Wear fitbit during exercise or log exercise?

[SunsetRunner]

Hi everyone,

I have a "best practices" question. I do a variety of different kinds of exercise, from lifting weights to running to cardio dance to HIIT to downhill skiing! Should I leave my fitbit (I have a One) on for these and assume it is correctly tracking my activity? Or should I take it off and log them separately? Or should I wear it AND log the activities? It seems obvious when I go for a run, but when I went skiing a few weeks ago, I was out for hours and only recorded 9 very active minutes.

Thanks!

Jen

[PamelaHazelton]

I wear my Flex AND log activities that it either doesn't track or may only count the steps on.

[AaI]

I wear mine as well, and log it in.

Not sure if that is correct or not.

[WolfRhan]

You may as well wear it and log it.  Generally logging will over-ride wearing it, but it does no harm to wear it and collect data that ultimately won't be used.     

[Seyler87]

If you wear it all the time it will log steps. But with skiing you're not really "walking". For example too, if you wear it while walking on the treadmill and then enter it, it will add double steps because going off of your height and age to calculate your stride. BUT those doubled steps won't count towards badges or challenges.

[Heybales]

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@Seyler87 wrote:
If you wear it all the time it will log steps. But with skiing you're not really "walking". For example too, if you wear it while walking on the treadmill and then enter it, it will add double steps because going off of your height and age to calculate your stride. BUT those doubled steps won't count towards badges or challenges.

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Incorrect - it does NOT double count steps.

When you manually log walking and running, it replaces steps, distance, and calories based on what you entered.

You just can't count those steps now in badges or challenges since you could easily be making it up.

[TandemWalker]

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@SunsetRunner wrote:

Hi everyone,

I have a "best practices" question. I do a variety of different kinds of exercise, from lifting weights to running to cardio dance to HIIT to downhill skiing! Should I leave my fitbit (I have a One) on for these and assume it is correctly tracking my activity? Or should I take it off and log them separately? Or should I wear it AND log the activities? It seems obvious when I go for a run, but when I went skiing a few weeks ago, I was out for hours and only recorded 9 very active minutes.

Thanks!

Jen

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Hi Jen. I never wear my tracker unless the activity is step-based. And even when it is step based (treadmill and elliptical for example) I still don't wear it, because those are not walk/jog workouts or daily routine steps - they are elliptical and treadmills workouts. When you go for a walk/jog outdoors or an indoor track, there is nothing helping your forward motion - just you leg joints and muscles! So I prefer not to skew my true step stats with machine workouts. I don't know if this is best practice or not - just my preference, because my goal is not to maximize my step count but to track my workouts for what they are.

I am not surprised that you only got 9 VAMs for hours of skiing. If you booked your two-hour skiing event manually, you would get 120 VAMs. I'm not sure that's correct, as it doesn't seem to take into account any down time for chair lifts and so forth. So perhaps skiing is not that good an example. But since your tracker relies on steps to tabulate its metrics, I can why the VAM calculation was low, likewise the step count I'm sure.

TW

[cathyz64]

It appears to me that when I add my exercise and wear my fitbit it doubles the steps and calories burned, giving me a false read. How do I keep that from happening?

[Dee5766]

I have the exact same question - if my goal is to get at least 10K steps a day - and I wear my Fitbit all the time - even on the treadmill - it counts my treadmill steps AND when i enter my activity it counts it again.  Isn't this wrong?

[bdaniels04]

I wear my Fitbit when I'm running and I log my activity through MapMyFitness/MyFitnessPal and I've never seen it double my steps. I thinkyou could get that issue if you're logging directly into Fitbit, but I've not noticed using these other apps.

[Dee5766]

I will try this - thanks.

Dee

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[Heybales]

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@cathyz64 wrote:

It appears to me that when I add my exercise and wear my fitbit it doubles the steps and calories burned, giving me a false read. How do I keep that from happening?

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It appears to happen - but it's not.

First, if you are adding walking or running, the only exercise that changes steps, why?

That's exactly what the Fitbit is good at estimating - why are you manually entering it?

Also, you are viewing it appears an activity record, the result of hitting the button on the device.

That is NOT adding that info to the daily stats - it's viewing for that block of time those stats from the daily stats.

When you then manually added a workout - you replaced the original data.

The activity record continues to show whatever Fitbit first saw.

Again - there's no need to do that - unless you have much better calorie burn estimate, and/or distance.

I always manually logged, but then there is no need to keep the activity record - so delete it.

Why manually log and keep data that has been replaced.

No, your stats is not being doubled.

[Heybales]

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@Dee5766 wrote:

I have the exact same question - if my goal is to get at least 10K steps a day - and I wear my Fitbit all the time - even on the treadmill - it counts my treadmill steps AND when i enter my activity it counts it again.  Isn't this wrong?

