Option to use Standard Heart Rate zones

[Parkersspace]

You changed how the fitbit determine active minutes and Heart Rate Zones. The majority of the population will operate well at the standard zones, especially older people. Many conditions affect older people making these new zones very dangerous. Option to use standards or set your own doctor recommended zones should be included.

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @Parkersspace, and thanks for taking the time to share this suggestion about having the option to use standard Heart Rate zones. We rely on feedback like yours to help us develop products and features that we know our community wants to see. If this suggestion receives votes from other customers and gains popularity, it will be shared internally with various teams at Fitbit. To learn more about how Fitbit decides which suggestions get developed, visit our FAQs.

Watch this space for status updates. In the meantime, try visiting Health & Wellness to talk with other members about all things health and fitness.

[harshani]

There is a whole number of us begging Fitbit for MONTHS asking to give a choice between active minutes and zone minutes. fitbit decided to take active minute option completely away from app and watches and thrust Zone minutes which is known to change based on heart rate and gender, race, type of diet you have, different medical conditions, different medical drugs you take, environment and etc etc etc.,

Even if you get a doctors standard, due to many reasons such as a change in  diet etc can still tip your resting heart rate. The zone minutes are not a workable option. It is highly unreliable. 

All we asked was to give people who have issues to be able to use active minutes ... aka ... give us a choice to chose active and zone minutes. Since June /July months this zone minutes were thrust and they have not changed anything. Now, this random thing appears and it is not going away. I have deleted and re deleted and it is not going away. 

Me and many others have learned that Fitbit moderators cannot do anything. Any complaints here mean nothing to them and moderators cannot do anything.

Trust me ..... fitbit NEVER listens

[bobby2478]

Another option would be to add a new heart rate zone below "Fat Burn" to capture activity with lower heart rate. You could give this new zone partial credit like 0.25x or 0.10x for each minute of activity. For example, at 0.25x, 4 minutes of activity in this zone would equate to 1 "Active Zone Minute". That way you get credit for leisurely paced activity (like under the old Active Minutes) while also getting extra credit for more strenuous activity at higher zones.

[Parkersspace2]

Only problem I have with that Bobby is I don't think that would be necessary if they just had standard fat burn zones which are 50% of someone's max HR but with the new formula that counts on a non changing resting heart rate isn't that active for non athlete recreational exercisers, but can be more accurate for professional dedicated athletes that are looking to up their game.  They are putting my fat burn zone over 100 beats but the standard measure is 82 and I know I am in fat burn mode at 82 beats per minute.  The issue is with the new Active Zones instead of the traditional standard zones heart rate zones which the vast majority of the population will find more accurate as the vast majority of the population is not elite athletes.  So as normal people and not Olympians trying to up our game we should have the option to revert to standard formulas for working out Heart Rate zones that do not take in to account our fitbit estimate resting Heart Rate or Fitbit's estimated Max Vo2 for a person.  I'm 55, they have a pretty low HR, often low 50's worked out for me and my Vo2 as 41 to 45 but they don't know I have a genetic metabolic disorder that means it is extremely important I do not go over certain heart rates and over do it or I will burn up my muscles for energy as I can't access glucose in my muscles.  Hence I need to keep myself in an aerobic or fat burning mode.  When i do that they show me no active minutes now even though I'm actually shown as burning 3500 calories on my active days and 1500 on my non active recovery days.  That's wrong.  So people should be able to choose standard heart rate zones if they are not athletes and even better set a specialty zone for where their doctors for what ever medical reasons want them to work in.

[bobby2478]

That is my issue as well, my fat burn zone starts at 120 bpm, and if i go for a 2 hour walk at a leisurely pace my heart rate never goes above 120 bps and thus I get no Active Zone Minutes. I could go for a 2 hour walk with over 15,000 steps but because my heart rate didn't hit 120 bps I get zero credit for Active Zone Minutes.

They need to add a heart rate zone below the Fat Burn zone, and they can then award partial credit to this zone so at least you get some credit. This would essentially merge together the "Active Minutes" into the "Active Zone Minutes" by giving you credit for activity even if you don't hit the Fat Burn or higher heart rate zones.

They could award partial credit and could use any number of formulas to award minutes. 0.25x or 0.10x were just initial thoughts but could be any value. The jist is because this is lower heart rate, you have to do more to equal 1 minute in the Fat Burn Zone, but you are still getting credit for being active.

[MrGlenn]

Uhhm...

You can change your heart rate zones manually already by setting a custom Max Heart rate. That forces the fat/cardio/peak activity zones to be recalculated.

