Random recording of active minutes on my Surge

[MarkH68]

My Surge seems to randomly record active minutes, I work as a courier and can pretty much guarantee Monday to Friday my days are fairly similar, I get out for a little run a few times a week but the work day is fairly similar day to day yet Monday it recorded 30 yesterday it recorded 475 active minutes and today 8, does anyone have any ideas what is going on. I tend to turn the tracker off at night so that wold cover restarting it.

Moderator edit: Clarified subject.

[YojanaFitbit]

Good morning @MarkH68! Welcome to the Forums! This is odd that you're getting more active minutes than what you're actually doing those days.  Did you log any activity such as walking or running or any other? Has this happened before? Have you tried the restart on your Surge already? This information that will help me to determine what is happening with your Surge. 

Check your calories for those days in your Fitbit Dashboard online, calorie readings usually help your active minutes, since when you're tracking an activity they will increase depending if it is a high a moderate level activity. As you can see in this picture I had a different reading for calories (green line) in the moring while I was walking. 

 Check that information and let me know if you have questions about it. 

I'll be around!

[MarkH68]

I have tried the reset yes. My query comes more from the fact that as a courier my daytime activity, as in 07:00-18:00 is pretty much the same, so how can my active minutes be so varied. I am currently tracking my calorie intake as I am on a diet and I have less than 2550 daily, I do a small ammount of activity post work, a small run or a cycle ride and I expect my activity levels to go up during those but surely during the working day my patterns are very similar so how can the activiy minutes be so different.

I have attached the graphs for Tue, Wed & Fri if it helps

[YojanaFitbit · Accepted solution]

Thanks for getting back to the Forums @MarkH68! Those pictures were really helpful. In regards of your query, your active minutes will vary depending on the intensity of your activities, for example if you maintain the same level of activity for 60 seconds, it will give you an active minute. So even if you do the same thing every day but you do it a little bit faster the information will vary. 

Take in count that all Fitbit trackers calculate active minutes using metabolic equivalents (METs) (a measure of exercise intensity based on oxygen consumption). METs help measure the energy expenditure of various activities. Because they do so in a comparable way among persons of different weights, METs are widely used as indicators for exercise intensity. For example, a MET of 1 indicates a body at rest. Fitbit trackers estimate your MET value in any given minute by calculating the intensity of your activity. 

You earn active minutes for activities at or above about 3 METs.  To stay in line with the Center for Disease Control's (CDC’s) “10 minutes at a time is fine” concept, minutes are only awarded after 10 minutes of continuous moderate-to-intense activity. You can view the CDC’s recommendations on the CDC website.

Going back to your inquiry, if an activity gives you active minutes one day and fewer active minutes the next day, remember that the intensity of exercise is key. Often what seems like the exact same amount of effort over the same distance in fact differs slightly enough to change your active minutes total. The more calories you burn the higher your MET value, so therefore the more calories you burn the higher your total active minutes. Assuming you're active for at least 10 minutes at a time, green spikes on your calorie graph typically indicate that you’re earning active minutes.  

Hope this helps, let me know if you have more questions!