Active minutes vs Exercise

[SunsetRunner]

I seem to be having a problem with Active Minutes

For example yesterday the charge hr logged the following:

30 min on Elliptical avg bmp 117

38 min work out avg bmp 87

31 min on elliptical avg bmp 126

117 min on sport avg bmp 92

but only recorded 158 active min. My resting bmp is around 55.  All of these should have logged active min to about 216.  I have noticed this on several days.

From what I understand active min count is less than the excercise count, especially if my heartrate is up.

Is there a way to fix this?

thanks

[SunsetRunner]

the point of sweating and HR sampling makes sense.

On extended workouts of 45 min or more I do sweat alot.

I do wear my watch 2-3 fingers from the wrist.

If the tracker monitors HR more frequently when the activity button is pressed than that could be my problem.

thank you.

[RangerLady]

Thank you for the reply, however it still doesn't help. Why does tracking using the Fitbit record active minutes yet using the app on my phone only does it occassionally? I prefer to use the app or manually log because just using the Fitbit doesn't record my average pace nor does it allow me to enter miles when I do a bike ride. Since I'm trying to track my progress for physical therapy, those matter to me.

[SunsetRunner]

Thanks Baltoscott your answer really seemed to be correct, but last night I have a very tough workout.

Eliptical, weights and then Badminton.  As you can see my heart rate was up, I moved about 90% of the time, and the weight training I was doing was my arms.

As you can see with the elliptical it was a good work out

1 min at peak, 29 min cardio, 2 min fat burn. = 32 min

For the weights and badminton I set the timer.  I do not believe it tracked my heart rate very accuratly.  But lets assume that it did.  For the most part I did not go below 80.  But it did record 16 min of cardio, 112 min of fat burn. = 128 min

128+32 = 160.

My dashboard only recorded 144 min shorting me of 16 min.  But I believe it should have been more.  I stayed in motion for about 90% of the 3 hours. 

If I go for a simple walk, not raising my heart rate at all it will count.

This is a walk from 2 days ago for 20 min (i did not set the timer for this, It was simply getting groceries at Costco.  At the end my heart rate did go up, must have been paying the cashier.  But the entire time counted towards activity.  Can someone explain this???

[Baltoscott]

Hi @SunsetRunner -- put the "@" in front of my name and I will get an email notification of your post.  (In this case I got it anyway because I've been posting in this thread).

You seem to be having fun with this.  There are some apples and oranges comparisons going on, though.  

As you've demonstrated, active minutes are not the same as fat burn + cardio minutes.  The fat burn and cardio minute categories only apply to HR fitbits (Surge, Charge HR, Blaze and Charge 2).  But active minutes are recorded for all fibits so add flex, flex 2, zip, one, fitbit ultra, and the original fitbit to the mix).  The non-HR models figure out the 3 MET threshold for active minutes strictly off the 3 axis accelerometer (and don't forget 10 minute threshold before active minutes are counted -- that doesn't apply to fat burn or cardio minutes).  The HR models use the accelerometer + (somehow) HR data.  Don't know how the HR data figures in, but I do know it's not JUST your HR data that is used to calculate active minutes which is why fat burn minutes + cardio minutes don't add up to active minutes.  

Another problem is probably the activites you are doing. Weight training and badminton are both notorious start/stop activities and you will not get 60 active minutes for an hour doing those activities even though your heart rate may be elevated during the entire activity.  That's because it takes a while for your heart rate to go back to normal after intense exercise even though you sit down or stand around between sets or serves.  Because the sets or serves aren't that far apart your HR may never get close to resting even if you are not moving 1/2 the time.  Said another way, if you do 8 METs for a minute (longish rally in your badminton game) followed by 1 or 2 METs for a minute (waiting for the next serve)  you'll probably get credit for one active minute, not two, even though your HR probably never drops below the aerobic category for the whole 2 minutes.

Research suggestion:  When you go next go to the gym, do a separate workouts (press button stop button) for weights and badminton (create a separate workout for each activity).  Then recategorize those workouts as "weights" and "badminton" on your computer.  Not sure, but it may give you more active minutes by averaging the effort over the time period.

[SunsetRunner]

To add to this post I found that Heart rate is extremely important in the calculations.  My fitbit was low on battery and did not read my heart rate.  Eventhough it new I was on the Ellipitical for 41 min.