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You just don't understand what's happening, that's all. Read the post right above for explanation.

[TandemWalker]

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@Dee5766 wrote:

I have the exact same question - if my goal is to get at least 10K steps a day - and I wear my Fitbit all the time - even on the treadmill - it counts my treadmill steps AND when i enter my activity it counts it again.  Isn't this wrong?

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When you wear your tracker to track a step-based activity, all the steps it recorded are logged to your dashboard following a successful sync.

If you subsequently log a manual treadmill acivity, you are actually overlaying that Fitbit data with your own entry. There is no need to log a step-based activity if you're wearing your tracker. There is NO double counting if do you log it - your step count remains the same in your step stats; but your dashboard will then also show your treadmill workout under Exercise because you logged it.

Personally, I don't like that approach. If I go for a treadmill or elliptical workout, I much prefer to set my tracker aside and log the activity manually, using the machine readout to log my caloric burn. This way, I get the full credit for the activity, including the incremental burn from the platform incline and upper body movements (elliptital.)

I also know that steps taken on such equipment aren't the same as regular routine steps or walk/jog workouts outdoors or using an indoor training track; you don't have a platform pushing you forward, your own body provides all the energy to move your forward. So I don't want those treadmill/elliptical steps to skew my true step stats. When I look at my step stats, I know that this is all that I'm looking at, not a mix bag of actual steps and treadmill/elliptical steps. When I look at my exercise log for the past week, I know that what I did on ellipitcal, treadmill, cycling, rowing; and I know how I did with daily routine steps and any timed walk/jog workouts.

Hope this helps. Have a nice day.

    TW     

(If this tip solved the problem for you, please mark this post solved, as this will be helpful to other users experiencing similar issues.)

[Pianinha]

Some activities such as Zumba I find it more rewarding to not log it as activity. I get my minutes and my steps. lol

Others such as yoga I have to log to boost my calories.

Do you think I am cheating....nah!

After all I remove my flex when I play piano. Playing piano makes my flex counts steps...and there are no longer activities called piano playing, like there was before. I do not know why they removed that option and it sucks.

[TandemWalker]

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@Pianinha wrote:

Some activities such as Zumba I find it more rewarding to not log it as activity. I get my minutes and my steps. lol

Others such as yoga I have to log to boost my calories.

Do you think I am cheating....nah!

After all I remove my flex when I play piano. Playing piano makes my flex counts steps...and there are no longer activities called piano playing, like there was before. I do not know why they removed that option and it sucks.

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Yes, you might get your minutes and your steps by not logging Zumba as an acivity; but is your caloric burn correct? I don't do zumba, so I wouldn't know. But you can try it at and see how it pans out. The next time you go for a zumba workout, use the timer on your One to time your workout. Once you sync, that event will show separately on your activity log and you'll see exactly how many steps your One picked up, active minutes and burn. Then log zumba manually and see what the burn is. I don't know for sure, but if my hunch is right, I suspect that logging the activity will give you an incremental burn for all the energy used for your upper body movements while dancing. Logging it will also NOT delete the steps, but simply add to the caloric burn already attached to the steps that your One registered.

TW

[wildfern]

I agree with this.  I have never seen double steps--on anything I logged.  Doing step aerobics adds alot of steps--but it also burns more calories as it is a high intensity exercise.  I've never seen a problem with logging it.

[CSB54]

I wear it doing any activity, (I wear it all day long) but when I do cardio of any kind, I also wear a Polar Heart rate monitor because I believe the HRM give a better calorie burned estimate.  Fitbit monitors steps only.  I had the HRM before I got the fitbit.

[TandemWalker]

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@CSB54 wrote:

I wear it doing any activity, (I wear it all day long) but when I do cardio of any kind, I also wear a Polar Heart rate monitor because I believe the HRM give a better calorie burned estimate.  Fitbit monitors steps only.  I had the HRM before I got the fitbit.

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Yes, Fitbit trackers are mostly pedometers; but the Charge HR and Surge go beyond the traditional pedometer functionality.

    TW     

(If this tip solved the problem for you, please mark this post solved, as this will be helpful to other users experiencing similar issues.)

[SuperStephSteph]

For me it depends on what I'm doing. When I take walks I am almost always pusing a stroller so I log my exercise to that the Fitbit will actually count my steps (aproximate my steps) because even though Fitbit says they count steps when pushing a stroller in my experience that's not actually so. Prior to having my Fitbit I would log workouts through Myfitnesspal and I find that the calorie adjustment it gives me for walking all day long and hitting the gym tends to be larger than I was giving myself for working out so I just make sure to wear it all day long and just take the calorie adjustment it gives me. Probably not actually following best practices but thus far this is what has been the easiest for me 🙂