Zone minutes when in heat

[rwahl]

I live in Florida where it is super hot right now in September. I am talking like 100 degrees every day. I notice that simply sitting outside in this heat increases my heart rate and causes my zone minutes to spike. Sitting outside for a couple hours shows I have like 60 zone minutes. Is this normal or even accurate? If it’s accurate then I’m good. But if not then how do I adjust this?

[SunsetRunner]

I've never noticed when I'm sitting outside in the heat or just got in general I look down and my heart rate is elevated. Usually 10-15 beats higher than normal. 

[MrMarv]

@rwahl and @SunsetRunner -

Okay - I'm taking a trip in the "Way Back Machine" here - like over 50 years!

High school biology - - - Not only does your heart rate increase when exercising to get oxygen to your muscles, it also increases when your body temperature rises to get the warmer blood in your core out to the other layers of you skin to cool it down.

Okay, I just checked and I'm back to 2020. Whew!

[rwahl]

So is it normal that my zone minutes spike during this time?

Thank you,
Rachel

[MrMarv]

@rwahl - 

Yes.

My take on it is - 

Remember, I am a retired Enterprise Computing professional, not a doctor or fitness professional.

FitBit has apparently rethought its definition of "activity".

• It used to be "Is your body active".
• It is now "Is your heart active".

From an Heart Health standpoint that works for me (and I have an ICD and greatly reduced (20%) LVEF after a viral attack in 2017), but at the same time, if I walk for 10 minutes, whether it be leisurely or briskly, I'm still a lot more active than sitting on my behind posting on the boards. But because I am just taking a stroll around the neighborhood for 30 minutes, I don't get credit for being active? And that 30 minutes was over a mile with no interruptions and easily 3/4 of a mile if I take a break to talk to a neighbor or two.

As I said in a post a while back, I don't have to treat either "Active Minutes" or "Active Zone Minutes" like the Holy Grail.

With apologies to Leslie Gore, "It's my data and I can ignore it if I want to!"

Have a great day and give the kids a hug. 

Where is that Grandson of mine? Ah, there he is, just drove up!

[SunsetRunner · Accepted solution]

Yes because your heart rate is up. It's normal. Your heart is pumping harder to move blood faster to cool your body down. Same way as to when you have a fever. Have you ever noticed your heart rate while you have a fever? So yes, your heart rate is up because your hot therefore putting you in the”zone”.

[CindiLi]

This doesn't seem right though.  I mean I get that when you're hot your pulse is up but I don't want that to go towards my activity/exercise minutes each week.  I have noticed I get some zone minutes while I sleep too, perhaps in REM sleep.  This is clearly not cardiovascular exercise though.

[MrMarv]

@CindiLi -

Good to see ya!

You are given an option to erase Active Zone Minutes during a user defined period, similar to the workaround for "Steps while driving" by booking a Driving Exercise.

• Tap on the AZM icon on the Today page.
• Tap on the gear icon at the top right of the AZM page.
• Tap on "Delete Active Zone Minutes" and you will be presented with the following:

Have a great day!

[blakflag]

I feel like my calories being exported from Fitbit to Lose It are much less useful now.  I liked that I could log my cardio exercise and those calories would export. But now Fitbit is giving me tons of credit for "moderate activity" when I'm really not doing that much, which seems to inflate the activity figures for connected apps.  My metabolism is NOT so high that I can ingest an extra 1000 calories every day from "moderate activity".

If there's no easier way to make Fitbit not overestimate, then I guess I will just stop using it for exercise calorie estimation. Which is really sad since it defeats the whole point of a integrated system.