Please bring back the original Active Minutes

[Ansellia]

Dear Developpers and Support Team,

I have read the polite official replies, telling community members that it is impossible to set your tracker back to the original Active Minutes. This answer is very disappointing for us users.

Our not so young family of 5 owns and uses Versa 2 or Blaze watches with enthusiasm. We have had Fitbit trackers for over 4 years, and loved them so much that many of our friends became users too. Please understand that over a certain age it is nearly impossible to push ourselves to the maximum daily during our exercise routines. My parents, father 78 and mother 74, are absolutely disappointed to see that all their efforts to stay fit results in very small amount of Active Zone Minutes, or sometimes even 0 minutes. 

I am 49, and my base heart rate level for the Active Zone minutes went up from 104 to 112 since the update. A good chunk of my fitness routine  lands in the below zone category. (I take beta blockers).

It was always nice and satisfying to see the active minutes graphs, and scroll through our past numbers. But now, we just want to ignore it. It is basically telling us that nothing we do will ever be enough. This is more than disheartening. 

The official replies, all the scientific explanations and answers unfortunately do not help us regular users, and it is honestly very sad to be evaluated negatively by our beloved trackers.

Please allow us who want to see the oiriginal active minutes to have an option. Please be so kind to give us a choice, a say in this matter. 

Sincerely,

A

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[CindiLi · Accepted solution]

Hi, 

Agreed this is a disheartening change to the software.  It wouldn’t be so bad if they stuck with traditional zones 70-85% of MHR but they’re using heart rate reserve which imho is more for professional athletes!  Here is a work around I found on here and may be useful for your family also.  You should be able to change the following in the app but at least on the IOS devices there is a glitch and you can’t change it.  You can change it here on your dashboard though.  

1.  Go to your dashboard above here and tap or click on the gear icon.

2. Tap on Settings

3. Scroll down to Heart Rate Zones and click on “custom”, I changed mine to 85% of my maximum heart rate (220 - age) x 85% - so for me 220 - 58 = 162 x 85% = 137.7, I rounded that number to 140 and saved.

4. Sync your app to your device and then tap on your account and scroll down to “heart health” under settings.  You should now see the updated heart rate zones.  

You can play with the numbers above until it makes sense with your medicines and overall exertion level.  Doing this for myself, my cardio zone is now 112-129 which is inline with where my older Garmin tracker puts me and now my zone minutes add up everyday with my exercise routines.

Hope that helps as a temporary fix!

Its possible if you have an android phone that you can just change this on the fly just doing step 4. above as I am not sure if this is a glitch in both iOS and android.

 

 

  

You can also vote to have a choice to display active minutes or active zone minutes here https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Suggestions/Allow-to-customize-Active-Zone-Minutes/idi-p/445...

[BahamasGirl365]

Thank you so much for this.

I'm a younger person in their 20's with autoimmune disorders, my Charge 3 said my fat burn mode was 117 and when I upgraded to a versa it put me at 129, went for a walk and my fitbit claimed I never reached fatburn mode, when I'm positive I would have according to my charge 3.Other workouts have done the same thing, when my Charge 3 would say I'm active my versa would say I barely did anything. I've been trying to figure out why it was like this for the last couple of weeks since owning the Versa, I'm a fairly active person, working out 6 days a week, and never could get Active Zone minutes.

Used your suggestion and my versa now says my fatburn mode is 117, just like the charge 3 always said.

Thank you!

[CynthL]

I agree. This seems to be true on the versa3. I have a low resting heart rate and my doctor advises against the maximum heart rate that is automatically calculated. Please consider the need to personally set our heart rate goals. I too am discouraged by not being able to achieve active minutes.