Charge 2 shows no activity on a day it also shows my activity

[janet790]

My Charge 2 shows I got no exercise at all last Thursday, while also showing that I was active 11 of 12 hours, walked 6.51 miles and climbed 132 floors. Nowhere near as good as the previous 4 days when I was out backpacking, but what's going on and how do I fix it?

[Julia_G · Accepted solution]

Hi, @janet790 your Fitbit determines exercise credit in three ways:

1. you can start the exercise app on your Fitbit and manually track your exercise using your Fitbit;

2. you can rely on SmartTrack to automatically detecting an exercise for you (based on step and/or heart rate readings sustained over a minimum of 10 minutes.

3. You can manually log an activity after completion

It doesn’t sound like you started the exercise app on the Fitbit or that you manually logged an activity, so I guess your question is, why didn’t your Fitbit detect any exercise given all that you apparently did:

The answer is that you will not necessarily get exercise credit just because you were active 11 of 12 hours - you get that credit if you take 250 steps in the hour.  You also won’t necessarily get exercise credit for distance walked if those were general pottering steps taken throughout the day rather than a sustained period of at least 10 minutes (depending on your settings)

With 132 floors climbed you would think that you would get credit!  However, because the altimeters on the early Fitbits could easily be affected by gusts of wind or drops in barometer pressure, the software was specifically designed to exclude floor count from calorie calculation or exercise credit.

So my best guess is that there is nothing to fix.  However, it is worth having a look in your app at your automatically detected exercises.  From the opening, Today screen of the app click on the gear icon top right.  On the next screen click on Activity &Wellness and then Exercise.  You will see which activities are automatically recognized and for how long you need to do them before they are recognized (they will then be back timed to the start of detection).  You will also see which are ignored.  If you change any of these settings then be sure to sync your Fitbit.

I hope this helps.  Welcome to the Community Forums!

[janet790]

Thanks, Julia_G. I know on the day in question, I did volunteer trail maintenance work for the Forest Service, so carried my tools at least 2-3 miles, mostly using a muscle-powered pole saw overhead and a hand saw down low. My Fitbit has certainly recognized that as exercise before since I do it nearly every week, though I've thought it sometimes gave me walking mileage for sawing over my head. At any rate, I then went out walking after I got home, and as a hiker/backpacker, I do not really ever take "pottering" steps unless I'm injured or ill. I did check my settings as you suggested and still don't understand why the device didn't count my day as containing exercise, but it's not worth either of us putting more time into it, as I know perfectly well that I did exercise that day as I do nearly every day of the year. Janet

[Julia_G]

Hi, @janet790 , as I mentioned you can always manually log it, even after the fact…  It would be nice for you to have a record for such a high achieving day. It sounds like you did a lot of exercise that day, but very much spread out throughout the day that it did not come throw as a single exercise unit.

[janet790]

Thanks again, Julia_G. Too much hassle to manually log it. All I really
care about is seeing approximate miles and elevation gain each day,
don't care about the rest since I know I get a lot of exercise. I was
just surprised to see my first-ever "no exercise" day other than when I
had Covid or surgery.