Active minutes overestimated

[VykkDraygo]

I just got my Blaze on Sunday. I'm pretty happy with it so far, but I think it is overestimating my number of active minutes, and therefore the calories burned. To preface, I have been counting calories, and tracking my weight since late August. I was definitely underestimating my workouts before, and I think the calorie burns the Blaze gives for the logged activities are correct. (Looking at a 100-200 calorie increase over my estimates). Problem is, I can go to the gym, do 35 minutes of cardio, then go home, and just sit, and the Blaze still thinks I am active. It says about 50 minutes of activity for ever 35 minute cardio exercise.

Now, this is leading me to get an estimated 4000 calories burned on days I go to the gym twice, and giving me about 3k worth to consume at my deficit. Now, I'm not worried about gaining on 3k calories (I can currently maintain at about 2.6k, on sedentary days), but I'm pretty sure I won't be losing as fast as I'd like.

Is there any way to curtail this? For example, should I turn off the heart rate monitor when I am done exercising? Everything else is spot on (except for a couple phantom stairs while driving).

[Fav150]

Since getting the blaze it's recording way to many active minutes.

its recorded over 79 active minutes today with 4424 steps (typical work day)

even getting ready for work this morning in the house I managed 15 active minutes!?!

it was never an issue when using my charge.

Not entirely sure was classes as active minutes but it wouldn't be walking around the house I'm sure, and previously the charge would only record active minutes with a decent walk or continuous walking for over a  short period of time.

Is this an issue with iOS app or blaze?

i turn my blaze off every night and use the charge for sleep recodrding and my app is up todate.

[AdamMSC]

You need to go to your settings on the fitbit webpage and change your automatically recognized exercises. Go to settings, click Blaze, scroll down until you see walking etc with 15 minutes next to it. Change it to 30 minutes or something higher than 15. Your blaze is recognizing continuous movement and logging it as walking. Some people enjoy this feature because they get their exercise this way.

[Fav150]

@AdamMSC Thanks for that, I tend not to log on to the website much as I do everything I need to through the app. The thing I find odd is that the charge worked OK with the same settings? 

[AdamMSC]

I never owned a Charge, so this is just conjecture, but the Blaze has heart rate monitoring and the Charge doesn't (unless you are talking about the charge hr). Maybe the Blaze labels your automatically recognized exercises by also taking into account your heart rate and steps. So if your heart rate is elevated and you are walking some here and there, then maybe it is recording more active minutes? It would have to do something like that to recognize any sort of cycling because there would be less arm movement, and outdoor biking is one of the recognized exercises.. Just a guess though!

[AshleyShaner]

I'm having the same issue.  Sometimes, when I'm getting ready for work in the morning, I'll notice I had like 30 active minutes.  I"m guessing it has something to do with heart rate.  I'm worried that this will cause an over estimation of the calories I can consume.  I've only had this problem with the blaze.  I only upgraded last week and have noticed an increase in "active minutes" ever since and my routine hasn't changed.

[VykkDraygo]

Yeah, I think it's tied with the heartrate. What I've done is to disable the automatic activity logging. I've only had it misreport once since I did that (11 minutes yesterday, after walking up the stairs at work). I think that might be tied with me changing phones at around that time, as the Blaze was effectively unpaired for 30+ minutes.

Since I've done that, my burn rate is back in a more reasonable range. So around 2.8k on lazy days, and around 3.6k on active days.

[AdamMSC]

You need to go into your settings and remove walking from your auto-recorded active exercises. It is probably set at 15 minutes. That means if you have been walking for about fifteen minutes or so it will add that to your active time.

[AdamMSC]

Woops... just saw that you turned that off already!

[Rich_Laue]

Lets go to Fitbits Help site, this is where 90 % of the answers  can be found, and we will see what Fitbit tjinks active minutes are. According to Fitbit it has to do with the caloric burn, and 3 times the BMR rate. Logging or not logging an activity has no impact on active minutes. It has to do with your movement and change in heart rate.

A person out of shape may have a HR that gets elavated a lot and give extra active minutes, where a tracker without HR won't.  This is becaise am or of shape heart has to work harder.

[VykkDraygo]

That may be, but it stopped overestimating once I disabled the automatic activity logging. The problem is that it thought I was still active, when I was really just driving home, or sitting around. My heart rate may have been elevated still, but I doubt that alone equates to a signifcant rise in caloric expenditure.

