11 min walk not counted as active minutes?

[Camilla_R]

My fitbit ionic does not count an 11 minute walk as active minutes.

The average bpm was around 110 and it was recorded as 11 minute fat burn.

Is the intensity to low to be counted as active minutes?

[Colinm39]

@Camilla_R Welcome to the forums, Fitbit's active minutes is a minimum of 3 times your BMR/sleeping calories and for 10 continuous minutes.

You can see that if you click on the Activity Log on the PC Dashboard, select the Active record icon with the small stop watch and enter the same times as your walk. This will give you a minute based vertical barchart when you select calories. That will show if there is a lag in the 11 minute activity. 

This is a copy of your data so it will not change anything

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@Camilla_R wrote:

My fitbit ionic does not count an 11 minute walk as active minutes.

The average bpm was around 110 and it was recorded as 11 minute fat burn.

Is the intensity to low to be counted as active minutes?

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[bIonicman]

Camilla_R,

for what it is worth, the manual mentions something about SmartTrack detects continuous movements of at least 15 minutes in length.

So I am wondering if that has something to do with what you noticed. It also says you can change that setting in the Exercise App.

[Camilla_R]

I think it says 10 min.
And anyway this was automatically recorded as exercise but just not as
active minutes.

[Camilla_R]

Hi!

I tried to do as you suggested.

It it supposed to be recorded as sleep, this activity I should compare with?

It actually gave the same amount of calories burnt, 51 in each case.

So does that mean I burn as many calories sleeping for 11 minutes as going for a walk with a bpm of 110 in average?

I have tried going for walks of around 25-40 minutes also and then the whole walk is recorded as active minutes. The average heart rate has then been slightly higher, around 115-125.

[bIonicman]

Hi Camilla-R,

I have not tried this myself, but if I read the manual and the help info online correctly, this is how it should work :

 Smartrack will automatically recognize the type of activity (walking, running etc. etc.).

It will count that towards your daily activity only when that activity lasts longer then a pre-set number of minutes. I suspect that the 11 minute walk you refer to is not long enough for Smartrack to count it.

You can change the minimum number of minutes per activity group to 10 minutes or higher.

Depending on how you setup your Ionic etc. you have to do this following this web page :

https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1933#duration

[Colinm39]

@Camilla_RApologies, I didn't explain myself fully.. Your 51 calories is definitely well into the Active minutes area. When we say sleep BMR we anticipate that you would look at your Activity Log on the PC and click calories and get the graph.. These are in 5 minute graphs so divide the single graph by 5 for your 1 minute BMR or better still use this calculator which uses the same equations as Fitbit and divide the answer by 1,440 minutes in a day.

The last graph has a Very Active Minutes which is 6 times and greater your BMR

Here is an example of what you should have seen in the Active Record graph.

[Camilla_R]

Thanks but the minutes is set to 10+ already for walks.

[Camilla_R]

Ok so if I use the calculator I get 1330 calories a day.

[Colinm39]

@Camilla_RYou are well over the total calories for your 11 minute walk because you only need 2.77 calories/minute to achieve an Active minute, a total of  30 calories.... Because Fitbit round up the calories to 3 in the graphs you are still well covered..

If you follow the steps for the Active Record post earlier you will probably see the issue.  Fitbit claim they don't discredit us if we pause to cross a road etc.

In your Activity Log for the day for the 11 minute walk did it show any 5 minute bar as green or yellow as per image below.. These graph bars are 5 minutes.  Use link

Nothing for me today it's now 41.7oC (107.1) in Melbourne....

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@Camilla_R wrote:
Ok so if I use the calculator I get 1330 calories a day.

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[Camilla_R]

Wow that sure is hot! Here in Sweden it's only +2 degrees C...

Well it looks like this:

https://www.fitbit.com/activities/exercise/11650537207

[Camilla_R]

And when I follow your steps 1 to 4 it all looks ok. I have more than 3 calories for each staple.

[Colinm39]

@Camilla_R  A southerly cool change is has come through.. Melbourne is renowned for having 4 seasons in the one day...

Unfortunately I cannot view that link on all of my browsers in Windows PC and the Android browsers.. It comes up with an error trying to display the graph..  Just a clear result..

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@Camilla_R wrote:

Wow that sure is hot! Here in Sweden it's only +2 degrees C...

Well it looks like this:

https://www.fitbit.com/activities/exercise/11650537207

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[Camilla_R]

Well it looks ok. each staple is above 3 calories.

Most around 4-5.

[Colinm39]

@Camilla_R. Thanks for getting back..

Do you have 10 continuous minutes in the Graph with 3 calories and above?

I would also check your physical settings, make sure they are correct and then look at the 5 minute graph during your sleep time. They should be 5 calories.

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@Camilla_R wrote:

Well it looks ok. each staple is above 3 calories.

Most around 4-5.

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[Camilla_R]

Yes I have 10 continous minutes with 3 or above calories.

My physical settings are ok.

[mikep87]

I quite often walk round to my parents house which is 10/11 minute walk, almost always it is counted as 10/11 active minutes and auto logged as walk exercise although occasionally it is neither and sometimes one or the other, I just figured that sometimes I walk quicker so it is not counted, or sometimes I pause for a while for heavy traffic or to use the cash machine so that is why it does not count - perhaps it is the same for you?

[Colinm39]

@Camilla_RThe joys of formulae and your new journey with Fitbit..  and as @mikep87 posts we lose some and gain some and I have had the reverse.. Only recorded 8 active minutes one day and I checked because that shouldn't have been so.. the 8 minutes were valid.. based on the 10 continuous minute rule.

Then other times I pick up active minutes with hand movements weeding the garden and the calories come from my HR, not my steps.. and that was probably becuase I was kneeling and putting different pressure on my heart.. It wasn't massive work just extracting flat leave from the lawn and crawling,,,

I have a low RHR, typically around 52-54 and my fat burning starts at 71 bpm..So I'm always juggling my Active Minutes. Win some, lose some.again...

Enjoy your new Ionic, because I am and it's doing everything I purchased it for.. I don't worry about music but always have the odd syncing problem and it took 30 minutes tonight to eventually sync via the phone and the Fitbit Connect..

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@Camilla_R wrote:

Yes I have 10 continous minutes with 3 or above calories.

My physical settings are ok.

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[Camilla_R]

Yes I guess it is something like that going on here.

I manually recorded another 10 minute walk today. My bpm average was 108 compared to 110 before but I burned more calories (59 compared to 51). It was calculated as active minutes.

Maybe because of more calories or maybe because of the manual recording (last time it was automatically tracked)?

[Colinm39]

@Camilla_RProbably the manual recording.. When you create that it, calculates your calories from the speed etc you have entered and more importantly it straight lines the graph over time..

Where I have had an up and down calories burn over a timed walk and lost active minutes, a simple test was to re-enter the data as a manual walking activity and I received 100% active minutes.

The downside to that is that the result isn't included in Challenges etc..

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@Camilla_R wrote:

Yes I guess it is something like that going on here.

I manually recorded another 10 minute walk today. My bpm average was 108 compared to 110 before but I burned more calories (59 compared to 51). It was calculated as active minutes.

Maybe because of more calories or maybe because of the manual recording (last time it was automatically tracked)?

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