exercise button in the app

[kathyb43]

just curious if you use the exercise button where it tracks your exercise for you with the gps does it count toward your step goa?

[rdinap]

It counted my steps when I used it, but it did not count active minutes. I used the exercise button for the first time last week on a 3 1/2 hour walk and it registered only 5 active minutes. Yesterday i walked for another 30 minutes and it registered 0 active minutes. Between the two I did another 3 hour walk without the exercise button and it registered all the active minutes. Also, you can't seem to be able to toggle between the exercise button and the app unless you have finished with the exercise button. needs an update.

[GadgetGeek]

I've used the Exercise button a few times but ended up deleting the exercise afterwards.  I really wanted to see my split times on my runs and love the GPS feature.

Things I don't love.

I just hit 26,659 steps, 12.59 miles yesterday, 4.39 miles was a GPS tracked activity gathering 10,054 steps for the walk alone.  That was a significant portion of my day. On that 1hr 12min walk only 8 minutes counted toward active minutes and none of the steps counted for my 25,000 Badge.

I deleted the 4.39 mile activity after reading that a manually added activity counts toward your steps but NOT for badges.  My new total is 23,757 steps, 11.36 miles and 116 active minutes. It is also worth noting that my walk was calculated at 374 calories, when I removed it my daily calorie burn jumped up a couple hundred.

I've walked and ran the same area with and without a GPS, it was really 4.39 miles but when I removed it as a GPS tracked (doesn't count for badges) activity I "lost" over a mile and close to 3000 steps so still missed my badge.

Bottom line, I like the feature but calories counted on a GPS activity are really low, Active minutes are not registered unless you really are running (today ran 2.5miles at a 6mph pace and those minutes counted as active), steps calcutated from GPS activity do not count towards badges.

I hople this helps you determine when to use or not use the new feature.

[Sprattakus · Accepted solution]

Here is the short and skinny of it. The Exercise portion of the app SHOULD NOT  be used while wearing the FitBit device you have. Support is telling me the exercise feature tracks distance, and then calculates your "steps" based on your entered stride width, which can change if you are going from walking to jogging, and back again. 

I quit using the FitBit Exercise tracker because it was throwing my actual steps verses my "calculated" steps way off and I was losing credit for steps taken. In theory, it's a great tool, but why would you make a feature that only works when you have to REMOVE the device you paid for, for it to be semi-accurate at best?  Confusing. I think you would have better luck with an app like Runkeeper, and just link your FitBit Account to that.

[kathyb43]

Thank you fot the explanation, just conneted it to my runkeeper app

[slysam]

Runkeeper does the same if I recall. If you log walking or running with a distance attached it changes the step count. I usually lose steps. It is weird because I calibrated my fitbit walking and running stride lengths doing laps on a measured running track and my fitbit distances are usually accurate or pretty close. So I was surprised that I usually lose steps if the distance is logged--whether by a third party app like runkeeper or digifit, but the fitbit apps GPS, or if I do it myself from that activity logging page. It seemed less of a problem with the Fitbit GPS, but I did lose calories burned (and my fitbit tracked calories burned were fine). I don't recall the calorie burn issue when I used Runkeeper or Digifit (Digifit's heart rate monitor estimate was often the same as fitbit's estimate) though--I just didn't like that they messed with my step count and I would lose any very active minutes if I logged. It doesn't matter whether you wear the fitbit or not--so you don't really gain anything not wearing it. If walking or running are logged with a distance than the steps are recalculated according to the distance logged (I think distance divided by stride length). If you log most other activities or walking/running with no distance than the calories burned are changed but steps are intact. The active minutes are based on the calories burned each minute--but for logged activity it tends to be all or nothing since the calories burned are evenly divided per minute.

[slysam]

About this comment from GadgetGeek : "Active minutes are not registered unless you really are running (today ran 2.5miles at a 6mph pace and those minutes counted as active), steps calculated from GPS activity do not count towards badges." (Sorry my web browser has formatting issues on this forum so I usually post in one long paragraph)... According to Fitbit staff you get very active minutes *if* the estimated calorie burn is 6 times your resting rate or higher. I think this is described in the FAQ section article on very active minutes. For logged activity this is based on MET charts and for fitbit tracked just in converting fitbit's calories to METs. According to MET charts, to get very active minutes walking on flat ground you need to walk 4.5 miles per hour or faster. Fitbit usually credits me with very active minutes faster than 4mph. So there is a difference, but the app seems more accurate in terms of what Fitbit publishes as the standard. I agree the calorie burn is low though. I was fine with fitbit's estimates.

[swimfan]

Haven't seen a reply to this in a while. Seems like there was a fix to this within the last month because I don't see the issues that are mentioned above. I had these issues and trouble when going between OS's. It doubled steps from iOS to Android and then back again. It is now fixed. I used this feature exclusively when my device was dead and was waiting for a new one. Really starting to like the split times, distance, time, etc. being called out when I am running.

Here is my new question about the exercise feature. Has anyone tried it to track a bike ride? There was only Walk, Run and Hike choices. Am going to try it, but thought perhaps someone else had already done so. Was thinking to use it for info, deleting and then adding the bike activity.

I've got a flex - not that it matters for this feature.

[Hanson_lvp62]

Thank you for that explanation regarding the Track your Exercise feature on the phone app.  That is really silly.  I was excited to have this added feature as i thought i would be able to stop using Map my walk to track my actual walks versus my steps/miles from the day.  I called tech support when i first got the upgrade and they said that the "engineers" were working on fixing this issue.  And by the way, it does not accurately track your mileage anyway...i have used it a few times and it actually doubles (at a minimum) the real miles walked/run.  And YES, then it throws off your real step count for the day.

[Tilian]

I accidentally removed "steps" and "active minutes" on my app on the iphone. And now i cant get it back - so annoying. Plz help me anyone?