Fitbit and weightlifting

[brawlysnake66]

Hey guys,

I have a question regarding weight lifting. Yesterday I worked out for about an hour and a half. I used my Fitbit Surge, Excercise>Weight lifting and began my workout. During that hour and a half of workout, I was switching machines and weights with my friend, back and forth. So in the end, actual workout time was 40 minutes or so. My Fitbit Surge counted that I burnt about 700 calories. My average BPM was about 110. I'm wondering whether I have my pause my fitbit for the time I'm not weight lifting or leave my fitbit on counting weight activity for the the time I'm at the gym, while I'm not sure if the calories reading is accurate while using this. Thanks in advance

[brawlysnake66]

Hi guys,

I have a question regarding the Fitbit Surge. If this is in the wrong section, kindly forgive me. So I was doing weight lifting today at the gym, while using my Surge. I went to Excercise>Weight lifting and clicked start within the watch interface. I left it on for the duration for my workout, which was about 1 hour and 25 minutes. I was not active during that full hour and 25 minutes. I was speaking with my friend while working out, etc. Full workout was around 45 minutes or so. I'm wondering as to how fitbit counts those calories. Whether it's counting calories based on a predetermined criteria, or depending on the heart and fat burn rate, etc. Thanks in advance!

[WendyB]

I would pause it while you are just standing there.

Or if thats a hassle then Manually log the lifting.

[Martin1]

I would say don't worry about it, just think of the numbers as a baseline, that way you can compare numbers to see how you are doing.  As long as you are consistant about how you use it, you will have an idea about how your workout is progressing.  I would also recomend the JeFit app.

[bbarrera]

You burn something like 75-90 calories per hour just being alive, or about 120 calories for 1.5 hours. So yeah, 120 cals is about 17% of 700 so there is some "error" if your objective is to measure just the calories burned during exercise (or compare to other workouts). However Fitbit app displays total calories for the day, so doesn't really matter.

The problem with pausing is you have to remember to unpause.

[SunsetRunner]

I would not pause it as you likely have elevated HR between sets - and I find that the surge catches up to real HR between sets as well. (Constricted forearm muscles are a challenge for an optical wrist based monitor- when you relax those muscles between sets the HR monitor 'catches up' and registers as a spike... At least in my experience)