adding non-typical activities as exercise: choral singing

[IronicWatch]

I am a member of community choral group with 2-hour rehearsals each week.  It is very clear to me that this activity takes a lot of energy, with involvement of the diaphragm, the lungs, etc.  Could somebody calculate this as an activity that could be added to the drop-down list to track?

[russsss]

@IronicWatch   ummmmm why not just track your pulse rate for the 2 hours a week to see if the "activity" actually does show an increase in heart rate  ... you can always log it as "workout" if you feel the need .  

[Dominique]

Which Fitbit model do you have? You’re making the assumption your Fitbit is not going to distinguish between time spent standing and singing from time spent lying on your couch. If your Fitbit features HR monitoring, it may well make the distinction. As suggested by @russsss, if your Fitbit supports on-device logging of activities (e.g. Charge 2, Surge, Blaze, Ionic), do record one of your choral singing sessions as a generic workout and compare the calories for that "workout" to the same amount of time spent doing something less strenuous, like sitting at the office, reading a book etc.

Other than that, check the Compendium of Physical Activities (you can download the complete 2011 edition as a PDF), which has METs for all sorts of activities. The most resembling activity in the Compendium would be "standing, singing in church, attending a ceremony, standing, active participation", which as a METs of 2.0. As a comparison, here is another activity with the same METs: "cooking or food preparation - standing or sitting or in general (not broken into stand/walk components), manual appliances, light effort". If you think your choral singing is more demanding than these, increase the METs accordingly.

Estimating total energy expenditure with an activity tracker comes with a margin of error anyway, so I personally wouldn’t bother separately logging activities like choral singing.  

[Daves_Not_Here]

@Dominique -- what's the MET for "pulling your chain"?

[pastimz]

I have a Sense Fitbit. Singing for me (in the church congregation) registers as "intense activity". I got 34 zone minutes in 18 minutes of congregational singing and used over 100 calories. I don't feel like I'm working that hard at all though....