Stationary Bike

[kdmiller63]

I just spent 20 minutes on a stationary bike and I don’t think my Alta really picked up anything. Also, I cannot seem to

locate how to log on for a stationary bike. Please help. 

[kdmiller63]

I just did 20 minutes on a stationary bike and I don’t think my Alta was really keeping track. Also I cannot find anywhere in the activities for stationary bike. Please help. 

[Dominique]

If you want to manually log it as an activity, you can do it here. Since there’s no activity labelled "stationary bike", you can create a custom one:

To determine the intensity of the activity, you can use the Physical Compendium of Activities and look for its MET:

Pick up the intensity you think is matching what you are doing, and base your calculation on it. You will also have to estimate your BMR (for that, you can use this online caculator).

If you want to track your total energy expenditure for the day, you may want to consider that 20 minutes spent on the stationary bike, whether logged or unlogged, will be within the margin of error of what your Fitbit Alta reports (estimating energy expenditure with an activity tracker is not exact science). Maybe your Alta fails to account for the effort on the bike, but OTOH it will give you undue credit for other activities (for instance, food prepping that has your hands move a lot).

[Cerizas]

I trick my  Charge HR into logging my stationary bike exercise by resting my hand on my thigh. Don't know if that would work on the Alta, but when it would still sync, the activity showed up as Workout most of the time. Once it was split into Walk and Sport when I'd taken a break for a few minutes before continuing. 

[WendyB]

I always manually log my stationary bike

I also just use Bike