Logging Gardening

[Nativestar]

I spent 5 hours on my allotment today, it was light gardening but it was constant activity and very little sitting down.  However, my fitbit hasn't logged any active minutes and I've gotten a negative calorie adjustment rather than the 300-400 I would have expected.

I get that gardening isn't cardio or step based so I don't hold it against my fitbit that it hasn't recorded it, but I'd like to able to adjust for this.  How can I log gardening as an activity that will give me credit?  I tried to manually log it but my available calories didn't change, so I'm guessing it registered the activity but not the calories burned?  Am I doing it wrong?

[LZeeW · Accepted solution]

@Nativestar  When I do gardening or yard work, I track it as "Workout" using the Exercise Mode since this is the catch all for "exercise" not specifically listed on the Exercise Shortcut list.  You will get a specific start/stop time and detailed heart rate and calorie burn graphs.  Since gardening isn't auto-recognized, your level of activity might not have had enough effort/intensity to be auto-recognized as Aerobic Workout.

Fitbit uses METs (metabolic equivalents) to calculate active minutes.  One MET is your body at rest.  You get active minutes when your activity intensity is 3 METs, the equivalent of a brisk walk.  If you were doing "light gardening", then it is possible that your activity effort/heart rate/calorie burn didn't meet the threshold for active minutes.  The Help Article about Active Minutes also says that you have to do 10 minutes of continuous moderate/intense activity before they start to count.  So the number of active minutes you get will depend on the duration of sustained effort.

Does this help?

[Nativestar]

Thanks for explaining.  I'll give that a go next time and see if it helps.

[PubliusJunior]

On a somewhat different aspect of the way FitBit tracks gardening, I've noticed this change during the past few weeks. Previously, my FitBit2 would count as active minutes nearly all of my gardening activity. I'm not talking about sedentary activity, such as weeding, but tasks such as hauling water or soil, digging, planting, raking, and a lot of moving around. However, for the past 2-3 weeks, my Fitbit way undercounts this type of gardening. For example, today I worked very actively in the garden with lots of hauling and working up a sweat, for about an hour. Only 13 active minutes were recorded. There has been no change in the counting of other activities, such as walking, using exercise equipment at the gym, etc. To illustrate this change in counting, my 3 month average for active minutes is 126, while the 1 month average is 79. However, for the past 3 months, and even 1 year, steps and weekly exercise remain constant and I've done about the same amount of active gardening all along.  

[PharLap]

I have paired my Fitbit Versa with the MyNetDiary meal/calorie counting app. Inputting calories consumed into the MyNetDiary syncs perfectly with my Fitbit. The MyNetDiary also allows you to input the exercise (like gardening that the Fitbut has issues recognising). Everything syncs and calibrates perfectly and records in both apps. Works a treat.

[SarshMcGding]

I did nearly two hours of very active gardening tonight; laying mulch, pushing a wheelbarrow, weeding volunteer trees and giant milkweed, rarely sitting and generating enough activity that I had an elevated heart rate, faster breathing, and was perspiring quite a bit. I was quite surprised to find out my Fitbit didn't log a bit of this, and only counted my steps. As such, though I'm sure I burned quite a lot of calories, I'm now at a deficit of almost 400 calories for the day after I enjoyed my most calorically dense meal of the day. This is disappointing. Looks like this was two years ago that this problem was discussed here, and it's still an issue.