Active minutes and weekly exercise with Fitbit Charge HR

[texstar]

I've had this problem in the past and I thought it was fixed.  Yesterday I did an hour pilates class, which I manually entered since it's a slow exercise and I never got above "fat burn".  Today I went on a 35 minute brisk walk with the dog and I was mostly in fat burn, but I did get about 12 minutes of cardio (gotta love hills).  So my Fitbit logged 36 active minutes, but it didn't count it as exercise.  So I went and logged it, and now it shows as exercise, but that I have zero active minutes.  Why can't I have both?

Moderator edit: Updated title for clarity

[FerdinandFitbit]

 Hi there @texstar, welcome to the Fitbit Community Forums! 🙂

I'm sorry to hear that your active minutes are not showing correctly on your exercise log. Thanks for all the details. I'd like to help you out.

Your Fitbit device recognizes and awards active minutes when the activity you're doing is more strenuous than regular walking, which includes everything from a brisk walk to a cardio workout or run. Now, Fitbit devices calculate active minutes using metabolic equivalents (METs). METs help measure the energy expenditure of various activities. Because they do so in a comparable way among persons of different weights, METs are widely used as indicators for exercise intensity.

You earn active minutes for activities at or above about 3 METs. If the same activity gives you active minutes one day and fewer active minutes the next day, remember that the intensity of exercise is key. Often what seems like the exact same amount of effort over the same distance in fact differs slightly enough to change your active minutes total.

Now if taking this into consideration, you feel like your active minutes count is still too low, you can try to give your Charge HR a quick restart and see if this makes any difference.For this, plug the charging cable to any USB port or UL-certified USB wall charger and plug the other end to your Charge HR. Press and hold the button for 10-12 seconds until you see the Fitbit icon and the version number and release the button.

For more detailed information on Active minutes, you can see this article.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need more help!