Active minutes

[SRida]

Anyone having trouble having your Active minutes after a workout log added? Example: I did 30mins of Pilates and I logged it and my minutes still says zero. I’ve done Pilates before and my minutes were added once I logged the activity. 

[MrMarv]

@SRida -

While you will often see Active Minutes updated when you have an Activity booked, whether automatically or manually, they are not irrevocably linked together.

Example:

While a walk can be entered manually or auto-recognized, the minutes spent walking may not qualify as being considered Active Minutes. To qualify as an Active Minute, during that particular minute you must have a calculated calorie burn of three times you BMR, or Basic Metabolic Rate. You will often see a reference to 3 times your MET, but the definition of the two are almost exactly the same.

My BMR is approximately 1.17 calories per minute. So for me to get credit for an Active Minute I have to have a calculated burn of a little nearly 4 calories during that 60-second slice of time.

Additionally, Fitbit doesn't give you credit for Active Minutes until you string a certain number of them in a row. The default is 10 minutes. That value is user-adjustable.

So it is easy to have an Activity without Active Minutes. And it is also easy to have Active Minutes without an activity. It is all about the settings. In fact, while the default for Active Minutes is 10 minutes, the default for the auto-recognition of walking is 15 minutes. So you can walk very briskly for twelve minutes and get credit for probably 13 Active Minutes or more since your heart rate will still be up for a bit longer. But that same 12 minute walk will not qualify for an Activity.

I would suggest you re-visit your manually entered Activity and check the calorie burn entered. And if you have a tracker with a heart rate reading capability I would seriously reconsider manually entering Activities.

Best of luck and welcome to the boards.

[SunsetRunner]

PIlates used to count as active minutes, but Fitbit in its infinite stupidity decided that pilates isn't active enough any more. If you log the time as Yoga instead, you'll get active minutes. Everyone who has done both yoga and pilates knows that pilates is more "active" than yoga, and no one at Fitbit will explain their logic for this stupid change, but there it is.

[MrMarv]

@SunsetRunner  and @SRida -

I just booked both exercises -

The Yoga booking wanted to book 150 calories for that 30 minutes, an average 4.27 times my BMR. I got active minutes.

The Pilates booking wanted to book 109 calories, an average of 3.1 times my BMR. I did not get active minutes.

I know, no surprise.

The 1.17 value I posted earlier is a guess of just what my actual BMR is according to Fitbit. If it is a little higher then 109 calories would be less than 3 times my BMR.

All I can say is HINT HINT HINT - the calorie values are user-editable.

[SunsetRunner]

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wrote:

All I can say is HINT HINT HINT - the calorie values are user-editable.

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Thank you thank you thank you!!! I had no idea that it could be as simple as changing the calories!