What happens when I select an exercise?

[Anotherjennifer]

Let’s say I decide to select an exercise with an exercise shortcut. I know that I can see all the stats for the exercise session. But does selecting a particular exercise change anything about how my Fitbit calculates various stats? If I’m swimming, on an outdoor bicycle or spinning, does it somehow figure out how to calculate step equivalents and credit me for those? Does it calculate calories burned differently depending on the exercise? What’s the difference between selecting the generic Workout vs a specific exercise? If I selected Weight Lifting but actually walked on the treadmill, would it show different stats for the exercise session vs having correctly selected Treadmill?

This is all really one big question that I hope is making sense: does selecting a particular exercise affect the way the Fitbit calculates the stats it calculates? Or is being able to select different exercises merely the illusion of specificity and, in fact, you could just select Workout for every exercise session and get the same results?

[JohnnyRow]

Good question that many don't understand.  As far as calories, makes no difference.  Calories are just calculated from heart rate, same if it is from workout, yoga or power lifting.  In that respect, "Workout" is as good as any, and I think many mistakenly obsess over getting exact choices for this, just as complaining about not having 'pickleball' choice.

They do differ somewhat in the stats they show in the workout summaries, though, I believe.  For instance, walking will always show 'steps', whereas pilates might show something else, not sure what, but if did not show steps in symmary, they would still get credited and count in daily total, it would just be that Fitbit might think they were not the major thing you were interested in looking at in workout summary.  And also I suppose in whether they give the option of using GPS to get a map, For instance no sense of getting GPS of treadmill walk.

Another caveat/difference is that for some choices the distance is not added to daily distance.  That is true for biking, 'outdoor workout', maybe a few others such as surfing, snowboarding, kayaking ...   The idea being that daily distance is distance traveled on foot, basically walking or running.

One more caveat. I don't know about swimming.  I haven't done since started Fitbit.  I guess it turns off heart rate reading. so idea about that.

So in summary, my understanding is that choice of exercise type is really mostly for your own history to let you remember what you were doing.  'Workout' is often good choice, for one thing, it lets you later edit the exercise type, whereas some choices do not.

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Now lets see if anyone bothers to disagree with me.