Double calorie burning log...

[Horseback]

Okay I'm very new to blaze or any fitness tracker for that matter...Question about logging workouts versus just letting blaze use heartrate as calorie burning calculator. If the Blaze is tracking my calories burned through heart rate then what is the purpose of logging exercise seperately? Would that not be duplicating calories burned?  

[RiverCat]

I'm relatively new to Blaze as well and I'm finding just the opposite.  Calories I burn bicycling or working out may be included in the daily calories (but certainly not doubled) although it is hard to tell and I'm beginning to doubt it because the workout time is apparently not.  I just downloaded last weeks "activities" when I was on a 5-day bike ride, which included some hilly 3-hour rides (most of which registered although hear rate was lost on two days).  The download told me that the ONLY day I was active was the day I went for a 1 hour walk.  Ouch!

I find it very flaky on picking up my heart rate, even though I wear the watch in exactly the same place for every ride or workout.

[FerdinandFitbit]

Hi there @RiverCat @Horseback. Good to see you in the Fitbit Community! 🙂

Your tracker certainly records your activity when it comes to steps, distance, calories burned, heart rate, distance, etc. for the whole day. Now, there are two ways your tracker will be able to record your "Activity sessions". You can manually log an exercise by going to the exercises shortcuts on your Blaze. This is basically for you to know in a specific time frame, how many steps you took, the calories you burned, the distance you traveled, your heart rate during the session and so on. This will not double your stats. If you decide to delete a recorded exercise, your daily totals will remain the same but logging exercise is like making an extract of that specific time frame.

Now, we have smart track. Smart track automatically recognizes when you're being active and will record it as an activity session for you. This is based on your movement and will be able to tell what exactly you were doing i.e. walking, running, biking, etc and doesn't count it as a duplicate either.

Hope this explanation works for you. Let me know if you need more help with this.

[RiverCat]

Thanks for the reply. I understand that is how it is supposed to work, although I think it would be great if the download of a weeks activities also included exercise, which it did not in my case.

My main problem though is with FitBit sometimes failing to see my heart rate or recognizing activity. I did a very hard hour-long workout the other day, but since Workout had disappeared as a choice after the update (I’ve got it back now), I decided to let smart track pick it up. Imagine my surprise when I staggered back to the locker room and FitBit told me I’d been active for 15 minutes and burned 81 calories! (The workout included 46 calories on a bike, 46 calories on a rower, 46 burpees, 46 body rows, etc. for several other exercises)

The same thing happened on a week-long bike ride last week. I wore the watch exactly the same way each day; weather, clothing, etc. was also more or less the same every day. Some 3-hour rides burned 800-plus calories; others with just as many hills burned 200. And after a long difficult hill that I barely made, Fitbit told me my heart rate was 106 (and then went up to 108 while I stood and had a snack). Not possible!

I like the FitBit when it works, but am dismayed at the variability.