Active Minutes seem high

[Robin_J]

I’ve noticed that my Inspire HR has been recording nearly an hour of active minutes today. All I’ve done active in that time is a 10 minute walk. As with most users the step count and distance also seems very high (recording me as covering about 200 metres before I get out of bed); unfortunately wearing on my non dominant hand/wrist is not an option for me.

Could the high active minutes be due to me basically being a bit out of shape, such that my heart rate doing normal everyday things (moving around the house) is higher than it should be for someone my weight and height? (As an example, I’m sat on a bus but my heart rate is at 90-100 bpm and has been for a while so I guess the Fitbit assumes I am being “active”).

[Heather-S · Accepted solution]

@Robin_J Welcome!  The active minutes could be affected by a high heart rate.  I know of people who had the flu, were running a fever, and their Fitbit recorded active minutes due to their heart rate being elevated for long periods of time.  

This article here also helps to explain active minutes.

As far as the added steps at night goes, is it possible you're a light sleeper and/or toss and turn frequently?  I know that I toss and turn a lot sometimes, and my Fitbit will count my arm movements as steps.  It's usually not much, but I will wake up sometimes with steps because of it.  It's usually not enough for me to worry about.

I hope that helps!

[Robin_J]

Thanks very much for this answer and for the welcome - I have anxiety disorders so a prolonged heart rate of 90-100+ when not doing anything physical is not unusual! I'm hoping over time the fitbit, or my interpretation of its observations and setting of targets, will start to learn and adapt to this; and that my cardio will improve so my resting heart rate will drop a bit. Would setting custom heart rates through the app help with this and allow me to compensate for it?

The whole device still feels very sensitive though, in terms of steps, active minutes, calories, distance etc. I've decided to turn GPS off unless actually going for a run or hike, which I hope will improve things a bit; I've heard switching off the exercise auto-recognition can also help, but it's a shame not to be able to use all the features all the time as almost every post here seems to be about this theme of oversensitivity and overcounting so hopefully updates will make the device a bit more usable. Switching off and on again, or clearing user data when there are obvious and substantial inaccuracies seems to work sometimes but again, it's a shame to have to do this a lot. It makes the motivational aspect of the app quite hard to get on board with when you feel you haven't really 'earned' the active minutes or moving every hour.

The steps when sleeping does seem fairly minor. It also records steps when I eat, type and so on; but step count doesn't interest me that much in itself, I'm more interested in calorie burn and heart rate and whilst I assume steps are one of the metrics that is used to calculate these, the HR seems perfectly accurate to me.

[Heather-S]

@Robin_J If you're finding the device too sensitive, have you tried to adjust the settings?  This help article might help answer some of your questions, but specifically this:

DOES THE WRIST I WEAR MY DEVICE ON AFFECT ACCURACY?

For wrist-based devices, it's important to specify whether you wear the device on your dominant or non-dominant wrist during setup:

• The dominant wrist setting decreases the sensitivity of step counting and should reduce any over counting of steps when your body is not moving. Your dominant hand is the one you use for writing and eating.
• The non-dominant wrist setting increases the sensitivity of step counting and should reduce any under counting of steps.

To start, the Wrist setting is set to non-dominant. Change your wrist setting in the Fitbit app. 

[Robin_J]

Thanks for this, unfortunately wearing on the other wrist isn’t an option for me and using a clip would mean losing the HR functionality which is the whole reason I got it in the first place. It is set to dominant wrist.

To give the device credit where it’s due, it logs heart rate, calorie burn and exercise brilliantly which will probably be all I need for now.

[Heather-S]

@Robin_J You don't have to change the wrist you're wearing it on, just the setting itself inside the app.  If you click on the picture of your Inspire, immediately underneath the clock faces option should be the "wrist" setting.  You could change it to the opposite of whatever you have it set at right now and see if will change how sensitive it is for you.