Fitbit is designed around the premise that people will use the on-device Exercise App to record their exercise sessions. The assumption is that when you manually log an exercise session after-the-fact, it must be because you were not wearing the watch during the workout. Therefore Fitbit ignores everything that was actually recorded, including steps, heart rate, calorie burn zone minutes, and replaces them based on whatever you input for parameters when you log the workout. Depending on the parameters you input, it might reduce or increase the number of steps and calories burned. And the number of steps, distance, and calories burned might not have relation to reality, which might be why steps manually logged are not counted in challenges.
But, for some reason beyond me, which maybe you can explain to me, many people still have an aversion to using the Exercise App, and insist on logging their workouts after they are done exercising rather than just being done with it when the workout is over.
Before posting, re-read to see if it would make sense to someone else not looking at your Fitbit or phone.
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