Count gentle exercise towards active minutes

[Historyfrog]

While it's great that I can manually log exercises that are not running, walking or hiking, it is very annoying that these activities do not count towards my active minutes or calories burned. It looks like it only gets logged in the daily exercise, which is nice from comparing data, but makes the quick glance for the day look like I'm behind in calorie burning and minutes active. This is not only annoying, but could result in people not eating enough to off set calorie burning, which is dangerous. 

[lyssfitz]

I agree with counting it towards 'active minutes' - I think if you manually choose an exercise it should still count e.g. you could be doing stretching or something that doesn't get your heart rate up but still beneficial for your body. and/or it would be good if we could manually choose minimum heart rate level for 'active minutes.'

The calories burned part is different though I think, because if you're wearing your watch/tracker then it will automatically calculate the calories anyway (so I think if it added extra calories then you would be doubling up and overestimating your calories burned.) 

[Historyfrog]

@ lyssfitz I did 17 minutes of yoga one day, manually recorded it. In the daily exercise section I am reflecting having burned 43 calories from it. When I go to the calorie burned tile, which is what I look at the most for a quick reference it doesn't appear to be reflected. In calories burned at about the same time it says 33 calories were burned. Now, it could be because the calories burned are broken down into 15 minute increments and count both BMR and activity burned calories. To me, it seems unclear as to if activity calories are being properly counted in the calories burned tile, which could cause me to think I've burned fewer calories than I did and eat less than I should. Part of what's confusing is the app labels BMR, yoga, and walking as light calorie burn. Maybe have BMR labeled as resting or BMR would help clear up my confusion. 

[YojanaFitbit]

Thanks for this suggestion @Historyfrog and commenters. I hope we have this in the future. Keep seeing you around.

[lizz319]

There are apps that count active minutes as any time spent active but with Fitbit, you have to be active for at least 10 minutes before it registers as progress. Could this be changed to record just normal activity? The way it is set up now doesn't help to motivate you to move as much. Just a thought.. hopefully someone can look into this?

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi everyone, and thanks so much for sharing this suggestion! While we don’t currently have plans to release this feature, we always appreciate the passion and creativity that comes out of this Community. Since we know this idea is important to many of you, we have left voting open to continue tracking interest and will post another update if anything changes. To learn more about how Fitbit decides which suggestions get developed, visit our FAQs.

We're always striving to enhance Fitbit products and services, and your input is a big part of that process. We truly thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us.