METs minutes vs Active Minutes

[SianS]

Hi,

I have just read a report from the World Health Organisation (WHO) suggesting a target of 3,000 to 4,000 METs minutes per week to give the best health benefits, a big increase from the 600 minutes previusly recommended.

My question is how do I calculate METs minutes from my Fitbit Active Minutes? A target of 3,000 Active Minutes a week seems unrealistic given that the person currently heading my Fitbit group (a runner) manages about that number a month.

Thanks

S

[SteveH]

I don't think fitbit have disclosed their algorithms for calculating active minutes other than the few hints in this help article:

http://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1379

[SianS]

Thanks for that SteveH, I had read that article before posting my question. 

What I'm trying to find out is how many Active Minutes do I need to achieve in order reach those 3,000 METs minutes the WHO is recommending.

[Dominique]

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@SianS wrote:

I have just read a report from the World Health Organisation (WHO) suggesting a target of 3,000 to 4,000 METs minutes per week to give the best health benefits, a big increase from the 600 minutes previusly recommended.

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First of all, where did you see that recommendation? All I can find on their site is this report from 2010:

http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/publications/9789241599979/en/

1. Adults aged 18–64 years should do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity throughout the week, or do at least 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity throughout the week, or an equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity activity.
2. Aerobic activity should be performed in bouts of at least 10 minutes duration.
3. For additional health benefits, adults should increase their moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity to 300 minutes per week, or engage in 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity per week, or an equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity activity.
4. Muscle-strengthening activities should be done involving major muscle groups on 2 or more days a week.

Secondly, what are "METs minutes"? The report gives a definition of METs: 

MET refers to metabolic equivalent and 1 MET is the rate of energy expenditure while sitting at rest. It is taken by convention to be an oxygen uptake of 3.5 milliliters per kilogram of body weight per minute. Physical activities frequently are classified by their intensity, using the MET as a reference.

And of "moderate-intensity physical activity":

On an absolute scale, moderate intensity refers to the physical activity that is performed at 3.0–5.9 times the intensity of rest. On a scale relative to an individual’s personal capacity, moderate-intensity physical activity is usually a 5 or 6 on a scale of 0–10 (34).

600 minutes = 150 x 4, so maybe that was a recommendation for one month, not one week?

[SianS]

Dominique, the article was in today's Guardian Newspaper, here is the link https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/09/whos-recommended-level-exercise-too-low-beat-disease.... The link referred to in the article is broken but the correct link to the British Medical Journal is this http://www.bmj.com/content/354/bmj.i3857. I won't pretend to have read the BMJ article as is its way beyond my understanding, but the headline conclusion is that the old WHO target is too low.

The reason I asked my original question was to try and get an idea of a conversion from METs minutes, which I am not measuring to Fitbit Active minutes which I am measuring.

[Dominique]

OK, "MET-minutes/week" is defined in this WHO document (page 16):

It’s not the same as Fitbit’s active minutes. Total physical activity as defined by WHO above will also include low-intensity activities that wouldn’t qualify for "active minutes" according to Fitbit.

[Nora58]

@SianS yes it does say 3000 to 4000 would be better for warding off the five diseases they were looking at but not someone who is healthy or to immediately go out and hurt your self by trying to go from 600 to 3000 in a week. It gave suggestions further down in the article on how to incorporate the exercise into your day. The article looked at specific people with specific illnesses and only in certain regions. It is an article based on research by others that has been pulled from Medline for the most part and been put together to be called a study. This is not put out by the WHO only the opinion of those who pulled the reports.

[dwent]

FitBit doesn't display MET-Minutes on the dashboard (although I have made a feature request asking that they do so - Display MET-Minutes on Dashboard) and there is no way of accurately converting FitBit's "Active Minutes" into MET-Minutes either. 

If you multiply your "Active Minutes" by 3, this will give you the minimum possible value of your MET-Minutes, assuming that you want to exclude activities lasting less than 10 minutes from the calculation, which is probably sensible and in line with WHO recommendations. Note that your actual MET-Minutes will almost certainly be higher than this minimum and, if most of your exercise is of the high-intensity variety, the discrepancy could be up to a factor 2-4 times the minimum. But at least it gives you something to go on.