Do you feel unrested in the morning, yet FitBit says you had a good night?

[J2B2]

I realise sleep tracking is all a bit crazy, but several times now I've had trouble getting to sleep, then feeling like I've been waking up a lot and lying awake, and then get up and feel pretty unrested and generally off. Not super tired or anything, but just feeling like I had a bad night.

But the FitBit says I was fine. Maybe a little under my 30 day average on something, but benchmarking as pretty much average - or even better in terms of being awake. And I'm on the "sensitive" sleep tracking in my settings too.

Just curious - do other people see this much?

[WavyDavey]

Hi @J2B2 ,

What I've noticed is two situations that sound like yours.

One, is when I wake up in the middle of the night, and just lay in bed until I can fall asleep again.

Two, is when I wake up and get out of bed, go to the bathroom, watch TV, etc.

In the second situation, the fitbit always picks up the awake time and notes it.

The first first situation, sometimes the fitbit still thinks I'm asleep.

Because of this, I've concluded that the fitbit doesn't have any insight into whether at the brain level we are asleep or not. It can only go by movement patterns (and HR). The more a period of awake time is just being immobile, the more chance the tracker may not see the awake time as awake.

Make sense?

[J2B2]

Yes, that makes sense. Particularly as I also notice my "light sleep" time is always rather a lot more than the benchmark for my age while my "awake time" is rather a lot less. So I suspect FitBit is interpreting my wake times as light sleep in a lot of cases. And when I wake up I tend to just lie still and not toss and turn as is I suppose more usual, thereby not altering my HR enough to the extent that it tells my device that I'm awake. 

Hard to know what to do other than just read the stats a bit differently I suppose.

[WavyDavey]

I'm somewhat of a restless sleeper, so if I'm awake I'm usually tossing and turning, and the fitbit picks that up.

It's probably best to just account for the misinterpretation. I always go by how I feel over what an app says. The sleep tracking is really good for spotting longer term trends.

The only other option is to be more restless. 🙂

[TLV123]

YES!  Happens to me a LOT!  I toss and turn all night.  I have crazy dreams and am really restless and feel like crap in the morning and then I load my sleep data and it says I slept 7.5 hours or something.  It's weird.

[JanMarc]

I am new to this...just bought a Fitbit, mainly for sleep tracking. My sleep is terrible, averaging 20+ awake episodes per night, usually very brief, a minute or two, with a big chunk of up to an hour awake as well. But I get a good sleep score...about 80! I’m exhausted. And I really don’t get it.The tracking seems to be pretty accurate but the scoring is very odd. 

[MrSandman]

BTW, if you have these kind of sleep problems, maybe you should see a doctor or something?