is all about the intensity of your exercise. When you isolate an activity period for certain type of activity; yes it has to be above 10 minutes for this to count for active minutes.

However I believed I mentioned this in my previous reply. Active minutes are also accumulative for the entire day, which means if you had a brisk walk and the intensity was high enough to give you active minutes, you will then accumulate this minutes to your overall numbers.

If you took a brisk walk along the same route two days in a row, differences in your speed and exertion levels (e.g. out of breath vs not out of breath, etc) will cause different active minute totals for the two activities. 

With high intensity I refer to the effort you invest on an exercise from being in a regular pace to a pace that challenge your stamina or get you out of the comfort zone that regularly we maintain to do an exercise. Usually this zone on your heart rate graphs are called peak zone.

To give you an example, here is one period of exercise from my dashboard where I was able to maintain a high intensity pace on my routine. As you can see, here is where I earned more active minutes.

Hope this clarify a little bit more about active minutes. If you still have questions let me know.

[Chriswallace]

I have a Charge2 and have the same problem. Some days no (0) active minutes are logged. Even though on other days at same activity level active minutes are logged.  A glitch somewhere.

[LanuzaFitbit]

Hello @Chriswallace! Welcome to the Forums! 

If you have already gone through @RobertoME's excellent explanation and you still feel that you should've been awarded some active minutes, I'd like to take a closer look. To do that, please take two screen shots. One when you got no active minutes and one where you did. That way I'd be able to determine if something is wrong.

Look forward to your reply so that we can get this straightened out.

[Chriswallace]

I read the post thanks.

[LanuzaFitbit]

Hey @Chriswallace, thanks for letting me know.

If after reading that post you still have any questions, please let me know right away.

If you have the time, you should take a look at one of our Discussion boards. There you can talk about a lot of different topics with other users.

Hope to see you around!