In that period that it added I did over 5000 steps, and the duration of the excercise it did not track any activity.  And the Impact on my day was 0 steps.  I can let this go on the battery being very low, but.....

 

[SunsetRunner]

Hello @Baltoscott.  I think I may understand some of my issue.  But everytime I get close I find something that moves me back into there may be a problem.

I download the following report from fitbit. 

There are 4 columns that should add up my day Minutes Sedentary, Lightly Active, Fairly Active and Very Active.  I added 2 more - The total of these 4 columns, which should equal 1440 (1440 minutes in a day. And the last column is 1440-total minutes.

Total minutes should be equal to 1440, my last column should be 0.

I do not believe I am missing that many active minutes for the month, but I am definitly missing time, and some of it is problably active minutes that I believe I am missing.  When I run the same report for August I have 1440 minutes for every day accounted for.

[Baltoscott]

@SunsetRunner -- wondering if any of the days that don't add up to 1440 were days you manually entered activities.  Manual activities can overwrite activity minutes in you daily activity reports and may mask the various categories of tracker recorded activity minutes that show up in this report.

[SunsetRunner]

@Baltoscott thanks for the response.  I actually do not manually add activity.  I did try it back in May/June and it did screw everything up.  I only use the automatic and timer events.

[Baltoscott]

@SunsetRunner - Looks like I'm missing more than you!  None of mine add up to 1440.  

Based on your results I was guessing the fitbit made a determination about lightly, fairly, and very active minutes, and dumped the rest of the day into the sedentary bucket.  But that doesn't seem to be the case looking at my results.  I think for all these days I was wearing my Charge 2, but August is similar (just 2 days added up to 1440) when I was mostly wearing my HR.  

I may have issues because of imported activates, however.  I bike commute five or six days/week and track that activity on a Garmin bike computer which gets imported to fitbit via Strava and MyFitnessPal (side issue: that creates double entries for the same activity, but they seem to serially overwrite tracker recorded stats).

[SunsetRunner]

@Baltoscott  I have found some more issues and I am beginning to think it may be my watch, but I can be certian.

I am not using any other 3rd party software, so all my data is coming from fitbit.

But last week my wife and I were on vactation.  We were doing alot of hiking.  She was creditted for 100% of the hike as active time, I only recieved about 25% of the time.  Our steps and distance were almost exact. 

I may drop looking at the activity time.

Fitbit really does not have it together for the calculation, and they do not seem to be interested in coming into the thread to comment.

I will download the data and do my own reporting.

Maybe they will fix the problem in the future.

[Kswagner66]

I’m having the same problem. I’m getting exercise minutes in - HR elevated and needs to be more than 15 minutes, which exceeds the requirements for active minutes. Yet, for the last several days, my exercise minutes have been higher than my active minutes! And the exercise has been auto recorded. I’m puzzled, to say the least! 

[Kswagner66]

My Fitbit is automatically recording my exercise, without pushing the button. This means I am exercising- running, so step-based (per my data) with an elevated heart rate (peak!!)  for more than 15 minutes. Yet though the threshold for active minutes is ,lower, I’m not getting any credit for active minutes. This is a big, and needs to be fixed. I certainly understand that relatively speaking it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s a function offered by my Versa, and it should work as advertised. And I don’t get all my “greens” at the end of the night because my active minutes aren’t even adding up to 30 minutes despite exceeding that amount of time in exercise minutes that are above the activity threshold requirements. Please help. 

[Kswagner66]

My Fitbit is automatically recording my exercise, without pushing the button. This means I am exercising- running, so step-based (per my data) with an elevated heart rate (peak!!)  for more than 15 minutes. Yet though the threshold for active minutes is lower, I’m not getting any credit for active minutes. This is a bug that needs to be fixed. I certainly understand that relatively speaking it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s a function offered by my Versa, and it should work as advertised. And I don’t get all my “greens” at the end of the night because my active minutes aren’t  adding up to 30 minutes.

[MazzaP]

It’s pretty weird. Worked out today for 55 mins, continuous cardio HR with a few minutes high HR, and I got 28 active minutes. And doing a slow ambling walk gives you active minutes too. Odd