Active minutes not recording in activity recorded exercises

[Prof_G]

When I walk/hike I put the One in Activity mode, and it's been recording those data well.  I then log it as an activity on the webpage, so that I get 'credit' for the exercise.  However, starting yesterday I no longer see those minutes as active minutes, it seems like it's an either/or situation.  Why is this?  How can I track/log my exercise so as to meet that goal, and not lose my active minutes, which I also want to track in the long term? 

PS - I've restarted the unit, and rentered the data in the activity log, neither of which resolved the situation.

[SteveH]

I think what might be happening here is that when your fitbit tracks a walk it sees your activity levels vary over time with peaks and troughs in effort and it is during these times of peak effort that you are likely to get active minutes.

When you manually log an activity it doesn't know anything about these peaks and troughs and so averages the effort out evenly over the time frame, thereby losing active minutes.

Manually logging the walk overwrites the calories and active minutes so you see a drop.

[Prof_G]

Sure, except that I was getting both until yesterday. I put it in activity mode to get my workout data, then manually log it to get credit for the exercise. The nail yesterday, that would not overwrite active minutes. In browsing the boards, it seems like the active minutes are a really buggy feature, and there's a lot of discontent with the way they work. Ah well, what to do?

[Prof_G]

Today I got both, doing nothing differently. It's a mystery...

[TandemWalker · Accepted solution]

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@Prof_G wrote:

When I walk/hike I put the One in Activity mode, and it's been recording those data well.  I then log it as an activity on the webpage, so that I get 'credit' for the exercise.  However, starting yesterday I no longer see those minutes as active minutes, it seems like it's an either/or situation.  Why is this?  How can I track/log my exercise so as to meet that goal, and not lose my active minutes, which I also want to track in the long term? 

PS - I've restarted the unit, and rentered the data in the activity log, neither of which resolved the situation.

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Hi @Prof_G. When your wear your One, regardless of the Activity Mode being enabled or not, you shouldn't have to log anything manually; a successful sync to your account at www.fitbit.com does it all for you. If you press the button on the side of your Fitbit One at the beginning and end of your walk/hike to capture the event separately on your Activity Log, you still don't have to log anything manually as the sync does it all for you.

TW

[Prof_G]

My tracker does not automatically parse out that as separate data, so if I put it in activity mode I get stats for just my workouts, otherwise, those data just get lumped into the day's totals, and it's much harder for me to track my progress.

[TandemWalker]

That's right @Prof_G. Unless old age is catching up with me, which believe me wouldn't be a first, what you're stating in your last post is not contrary to what I wrote in mine. Unless you use the timer functionality to track a specific workout that you want to capture separately from your daily activities, syncing will not automatically show that activity/event seperately on you Activities log because Fitbit has no time factors to do so. Just like your car odometer - unless you press Trip A or B, the mileage for a specifc trip will not be isolated and will be bundled up with your total mileage.

TW