is my flex double counting exercise?

[gmw4259]

The last few days I've been biking on vacation. I enter the biking and my food through My Fitness Pal. FitBit is showing an enormous number of steps! Today I biked for 3 hours and entered the calories for that in MFP. (I use a heart rate monitor to get the calories.) FitBit shows the 3 hours of biking but also says 21,000 steps! I've probably actually walked under 2,000 steps.

I don't believe I had this problem this summer when I biked. Is there something I can do about this? Is it a bug? Is it related to the problem where FitBit is getting multiple copies of meals when the meal is entered in MFP?

[EdgarFitbit]

@gmw4259 Hey there! Allow me to help you today 

I'd like to start this discussion by asking some questions. Did you get to resolve this? I noticed this happened 2 weeks ago. Did you try unlinking and relinking both MyFitnessPal and Fitbit account? I haven't heard about any reports regarding this issue but I'd like to gather information to figure out what's going on between the connection. 

Looking forward to your response.

[gmw4259]

I didn't try unlinking and relinking at the time. I was away on vacation in New Zealand. It seemed to happen each day. Now that I'm home where it's colder, I'm not biking again until spring so I can't see if the problem is still there.

Can you tell me, though, if one enters exercise (in my case through My Fitness Pal), does FitBit know not to enter "steps" during the exercise time? Or does it somehow add to the step count to account for the exercise?

[EdgarFitbit]

@gmw4259 Actually, you won't earn steps if the activity doesn't consist in step-based exercise. Regularly, your bicycle exercise or, for example elliptical, won't count your steps during the activity so that's the odd thing. Please try to unlink and relink both accounts by following the next steps:

1. Sign into your Fitbit dashboard.
2. Click the gear icon in the upper right corner and select "Settings" from the drop-down menu.
3. On the left side of your screen click "Applications."
4. Under MyFitnessPal, click "Revoke Access."
5. You can then re-link the two accounts by clicking here.

Next time you are able to do some biking again, give it a try and let me know any odd behavior.

[gmw4259]

I did the disconnect and reconnect. We'll see what happens next time I'm biking.

[EdgarFitbit]

@gmw4259 Good job! Let's wait until the next time. Keep in mind that biking or "cycling" activities won't give you any steps. If you want to get accuracy, just log the activity and don't wear your tracker while involved in your activity. 

Happy holidays!

[gmw4259]

I wear my FitBit all the time (except when showering). Today I synced it right before a bike ride. I rode 12 miles. I synced it again at the end and it gave me 1600 steps.I enter biking and my food through My Fitness Pal and probably should have entered the biking in MFP before syncing it but I entered it right away after syncing the FitBit. Nothing on the Fitbit screen changed though, the extra 1600 steps stayed. Fitbit seemed to think I had walked those 1600 steps and gone 2 miles. If I weren't using MFP and entered the biking directly in Fitbit, would it still think I also walked 1600 steps? Am I expecting too much that FitBit wouldn't double count the time as both biking and walking? Though I see that FitBit isn't giving me any extra adjustment in MFP for those phantom steps but maybe it wouldn't for that small number of steps if they were real either.

[EdgarFitbit]

@gmw4259 Thanks for letting us know all the details. I'd like to check your Fitbit account, so in order to do so, I've sent you a PM (private message) in your Community inbox with the request. Please check your message and let me know your email address in private. 

Check out this discussion where some users discussed about Private messages. Get more knowledge about what are those messages and how to reply to one of them. You just need to click on "Reply" in order to send me your email.

Looking forward to resolve this!