Exercise tracker on device vs. app

[MishyMish]

Hi everyone. I just recently purchased a Charge 2 and am wondering the best way to accurately track  my exercise and calories burned.

When I first purchased my Charge 2 I would use the app on my iphone to track my exercises (weight training, jogging on treadmill, elliptical, etc) until I learned that I could use the exercise shortcuts on my device to track it via starting and stopping times and have been using that instead. However, I have noticed that there is a difference in the calories burned being reported by my fitbit depending on which way I track the exercises. Which method is the most accurate?

Thanks everyone! 

[MarreFitbit · Accepted solution]

Hey, welcome to the Fitbit Community @MishyMish!  I have never used my Fitbit app to track my activities. How were you using it? Did you use to manually log that type of exercises? Are you referring to activities that requires GPS?

To know how's the best way to track your activities with your new Charge 2 I'd recommend taking a look at this article. 

I always go for my shortcuts.  Note that you can customize your exercise menu by doing the following:

1. From the Fitbit app dashboard, tap the Account icon.
2. Tap your tracker tile. 
3. Tap Exercise Shortcuts.
4. To add a new shortcut, tap Exercise Shortcut and select an exercise. 
5. To remove a shortcut, swipe left on an exercise name, then tap Delete. 

[LZeeW]

@MishyMish  I would say that the prevailing opinion (make that hype or marketing tool) is that exercises that are started and stopped from the tracker (multi-sport or exercise mode) better reflect your calorie burn.  The calorie burn is derived from your heart rate response to additional effort.

When you say you are using the app, does that mean you are tapping on the exercise tile, then the stopwatch to get to the track/log screen?  When you manually log an exercise, the calorie burn is derived from proprietary algorithms based on gender, weight and age.  I believe that any exercise that is completely, manually logged will overwrite any data that was captured by the tracker at the same time.

Which is more accurate?  Who knows?  Fitbit will stand by its products.  But a recent article had subjects exercising while wearing a number or wrist worn, heart rated based activity monitors all at the same time -- while doing indirect calorimetry.  The results are discouraging.  All the trackers had a lot of error.

These are my take home messages.  Number one -- Fitbit wants you to believe that the heart rate based calorie burns are more accurate.  Number two --  trackers are not scientific devices -- they are activity monitor of unverified accuracy.  Number three -- don't eat that doughnut because your Fitbit just told you that you burned 750 calories on the treadmill.

[MishyMish]

Hi and thank you for the welcome @MarreFitbit 🙂 To use my fitbit app to track activities I would open the fitbit app on my phone, tap the weekly exercise tab, then manually track each activity, whether it be weight training, treadmill, elliptical etc by entering the start and stop time for each activity then the info from my fitbit device would upload to the app on my phone once the exercise was complete.

[MishyMish]

Thank you for your response @LZeeW I appreciate it.

Yes that is how I was tracking my activity on my app by clicking on the stopwatch in the app. 

[JamesV77]

So I recently noticed that when I start the tracking of my exercise with the app using the stopwatch icon it no longer shows my hear rate in the details after I stop the event.  I also notice that while running my watch (Versa) screen says start exercise app on it.  If I do nothing to the watch and stop the app when I am finished I get all my running details but no heart rate (time in heart rate zones) info.  I was curious yesterday so I hit the screen while running and now my app shows two events with the same start time but one has the heart rate and time in heart rate zone info back the way I remember it used to do.  So I assume now that I must use the device to kick off recording my runs in order to get all the data that it used to collect when I manually hit the stopwatch icon in the app from my phone...?  Does this make sense to anyone..?  Just a weird quirk I noticed stated happening about the beginning of July.  Should I turn off automatically start tracking for my runs...?  Thanks in advance for those who reply