Activity vs full day don't match up

[babyblueut]

Why don't the minutes in the heart rate zones in my hike reflect in my day's activity. I have never had these numbers match up.

[wmchapman]

Just a little confusion, Active Minutes and minutes active are not the same. Your charts below show some terrific minutes active -well done. Here's a great explanation of Active Minutes.

Hope this clears it up for you, they won't match since Active Minutes are the total minutes your were active for 10 minutes or longer. Reaching the MET level and maintaining it is what compounds the total.

For analyzing activities like your samples, I go to fitbit.com on a computer, click on the activity and then more detail. I've attached a chart of an afternoon walk, you will see at the bottom I was "awarded" 25 active minutes even though the activity was 32.25min (top). Pretty close the the time I spent in the fat burn zone.

[babyblueut]

Thanks for your reply. I do understand how the "active Minutes" work I guess what is confusing to me is that for my whole day it shows that I was in peak heart rate for 15 mins but in just my 2 hr hike it recorded peak heart rate for 21 mins. So what did I actually do?  15 or 21?  Why does the whole day not count the 6 mins of peak?  IDK. 

[wmchapman]

Personally, for the micro stuff I'd rely on the computer's java graph of the activity for deep analysis and study. Have you noticed you can hover over the graph and get moment by moment stats? Would be nice to have a "flag" function to set curious, or way points for later review. I'm sure that feature will arrive someday.

Regarding peak, my guess is that's cardio, not as easy on the heart as fat burn. As you get older you'll have a better idea why it's not a preferred zone. Keep after it while you are (still) building that body - only one you get. Good work.

[Esya · Accepted solution]

I have the same. This morning I travelled to work by bike and recorded the ride and it had 6 minutes in cardio heart rate zone. But when I go to the heart tile, it shows 2 minutes in cardio heart rate zone for the entire day.

I believe this is due to the way the heart rate is sampled differently for both the data sets. Instead of sampling it every second as is done for the graph when you track an exercise, the data is sampled less densely for the full day graph. This can reflect in different totals when you move through heart rate zones rather quickly. The data will be more similar when you stay in zones for a longer period before switching to a different one. Notice how during your hike you drop to cardio often.