Inaccurate measurement of cycling, lifting

[markelphelps]

I don't think my charge 3 is accurately capturing my cycling. Today I biked 10 miles (two separate 30-minutes chunks), including over 800 feet of elevation change. I was GASSED, and I still have 0 active minutes. I'm already quite frustrated that cycling doesn't count towards my step total, and today I got at least 45 minutes of MVPA from biking and it doesn't show on my fitbit at all, it looks like I was basically sitting on the couch. Am I doing something wrong, or is it just bad at measuring biking? Should I put it around my ankle? Using accelerometers to measure cycling has been researched a lot, I would have thought it'd be better than this.

I also worked for 3 hours at a grocery store loading boxes of food, and still no active minutes from that. I averaged 21 steps/minute, so I guess it didn't count anything while I was standing and moving food around.

Between work and the cycling, I was exhausted when I got home. A few days ago I went on a very casual and slow walk, and got 50 active minutes--not tired at all afterwards, and basically no exertion. Please help me understand how the fitbit captures my activity. Is it really only good for walking/running? That's such a narrow scope of activities.

I'm sorry if this comes across as a rant, but I'm very frustrated and upset. I'm super out of shape, and I just want to be able to look at my Fitbit and SEE the physical activity I did as motivation. I was really excited to look at the app tonight when I got home, and seeing so little was really upsetting and demotivating.

[JohnnyRow]

Possible explanation: Active Minutes  require a certain level of effort (measured by heart rate) for at least 10 consecutive minutes.  No idea if this is the case for you, but in biking it is possible to coast a bit between hard spurts, or work vary hard climbing a hill, then coast a bit going down, which might lead to not getting 10 consecutive minutes, even though total workout is hard.  Whereas, in walking, there is no coasting so there tend not to be rest periods breaking up the 10 consecutive minute requirement.  But you should still see the increased calorie burn based on increased heart rate.

Several of the Fitbit models, though not Charge 3, have switched to using Active Zone Minutes instead of Active Minutes.  As the link explains, Active Zone Minutes do not have the 10 consecutive minute requirement, and give double credit for more intense exercise.