I'm also not terribly out of shape (though I am overweight). I'm not exactly an athlete, but I'm pretty happy with the 60 BPM average resting rate the watch says I have. But I do tend to spend most of my cardio sessions in the peak range. Looking at the logs, the lowest average rate was 157 BPM (63% spent at peak), and the highest average rate was 171 BPM (83% spent at peak). I also usually end with a 30 second to 1 minute sprint, so I'm touching 190+ BPM right before cooldown. I'm sure this tilts the scale, so to speak, and loads me up with minutes I'm not really being more active.

[AshleyShaner]

Also, I had an HR previously and if anything I'm in better shape now than when I had the charge HR. So for my active minutes, they shouldn't have changed that much. That's why I think they're off.

[VykkDraygo]

I have an Android (S7 Edge), and had one before upgrading too (HTC One M8). I've had about a week logged on each phone, so it's not related to the platform, or a phone specific bug.

In all likelihood, it is probably working as intended, so I'm just not going to lean on the estimations too much. What I'm doing, to chart the reliability, is eating the same calories per day, regardless of exercise. I picked 2000 calories, which is a 500 calorie deficit on rest days, and should be at least a 750 calorie deficit on active days. I'm charting my weight with trendweight, so I'll be able to see how I lose versus the projected loss from Fitbit (based on calorie adjustments). I'm pretty meticulous with my food logging, so it should be a fairly accurate comparison.

Of course, I just started yesterday, so no news yet. Although, from the previous two weeks of eating at the Fitbit suggested rate, I have barely lost any weight (~.6 pounds, about 1/8 of the projected loss). Which is about what I expected to lose at that level of intake. That rate of loss would be fine if I were looking at about 5 - 10 pounds to goal weight. But I've got about 40 to go, and I'm not that patient. 🙂

[juiceprof]

Some excellent points have been raised in this discussion.  In my case, my old flex was giving me pretty accurate readings of active minutes based on the amount of time I spent exercising (usually walking at my age).  My new blaze is giving me three to four times as many active minutes for the same exercise during the day.  I suspect that the HR monitor contributes to this as my resting HR is around 48-50.  So, when I merely get up and move around, my pulse increases.  I suspect at some point, that is interpreted as "active."  The problem, as was mentioned, is that I'm now being told I can eat an extra 600-700 calories per day, which just isn't so unless I want to gain all my weight back.  PS--I don't really want to turn off automatic activity tracking.  I like that feature.  I'd just like to see the active minutes go back down to where they are truly tracking "active" minutes.

[Sue222]

Have you found any solution to this issue? I am having the identical problem. I had a Charge HR which logged active minutes beautifully. I now have a Blaze which worked fine until yesterday. Now it is logging wayyy too many minutes. Many people seem to have this problem!

[juiceprof]

Hi, Sue222.  I have found no solution other than ignoring the number of extra calories I'm told I can eat.  I've been told I could eat more than 1000 extra calories on some days.  If I didn't ignore that advice, I'd be a blimp.  I've gotten a couple of Blaze updates.  Those didn't fix the problem, either.  I still miss my Flex for the +/- calorie counts.  Love most of the other features of the Blaze.

[aliruns]

I just got my blaze and noticed that active minutes were so high. Any solutions yet? 

[juiceprof]

Not that I have seen, aliruns.  If you use My Fitness Pal, there is a Negative Calorie Adjustment function that I have not used.  I understand it is supposed to reduce the calorie credits, but obviously does nothing to correct the active minutes counted by the Blaze.  I have just learned to ignore them and the extra calorie credits and just shoot for my target calories regardless of how much exercise I do.  I still wish Fitbit would solve the problem or at least explain what is going on.

[susieo]

I am having the same problem.  My resting heart rate is very high, like I'm a hummingbird high.  Really hoping to fix this issue.  I'd like to have accurate active minutes recorded rather than have to turn off notifications.  Please find a solution!

[AlejandraFitbit]

It's great to see you around @aliruns, @juiceprof and @susieo. I would like to know if you keep having problems with your tracker's accuracy? Have you tried any type of troubleshoot? If you haven't, I recommend restarting your trackers. Also, could you please tell me which activity are you doing while tracking your exercises.

Hope to hear from you soon.