Active Zone Minutes Heart Rate

[BahamasGirl365]

I noticed Active Zone minutes being added to the fitbit firmware update for Versa 2, and all new fiitbt.

After looking around on this site I noticed it said that it goes by your heart rate, due to medications and anxiety I tend to have a higher heart rate (80's-100 sometimes 105) and my FatBurn mode can come on randomly when I'm just sitting due to anxiety,

is this going to affect the Active Zone Minutes vs when I'm doing an actual workout?

[MrMarv]

@BahamasGirl365 -

I suspect that those periods of anxiety or pharmaceutical assisted heart rate elevations will add to your Active Zone Minutes. 

During a recent heat wave here in Southern California where it stayed in the 80's overnight, my heart rate wandered up into fat burn if I didn't turn on the ceiling fan, and sometimes even when I did. I had Active Zone Minutes booked while sleeping.

[BahamasGirl365]

Looks like it's not. 😕

It isn't even counting a workout because it's claiming my "fatburn mode" is 128" My heart rate doesn't get that high even when I am working out or going for a good paced walk, and according to what it should be (117) it doesn't track any active minutes, even with custom zones turned on

[MrMarv]

@BahamasGirl365 -

The Versa family of devices, as well as the Ionic, have assumed the new Heart Rate Zone formula formerly only used by the Charge 4 - the "Heart Rate Reserve" method instead of the "Traditional" formula.

In the chart below are two data rows showing Heart Rate Zone cutoffs:

The first data row represents the Traditional formula which are straight fixed percentages (50, 70 and 85%) of your Max Heart Rate which is defined as subtracting your age from 220. For me, as a 68 year old male, my Max Heart Rate is 152. 

The second data row represents the Heart Rate Reserve formula. Subtracting your resting heart rate from your traditional max heart rate results in that reserve.
     40% of the reserve is added to your resting heart rate to establish the beginning of the Fat Burn Zone.
     60% of the reserve is added to your resting heart rate to establish the beginning of the Cardio Zone.
     85% of the reserve is added to your resting heart rate to establish the beginning of the Peak Zone.

The HRR zones are commonly referred to as "Training Zones". We won't talk about what my Cardiologist calls them.

In addition to the above, Active Minutes were replaced with Active Zone Minutes (AZM).

FitBit has apparently rethought its definition of "activity".

    It used to be "Is your body active".

    It is now "Is your heart active and how active is it".

For each minute you average in Fat Burn you receive one AZM.

For each minute you average in either Cardio or Peak you receive two AZM.

[BahamasGirl365]

Yeah I understand how it all works, with the calculations and what was changed etc (basically all that you explained I knew  and understood 🙂 but, that's not the issue.

As someone who is active, but has underlying health conditions, fitbit telling me my "fatburn" mode is now in 129 when at 129 I'm running and generally can not keep a conversation up (like they claim you can in fatburn), and in more of a cardio mode, not fatburn as fitbit claims, is completely incorrect. My heart rate doesn't go to 129 when I'm doing light walking or even fast paced walking which according to fitbit it should?? 129 seems rather high, if I leave it at the default that fitbit has it, I will never get any zone minutes, because when walking or basic workouts, because my heart rate doesn't go that high when doing them. I can do a cardio workout, full cardio and not reach 129 but I'm working out, but according to fitbit it doesn't count because I didn't reach fatburn mode ever during that workout according to the Versa 2, yet according to the Charge I did??

Not cool. According to my Charge 3 my fatburn mode was 117, not 129. Someone explained in another article how to use custom max heart rate and that seems to have lowered it back to the 117, which appears to be more accurate for me, actually counting a walk as active zone minutes and not "you did no workout today because your heart never reached 129 bpm when you were walking even though it reached 126 we'll still say you just sat all day"

[MrMarv]

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@BahamasGirl365 wrote:

Yeah I understand how it all works, with the calculations and what was changed etc (basically all that you explained I knew  and understood 🙂 but, that's not the issue.

As someone who is active, but has underlying health conditions, fitbit telling me my "fatburn" mode is now in 129 when at 129 I'm running and generally can not keep a conversation up (like they claim you can in fatburn), and in more of a cardio mode, not fatburn as fitbit claims, is completely incorrect.

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Ahh - had I known about the health issue, I would have added in changing your Max HR as I have done. I reduced by Max HR by 20% because I take Beta Blockers which throttle the heart rate down even when exercising.

Good to hear you figured it out.