Tracking Activity with fitbit one

[LyndsieP]

I'm curious to know how other ONE users track specific exercises. I do a lot of things, like fitness classes and workout dvds with light hand weights for example, that involve a lot more than stepping. 

I'm concerned about my calories burned being as accurate as possible, because I use fitbit along with the lose it app to keep track of my calories in vs calories out. 

When I do an activity that involves more than just stepping, I feel as though I need to track it manually to get proper "credit" for it. 

Is this the best way to do it? 

Typically, when I track a specific exercise, I see my total calories burned adjust. Usually they go up. This makes sense to me, because if I am, for example, using weights, then I probably burned more calories than what the fitbit picked up on its own. 

There were two cases this last week though, where my total calories burned went DOWN after I tracked the exercise. The first was a stabitily ball class. Stability ball training is not an activity in the data base, so I wasn't sure what to track it as. I chose pilates, and my calories went down. I deleted the activity, and they went back up. 

The second time was a workout with a bosu ball. Same thing, not in the database, so I estimated it as aerobics. Again my calories burned went down when I tracked it, then back up when I deleted it. 

What is going on here? What is the best way for me to accurately estimate my calories burned during exercise?? 

[SantiR]

@LyndsieP Welcome to the Fitbit Community! I was searching for those activities and they are not listed on the dashboard. Have you tried to create a custom activity for stability ball and bosu ball? You can do this on the online dashboard. There is a "yoga" option if you would like to try with that one as well to check the calories. I left a picture below showing how the custom activities looks on the online dashboard.

Also, I recommend to suggest those activities to be added in the nearest future on the Feature Request Board. 

Let me know once you create the request so I can vote for it! 

[LyndsieP]

Thank you for the suggestions. My problem is that I don't know how many calories I'm buring during the exercise, so I can't create a custom activity. I can't wear a chest strap heart rate monitor for some of my acvitities, and even the HR/Surge/blaze are much too big and bulky for me. That is why I use the database of activities to give me an estimate. 

Please correct me if I am wrong. My understanding is that the point of tracking an activity is to account for non-stepping movements that are probably not picked up by the fitbit. 

I guess if my total calories burned are going DOWN when I track something, it means that fitbit actually picked up more movement than what the estimate is for the activity that I tracked. 

I tried naming those two example some other things, like aerobic and yoga and it still went down. I deleted the entries so that it would go back up. For some of my activities, total calorie burn goes up a lot when I track it. Other times, just a couple of calories up. 

I wish I had an idea of how accurately the ONE registers calories and how accurate the data base estimate are.