Weight Watchers Activity Points and Fitbit Exercise

[SunsetRunner]

I am on Weight Watchers and recently purchased a Charge HR. The other day I did a long bike ride, 75 miles. Fitbit saw it as 35000 steps and that sync'd with Weight Watchers. I then declared the period of riding as cycling in the Dashboard. Now it sync'd more points, but kept the original points sync'd. In other words it double sync'd. 

What is the most accurate way to deal with my cycling days? Should I declare the period of exercise before I start? I want accurate WW activity points but don't want double points.

[MaginB · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Fitbit Community! It's great to have you here @SunsetRunner! Allow me to help, in order to get your data more accurate I recommend you logging the activity before starting, you can take a look at this article in order to check all the stats that are being tracked when you log a bike ride or a spinning class. 

Hope it helps! 

[tlb2124]

I am having the exact same problem!  Does Weight Waters ONLY sync steps? 

I played competitive volleyball last night, WW took only my steps 12,000 from my Fitbit, NOT my activity (I started and stopped my Fitbit to record my exercise period, burning 600 calories).  When I went to log volleyball into my WW, it doubled up the Fitpoints, as the other user said. 

Has anyone found a solution to this??

[RobertoME]

Hello @tlb2124, welcome aboard to our community. In this case activities tracked by Fitbit will be converted to activity "PointsPlus" and credited to your Weight Watcher's account. If any of those activities are labeled to a different one it will be change as a manual log so, I believe Weight Watchers will not consider this activity to your daily count. 

About its duplicating your points, is because your activity from Fitbit were already converted to activity points and when you logged this information is duplicating the data.

Hope this helps and see you around.

[fitzmonkey]

Thank you for these explanations; however, I'm not sure it addresses the question of accuracy. If Weight Watchers measures my daily steps outside of my recorded activity, I end up with what looks like a very high amount of WW activity points. I live and work in a city, so I easily meet my 10,000 on a daily basis just getting from point A to point B, often more like 15,000, which alone adds up to 11-13 points. If I add a run, that's an additional 8-10 WW points, so I get upwards of 20-25 activity points a day if I add my activity separately.

If that's accurate, great! I'll take it! I just don't want to be banking on a credit of points if it's inaccurate. I should note that when I do an hour of yoga, it's only about 100 steps, but counts as 3-5 WW points. Any advice as to the accuracy? Should I keep entering separate activities, or just go by steps? Thanks.

[SunsetRunner]

fitzmonkey, did you get a resolution for this? I just joined WW and on the WW app I'm getting 2 activities listed every day, one is the number of steps I'm taking and the other is an activity I've done (usually walking). I am worried about it being double-counted. Chatting with a WW tech support now. Not sure if it's a WW issue or FB issue.

[SunsetRunner]

Can't figure out how to edit what I just posted, but I wanted to add that WW tech support says it's a known issue and their Engineering Department is working on it. So it sounds like it is being double-counted. I guess it's easy enough to deal with until it's fixed. I don't eat back any activity points anyway.

[sorrell76]

I was wondering the same thing. Just started back on WW yesterday. Anything that FitBit automatically logs gets logged along with the steps. I certainly won't complain if it's right, but want to make sure it's accurate.

[lnhudlow]

I'm hoping this is resolved soon, too!  In the past, WWs would give me points for steps AND my bike ride -- which seemed reasonable - the points didn't seem way out of line.  But now, I'm getting points for steps alone -- and what Fitbit is labeling as a Walk.  The Walk activity usually is a few more points, I think because it's based on exertion, not just number of steps.  Somehow the steps on the Walk activity need to be deducted from the total step count of the day so they aren't counted twice by WWs.  In the meantime, I have disconnected my Fitbit from WWs and I will manually enter my steps....and bike rides.  I'd rather have too few points counted than too many!  Hopefully this will be resolved!

[sorrell76]

I just rejoined Weight Watchers this week. I haven't been on it for a few years.  So did this double counting problem become an issue just recently or when the Smartpoints/Fitpoints started?

[lnhudlow]

There were initial problems when the SmartPoints first started -- then everything seemed okay.  The steps and my bike ride being counted separately has happened continually -- but that seemed fine -- the total points seemed reasonable.  But this new issue has just started within the last week -- where total steps are counted and then my walk activities are counted separately, with way too many points being counted.  In the past, when I took a walk, only total steps were counted for the day -- not total steps AND a walk activity.  I hope this makes sense!  🙂    

[sorrell76]

I talked to someone at WW today.  They said it is a known issue and that it started when Fitbit did an update, so they're trying to get it figured out.  Meanwhile, since I am new, what do those of you who have been on it recommend?  Just don't count the ones for the extra exercise?

[SunsetRunner]

sorrell76, I am new to WW too, although I used to do WW maybe 2-3 years ago. Personally, I don't plan on using the FitPoints anyway, so it really doesn't matter to me. I like how WW gives you a Fitpoints goal for the week, so we don't forget the importance of staying active, But I will just use try to hit their goal and not convert those points to food. I did the simple math this week to subtract out the extra activity points and I'm still over goal.

[lnhudlow]

It might be easiest to just enter your steps manually until this is figured out.   You may get a few less points, but better to be given too few instead of too many! 

I usually do eat up most of my activity points.  I found that I was way too hungry when I didn't -- and I have lost weight eating up every activity point!  🙂 

[Tracyjba]

Thanks for the comments in explaining this is a recent issue. I just rejoined WW and am having the same double count issues.  I also just realized there doesn't seem to be a way to remove an activity on the activity list (that seems like it would be a good feature).  I'm commenting so that I can get email updates pushed to me to hopefully hear when this issue is resolved.

[lnhudlow]

You are correct.  The only time you can remove an activity on the WWs activity page is if you entered it manually.  It would make things easier in this situation if we could remove activities or steps synced from Fitbit!  Still hoping for a solution!

[HelenaFitbit]

Thank you for participation in the forums everyone! I'll be glad to help. 

As @sorrell76 mentioned; there seems to be a problem with the WeightWatchers link to Fitbit; in this case you'll need to double check on their current bug reports about the status of this problem. This is because the integration was created by WW and they should explain how they interpret the data from your Fitbit tracker.

There's a workaround for WW provided by @Shatzi in this thread, hopefully it will correct your logged activity and show it as a single log. 

Let me know if you have any questions, have a great day!

[SunsetRunner]

Helena: I see you've posted that same link in several different threads. How is this a "workaround" to the double-counting issue? Seems more like it's a way to get the 2 apps communicating, not to fix this new double-counting problem.

[dbeckett1963]

I am having this problem also. Chatted with two WW Tech support people yesterday who eventually said it was a problem with FitBit and not them ... they didn't say that this as a "known issue" that WW was currently addressing. I haven't found a work-around that keeps from double counting FitPoints in the WW App when syncing from my FitBit, so I am deducting them mentally for now.

[sorrell76]

Mine seems to be working correctly for the moment. I took a long walk last night and it did not double count it in WW.