Active Minutes = minutes exercised?

[fougamou]

Silly question in that this has no impact on my activity, just how I am accounting for it.

I am in fitness challenge sponsored by our wellness program. I am accounting for steps taken and minutes exercised.

Do you think reporting active minutes can be considered equal to minutes exercised?   If would be nice if I could just report the data from my Fitbit rather than having to remember this each day.

[Dominique]

In your Dashboard, active minutes are split between light, moderate and very active:

What you consider as "exercise" is up to you / your company. I personally consider only VAMs as real exercise, moderate and light are just non-sedentary.

As you probably are aware, Fitbit may fail to detect intense activity if it is not step-based. This is something you may want to take into account if such activities represent a lot of what you do.

[crd22]

Yeah I'd say so.
Running counts as very active minutes, as does walking continuously at a mild pace (~3 mph from what I've seen).

I mean, most any other exercise will constitute significantly fewer steps than these so you'd still have to remember these times because it's very likely they wouldn't be considered "very active minutes".

[Dominique]

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@crd22 wrote:
Running counts as very active minutes, as does walking continuously at a mild pace (~3 mph from what I've seen).

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I definitely don't get VAM's from walking at 3 mph. Speed needs to be at least 4.1 mph for VAM's to kick in. What Fitbit model do you have? I have a One. My understanding is the algorithm for VAM's varies from one model to another.

[Mediakath]

So do activity minutes only get logged if I hit the button first, like when I go to bed? I manually entered 45 minutes of Pilates today, but got NO credit in activity minutes.??

[crd22]

I have a Zip.
And the only reason I threw in a specific speed was because I've been walking on the treadmill at 3.0-3.3 mph many times in the past couple weeks and that whole time counts as very active for me.
It could be heavily influenced by the duration, which is usually at least 60 minutes. If I walked at 3 mph for 5 minutes, I'd be pretty confident that it wouldn't count as very active.

[Colinm39]

The timer has nothing to do with Active Minutes. The timer, whether you set it or log a manual timer activity just copies what the data tracker measures into a log. Active Minutes are all about calories and as Dominique shows in his graph of the break down. I need 7 calories/minute to get 1 x VAM (Very Active Minute) green as you can see in my chart and I need to walk at over 4mph to get SOME VAM.

You need to find the activities to generate the calories burned....If I create a 45 minute pilates - intermediate activity I get 213 calories and breaking that down to 1 minute and 5 minutes I get  4.7 and 24 calories respectively, nowhere near what my chart shows which puts me into moderate activity.

Finally Fitbit are addressing the issue and VAM will be eliminated and become Active Minutes. Watch this space !!!!! Reported December 2013 from a Moderator

                                

[Colinm39]

There is an impact or velocity issue as well if the Fitbit is used under conditions that it was not intended.

I was wearing my Fitbit's Ultra and a One while on my 30" exercise ball (rehab for lower back issues) and I had surprising results, I wondered where the VAM came from.

Waist mounted Fitbits mid navel and hip.

Bounces average were 100 bounces/minute for 30 minutes

Average speed was 3.1 mph

VAM was 28 out of 30 minutes

Calories were 284, no way

  I went 1-1/4 miles (2.04 km) sitting at the computer bouncing and reading posts.

The results were similar to wearing the Fitbit on your ankle where the calories double. Tested by me results available.

For me to get VAM I have to walk on a flat surface at >135 steps/minute and about 4.1 mph, same as Dominque.

[Colinm39]

Use the chart that Dominque has produced and you can do that by clicking on your Very Active Minutes tile and clicking All.. and you can click on yopur Profile picture and get the same results but the colours are the old colours Red is VAM.

[Colinm39]

I would be interested to hear from you about the 1 minute calories graph if you do a manual timer activity for a treadmill time period. I find the graph see saws and spikes for me even at a constant speed..

This ism part of research by me because I'm in dialogue with Fitbit because I believe there is an error in the algorithm reporting VAM

Here is one of my reports to Fitbit, the speed and steps were fairly constant but I only got 9 active minutes out of 48 minutes. Before Fitbit changed from METS to CDC guidelines I would have got close to 100% VAM. Maybe this is why Fitbit will discontinue VAM for Activity Minutes which is Moderate + VAM (confirmed by Fitbit)

[crd22]

I can't find any way to show the 1 minute graphs.

[Colinm39]

I'm having a quiet coffee and out of the 111oF heat in Melbourne. You create a Manual timer activity by


Log, Activity
Click the large stop watch near the search bar
Enter your time period and update

Take care if you are in older date area because today's date shows, change that and if you edit the record it can default to am

You now have a timer record, if you click on the small stop watch on the activity description you will see your graphs. A wonderful analytical tool.

Thanks for helping. Greatly appreciated.

[crd22]

Oh wow that's pretty neat.
Here's what it looks like from last night...

Pretty dang consistent to me (as iit should be).

[Colinm39]

That is consistency, what Fitbit do you have and where do you wear it. Many complain of the few VAM they get and yours hits the perfect score.

I was expecting to see some more peaks, and if I were to get 8 calories/minute like that for only about 115 steps/minute I would be over the moon and I would get 100%

[Mary]

8 calories a minute for walking?  Dang.  

[Dominique]

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@Mary wrote:

8 calories a minute for walking?  Dang.  

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She has a Zip, which I think is overly generous. From the graph, she gets about 110 steps per minute, which is 6600 steps per hour. There is no way she would walk at 4+ mph at that pace, unless she has a gigantic stride length. I average about 8900-9000 steps per hour when walking at 4.3 mph.

[Colinm39]

Fitbit records at the 1 minute level and because there are a couple of peaks in your graph would indicate that there are no manual activities. I will go and purchase a Zip now and replace my R.I.P. Classic and do some more comparison testing. So I will have the One, superglued Ultra and the Zip..

[fougamou]

Thanks everyone, this is really intersting.

My dashboard tile reads "Active Minutes"   I did not realize that I could click on it and get the graph.  

Looks like the "Active Minutes" on the Dashboard is "Very Active Minutes" on the graph, and that is what I wanted to report.

[Mary]

If I wear a Zip, will I lose more weight?  

I walk a little faster than that 110 and only get 5 calories a minute for most.  Though I never looked at it by minute before today, and only remembered to 'record' the last 12 minutes of my walk.  The first minute it did give me 8 calories, but then all 5s except for one 0 and one 7.  So a bit less consistent.  

Though I'm probably old enough to be her mother but also am probably higher BMI.  

[Colinm39]

Dominique

Now that our heat wave has "gone", yesterday I purchased the Zip after posting on the treadmill Zip calories.

I will test all three Ultra, One and Zip and see what happens. I'm like you, I battle to get any VAM under 4.2 mph and 135 steps/minute.