Activity minute discrepancy

[knit6185]

My husband and I both have Fitbit One's.  Today, we took advantage of our northern NY snowfall dump and went snowshoeing for a couple hours.  When we got back, my husband's fitbit showed intense activity and lots of very active minutes  for our adventure, while mine showed only moderate activity and no very active minutes. 😞  Is it because it takes more energy to move his 6'2"  195lb frame than my 5'6" 150lb body?  Or is there a fitbit issue?  We both feel our fitbits are accurate otherwise.  Thanks

[Colinm39]

@knit6185You are correct, it is all about calories and men burn more than women because they have more muscle. BMR comes into, it and if you are interested this BMR calculator is the same as what Fitbit use and it is within 4 calories of my Fitbit BMR. You can compare your pre-activity calories. It is important for both of you to have your physical characteristics accurate in your settings.  BMR Link

Also if you look at this link a similar question about VAM.... link

[knit6185]

Thanks.  Objectively, it makes sense. 

[slysam]

While the calorie burn will be higher for the male (usually), I think the standard calorie burn per minute for very active is different depending on your stats. I get VAM when I burn more than 5 calories per minute which is slightly over 5 times my metabolic rate. On the old forum several users posted their calorie burn per minute where they start to see VAM--most of the posters seemed to be male and their calorie per minute burn requirement seemed higher than mine. If you were doing the exact same activity, I guess I would also look at other possible differences. Where you wearing the fitbit's in different places? Was he sustaining the movement for a greater part of each minute? Was he moving faster? Is he heavier on his feet than you? (I think this matters after some observation and testing. I always get a high rating for higher impact activities.) On the impact, weighing more can add to this beyond what it adds to your BMR and calorie burn. I suspected this, but to see I repeated the same workout video segment twice--one mile of a walking video by Leslie Sansone. My settings were the same both times, the only difference was the first time I did it regular and the second time wearing a weighted vest (adding 10 pounds to my torso). One reason I decided to try this with a video is so I could follow the beat of the music and instructor to make it as much the same a s possible. Wearing the vest, I felt sluggish and may have missed a beat or two but mostly kept pace. Without the vest I kept pace with little effort. When I looked at my activity record the distance was about the same for both versions, but the weighted vest version counted slightly more steps and a higher calorie burn. It was rated as a mix of moderately active and very active (this one had jogging breaks). The unweighted was also a mix of moderately and very active minutes but there were fewer of the red very active spikes and the calorie burn was lower. It could be just variations in the fitbit tracking, but it was big enough that I believe it was because the fitbit felt more impact from the steps and maybe even felt more of the steps (these videos do have some "step" movements that I think the fitbit might miss like little kicks). I had thought when I first got my Fitbit I earned VAM's walking more easily, I wasn't sure if it is because of fitness improvements, technique improvements or weight loss (I weighed about 10 pounds morre which was why I chose to weight the vest to 10 pounds for this experiment).