Former BodyMedia User, New to FitBit and Confused!

Fat_Bottomed_Girl

Hello all!

I am brand new with Fitbit after (sadly) giving up on Bodymedia. Since they have been bought out, they are just no longer interested in the armband style trackers, which I prefer. (I tried the Charge, and ended up with several hundred extra "steps" just from drying my hair. For that reason, I chose to go with the Fitbit One.)

Today, was my first day at the gym with the Fitbit One. So that I could track as accurately as possible, I put my One into exercise mode during each type of workout. I came back home to input the additional information needed so that my calories would (hopefully) be tracked as accurately.

A couple of things. I did not take note of the distance or calories burned while doing the machine based activities. I simply noted my average heart rate, thinking that FitBit would "figure out" the rest based on the age, weight and gender I have informed Fitbit of.

I completed 20 minutes of each:
Weight Lifting
Stationary Bike
StairMaster
Treadmill 3.0 at 9 incline

When I got home, I tried to log my activity, assuming there would be several options to choose from. (I figured the Stairmaster and Treadmill would be equivalent to hiking, rather than walking or running, and the weightlifting is not a step based activity.) I see that there are only FOUR options to choose from, walking, running, swimming and biking. If I input one of the four options, at least I have the option of entering the INTENSITY of the exercise, even IF I did not note the distance or calories burned (as according to the machine).

1.) Is it correct that I do NOT have the option to enter the intensity of "custom" activity? I must know the calories burned when doing so? If so, WTH? I KNOW that the FItbit is a glorified pedometer, but this is very disappointing. I would think the FitBit software would be a little more advanced than that. I HATE chest HRMs and don't want ANOTHER piece of equipment to accurately supplement my calorie expenditure during workouts.

2.) Although steps were noted by the Fitbit during my workout, I STILL only received 5 minutes of "very active" minutes, even after inputting my "custom data". I feel gypped! I can assure you that I was working my best during this time. Is there a way to edit this?

3.) In addition, I noticed that my "custom" workouts do not show on my exercise log, so there's that...

I TRULY hope that I am just missing something here. Can someone offer me some direction?

4.) LASTLY - I would also love some explanation of the "calories in/calories out". I was sick the other day and ate only 1085 calories (NOT the norm-I budget for 1400 and expect to eat 1600) and expended 2015 calories (I budget for a goal of up to 2500). On my app, it shows me that I am OVER BUDGET in the little scale graph (1085 in/2015 out) yet when I click on that tab, it says "OVER BUDGET 1085 in/2015 out. 83 CALORIES LEFT in your budget." How am I over budget, with 83 calories "left"? The little plate shows me with 83 calories left as well...

I'm so confused. I should never be "overbudget" at a calorie intake of 1085, although I am wondering if it is taking my preferred defecit into account. -Explanation, anyone?

Thank you in advance to anyone who can offer some guidance! I really hope that there are some solutions here without having to bend over backwards to adjust for this and that and this and that, defeating the purpose in my eyes.

HAPPY NEW YEAR and best wishes in obtaining your health and fitness goals!

editorgrrl

Ignore Fitbit's calorie goal—it prorates your calories by time of day & goes way below 1,200. Follow your MFP goal, eating back your adjustments

You're overthinking the accuracy. Trust your Fitbit for several weeks, then reevaluate your progress. I got exhausted just trying to read all this—I can't imagine doing all that every day! I don't log any step-based activity. My Flex gives me "steps" in the shower. But I lost the weight & have maintained for six months. TDEE is by definition the number of calories at which your weight will stabilize. So my Fitbit burn = TDEE.

heybales

There are 4 icons for quick access - but there is a huge database if you actually type in an exercise. That's what the empty text line was right under the icons.

1 - Depends on the exercise. All exercise databases are built on usually a common one using METS, and the different levels of workouts actually done in studies.
For instance, weight lifting did use to have vigorous/power lifting and easy/moderate options, but they dropped the lower one. But used to.
Spin or stationary bike - really, how does your view of hard relate to a study description of hard?
That's really a meaningless subjective description. Now 200 watts is objective and meaningful.
Incline walking, yes, not calculated by Fitbit, and 9% grade would be way off, and could be meaningful if done often. Use the machine calorie readings if weight was asked for, or this.
http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs.html

You don't need the calories burned for any of the exercise in the database though, if the description is pretty close to what you actually did. But if you have better calorie burn info, you can indeed enter it. That field for calories does say optional after all.
And depending on the workout, if you don't know the distance or stats, you can click on Intensity and select a description that applies.

2 - Your calorie burn must be 6 x your resting calorie burn to receive VAM time on manually entered workouts. If you did not accomplish that, then you did not do VAM time, now matter how hard you think you worked out, if your best is currently not 6x or more resting calorie burn, so be it - you will get there, believe me. BodyMedia defaulted to the same values for their ranges too, based on METS is how they described it.
Your resting calorie burn is shown in your daily graph of calorie burn. Look at any non-moving time per 5 min. Divide by 5 for that figure that is used.

3 - Your MFP Exercise Diary?
Correct, no workouts come from Fitbit over to MFP, merely the daily calorie burn, which is then compared to what MFP thought you'd burn with no exercise. So that adjustment may or may not be exercise calorie burn.
Do you actually use the MFP Exercise diary and reporting for review that it matters? Vast majority actually don't. It's merely their means of auto-posting to their wall what they did. In which case, just post it manually with more info if desired. Use Fitbit reports for exercise. Neither one has much detail on workouts anyway, they aren't the best place for that data like for training.

4 - Don't use Fitbit data for eating goals at all, only MFP. Trying to follow 2 roads to the same destination is just asking for confusion, as you got. And will lead to problems without a man even driving. For them to end up similar, you'd have to make a bunch match between them, and they'd still be off by 10-15 perhaps. And then pick the wrong tile to view, as you did, and it's useless info anyway.
Only use it for fitness goals, like the daily burn you'd like to normally hit. So that if you hit that 2500 in daily burn, and you know MFP takes off 500, you'll be eating 2000.

Sadly, I think each of your workouts does indeed need to be manually logged, because they are either not step based as in walking/running level, or Fitbit has no clue you have such an incline going and increased calorie burn.
But merely note the start and duration as you did, creating activity records.
Log the displayed calorie burn from machines you entered a weight on (do that of course), and skip the stats otherwise, except for mph.