Account → Heart Settings → Heart Rate Zones.

That has been an option for a long time, even before the new calculation and AZM system. 

[Parkersspace]

MrGlenn i can set in a fake max heart rate, which I have, i've lowered mine 10 beats when it's probably actually a bit higher than average.  This succeeded in getting me a fatburn rate of 95 instead of 82 where is should be for my age, a cardio zone of 115, close to standard and a peak that is lower than it should be.  I would like the system to use standard (world averages for average people) fat burn zone, cadio zone and peak zone as the Charge 3 does and everything used to use before they decided to go with the new formula used by athletes which are more of like training zones based on their need to get better at a professional level and the superior fitness level of an elite athlete.  I just want the option to Use standard heart rate zones and have it measure active minutes in the every day lay person who is not an elite athlete and leave the training zone options for the athletes amoung the fitbit users.  The age formula for standard heart rate zones works for the vast majority of every day people.

[MLMoore]

I would like the option to have the previous standard heart rate zones to use. I am using my fitbit to monitor some health issues and now I do not have any comparable data to use because my heart rate zones have changed. I am not happy with this new firmware update that I had to get.

[Guy_]

As Heart rate on Sense and Versa 3 are not accurate, nor are Active Zone Minutes which are based on it.

So a choice of the older Active Minutes makes a lot more sense

[sen100]

I too would like the option to swap back to Active Minutes. Not least because even when I change the max heart rate manually, your calculations of heart rate zones are way off normal.  Secondly, its completely false representation to allocate 2 minutes for 1 minutes elevated heart rate. 

Keep your zone minutes if you really must- but please give your customers a choice.

[Parkersspace]

It's been a long time now of people saying give us a choice.  Fitbit was the tracker for the masses, Garmin for the athlete.  You will lose the masses if this continues even though new people don't know what this zone stuff is and if they are not an athlete they probably will ignore it but when I'm done with my current fitbit I'm trading in for something else because I want something that works for me not for an elite athlete.  I want to know standard heart rates active minutes not your zones and the fact I have gone back to looking at my heart rate to see what Heart rate zone i'm in instead of you recording it for me and having a look after is not what I was after.  Since the fitbit always ran on standard heart rate zones until you made the change to active minutes and your new unexplained zones it should not be a big problem to incorporate the choice in to the app which is still measuring the average heart rate zones on some devices.  Not sure how long my Versa will last but when it's gone I'm moving on to something that works better for the masses and is not constantly redesigned to help elite athletes.  I don't understand why you either don't have two settings or a fitbit designed for the elite athlete and one for the masses that just want to know if we managed the 150 minutes this week of moderate exercise and slept well enough. 

[Sarajane133]

After relying heavily on my Versa 2 as an exercise companion last summer, I was nearly brought to tears in my latest workouts when I could not reach cardio or peak despite my manual heart rate checks and overall energy levels saying much differently. In fact, my Fitbit hardly ever gets me out of the “below zones” category despite my active lifestyle. Very, very frustrating after having so much success with Fitbit last year. The change to active zones is beyond disappointing and it is likely going to cause me to shop elsewhere for watches. I am by no means an athlete and I always liked that Fitbit made understanding fitness and wellness accessible to the masses and non-athletes. My watch essentially says to me now, “if you aren’t sprinting at your full capacity, you aren’t doing enough” by not awarding me with active minutes because I don’t reach a certain heart rate. Besides all of that, I’ve noticed this update does not track my heart rate as accurately as it once did. Overall, very disappointing and I hope Fitbit fixes this issue. 

[DaviaK]

I agree completely that Fitbit should offer an option to revert back to the standard calculation for heart rate zones. If not, let us customize each individual heart rate zone manually. The zones are just inaccurate with the new calculations, and now as a woman I get to deal with an ever-changing heart rate zone depending on how my cycle impacts my resting heart rate. Yes, I get that I can go in a fiddle with the max heart rate in the app and try to get a more accurate and stable set of heart rate zones, but this is ridiculous. Just allow us to calculate and enter our own zones. 

[Seaton2020]

Lots of people have complained that the FatBurn/Cardio/Peak zone levels are now assessed via HRR method as opposed to the previous 'traditional' method
Why cant people have the option of choosing which method they want to use
Fitbit are making may people most unhappy.

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi @Seaton2020, thanks for sharing this suggestion about the traditional method to track your heart-rate zones instead of your heart rate reserve with us. This idea was already requested in the Feature Suggestions board, so I’ve moved your post here. This will help us to make sure the suggestions don't get confused, or split a popular vote. Please click on the thumbs-up to show your support.