Steps counted while biking

[KarenBures]

K. Quick vent. And possibly advice.  I just took a 2 hour spin class. Stayed mostly in zone 3 and burned 1020 calories. And my fitbit did not pick up very much and called it moderate activity. I literally can't move and I am so sore an hour after the class.  Does anyone know if there is a way to have it read for cycling activity more accurately? Or is there a bike attachement or something I can get. Cause there was NOTHING moderate about that activity! lol

[Sunshinesdad]

Hi Karen,

As far as I know you can't have it pick up cycling but you can log into your account and log the activity seperately.  It will ask you for a start time and duration.  The first time you log in you might want to put in the calories burned but after that it should calculate it by itself.  Fitbit will add those calories to what the activity tracker does register.

[KarenBures]

Thank you!!!!!

[SLS]

Cycling will not count your steps.  You can log it manually and get the calories burned accounted for, and unless you wear a heart rate monitor and know exactly how many calories you burn and ent those manually, it will show a lot less.  Here is a conversion chart if you want to just log your steps instead, but again, you will get a much lower calorie burned allowance.  

www.svsu.edu/media/hr/docs/hrpdf/Step.Conversion.Chart.pdf

As an example, yesterday I road cycled for 16 miles, two hours.  MayMyRun gave me 800+ calories burned and Fitbit gave me 422 calories burned.  It stinks, because I really don't know which is correct, so I just converted it into steps and took those.  I hate to error on either side, but not much I can do, as I don't have a HRM to be 100% sure.

[SLS]

You will need to copy and paste the whole address into your address bar.  It's not clickable as it's not complete, sorry.

[KarenBures]

Alright! Tonight I clipped my flex force around my underwear so that when I was cylcing it picked up on each leg movement! It worked! It shows the higher level of activity that it just wasn't picking up on my wrist! I'm a spin instructor so it was just aggravating me that it wasn't counting!! lol. I do have a heart rate monitor that I also wear during work outs but the force is a reminder to stay more active the rest of the day, not just during my work out.

[Ukase]

Glad you picked up on that trick. At first, when I clipped my fitbit on my waist band because the shorts I was wearing didn't have pockets, my cycling didn't register.

But, now with a pocket to clip it in, the FitBit picks it up - which is good. I have a Life Cycle machine that's about 15 years old here in the house - and it's a little too cold for me to head to the gym tonight. Watching the Auburn-FSU game while I ride - at least I was. Half an hour is all it took to reach my steps plus some.

[kabooper]

how did you attached it to your underware?   I have a force, did you clip it around thru a leg hole to the waist band?  I would love to try this but don't quite understand how.

[KarenBures]

Yep. I have a force and I just literally looped it around the waistband but right above my leg. So it sits at the top of my leg. That way it picks up on my leg rotations on the bike!

The wierd conversations you have that only other fit bit users get. lol

[Keithos]

excellent advice!

[gerrymcd]

The most accurate calorie count will come from you wearing a heart rate monitor and recording the output on either the watch-like device that comes with it, or your smartphone.  I used to use a garmin setup, but recently bought a Wahoo bluetooth heart rate monitor that connects to my iPhone.  The latter HRM cost $60 and the iPhone app was free.  

Its worth the cost and will give you much, much more accurate info than fudging a fitbit to work, or relying on the calorie counter on the spin bike (I've found they are really inaccurate -- not surprising since they will be setup with some average values for age, weight, etc).

[KarenBures]

Yep! I have a garmin for an accurate read on my heart rate (I do zone training) as well as calorie. I don't really use the Fit Bit to track my calories.  More like a reminder for me to stay active when I'm not training.  It was just bothering me that it wasn't picking up on the high intensity work of the spinning.  This has been a great solution for me! But I appreciate your thoughts!