Fitbit: that house cleaning counts as exercise :p

yirara
yirara Posts: 9,943 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
LOL! I just spent the last 3.5 hours cleaning my tiny flat, including every tiny nook and cranny, and things I usually don't see. Fitbit recorded it as a workout. Well, I did work myself into a sweat, but thanks but no thanks.

Did your trackers ever record odd things as exercise?

Replies

  • mrslynda
    mrslynda Posts: 50 Member
    I use a flex at the moment, and it sits in my inner pants pocket while I'm working. This is the recommended spot when you can't wear it on your wrist, and I can due to food safety at work. After one particularly hard night, where I was working with a hard to work with person, it tracked 15 mins of cycling. I had to think back to what I was doing at 2:30 am. Yeah, I could see why it thought running around like a mad woman, trying to keep the machine going and bread from falling of the fall, looked like cycling.......
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,943 Member
    mrslynda wrote: »
    I use a flex at the moment, and it sits in my inner pants pocket while I'm working. This is the recommended spot when you can't wear it on your wrist, and I can due to food safety at work. After one particularly hard night, where I was working with a hard to work with person, it tracked 15 mins of cycling. I had to think back to what I was doing at 2:30 am. Yeah, I could see why it thought running around like a mad woman, trying to keep the machine going and bread from falling of the fall, looked like cycling.......

    Hahaha! :D Brilliant, this!
    I walked down a mountain a while ago (well, jumped and walked very briskly) and fitbit tracked crosstrainer :p
  • MsHarryWinston
    MsHarryWinston Posts: 1,027 Member
    Before I got my Fitbit I would never actively log things like cleaning as exercise. And I never “start” a workout on my Fitbit when I’m cleaning or something. But I trust my Fitbit to just track my activity and adjust accordingly.
  • genpopadopolous
    genpopadopolous Posts: 411 Member
    I earned an hour and a half at "sport" one night dancing my face off at a club. Lol!
  • Leannep2201
    Leannep2201 Posts: 441 Member
    I supported a netball game recently. Yes, I may have wandered up and down the sideline, but Fitbit recorded half an hour of walking. Um, not quite!
  • swimmchick87
    swimmchick87 Posts: 458 Member
    I usually put my fitbit in my pocket at the grocery store, since it won't count steps on my wrist as I'm pushing the cart. One day I didn't have any pockets, so I snapped it onto the handle of my cross body purse. Fitbit logged the whole trip as "outdoor biking."
  • icemom011
    icemom011 Posts: 999 Member
    My Fitbit counts steps while I'm out cycling, but it also recognizes the cycling on it's own and records it as biking outside. I had to disconnect MFP from my cycling app though because it awards twice the calories vs fitbit, which is a lot more reasonable. I have charge2.
  • mph323
    mph323 Posts: 3,565 Member
    icemom011 wrote: »
    My Fitbit counts steps while I'm out cycling, but it also recognizes the cycling on it's own and records it as biking outside. I had to disconnect MFP from my cycling app though because it awards twice the calories vs fitbit, which is a lot more reasonable. I have charge2.

    Agree. The only app I have linked to my charge2 is mfp because it knows what I'm doing and records appropriate calories.
  • Orphia
    Orphia Posts: 7,097 Member
    edited August 2018
    I've always thought cleaning is accounted for by your activity level, even as sedentary.

    But does Fitbit automatically detect it and then send through an exercise entry to MFP called "cleaning"?

    If so, I'll mentally apologise to anyone on my feed I thought was desperate for manually entering cleaning. :smiley:
  • Keto_Vampire
    Keto_Vampire Posts: 1,670 Member
    I have mild tachycardia when standing (Orthostatic Intolerance/POTS) - just pacing around while standing counts as exercise solely based on heart rate. Had 1,171 mins of activity time this past week
  • icemom011
    icemom011 Posts: 999 Member
    Orphia wrote: »
    I've always thought cleaning is accounted for by your activity level, even as sedentary.

    But does Fitbit automatically detect it and then send through an exercise entry to MFP called "cleaning"?

    If so, I'll mentally apologise to anyone on my feed I thought was desperate for manually entering cleaning. :smiley:

    Nope, it doesn't. I believe you have to manually enter this
  • mrslynda
    mrslynda Posts: 50 Member
    Fitbit senses movement, or lack there of, and heart rate if you have that sort of model. I am on leave from work, and have done a bit of cleaning , and run up and down the stairs , taken one kid to school and etc, and am not seditary by Fitbit standards. I have mfp set as highly active, and haven't earned any extra calories today, but I haven't 'lost' any either.
  • greyparks206
    greyparks206 Posts: 165 Member
    I was riding around on a trailer pulled by a tractor on a work outing this spring, and my Fitibt recorded 45 minutes of "mountain biking". I guess from all the bouncing? :D

    Normally, though, it only adds a "walk" or "sport" recording when I've been doing something active that I don't have a button to manually log, like horseback riding. Riding actually requires a lot more physical exertion than walking, but I figure it's close enough for my purposes that I don't try to edit the record.
  • Slasher09
    Slasher09 Posts: 316 Member
    I work up a good heart rate and sweat cleaning my house. I have my MFP set to sedentary, despite working 3 12s as an ER RN (average 12k steps a shift) and I go by my sync with MFP to help with calories. It's worked for me. I don't live and die by each calorie....but if I didn't plan my dinner yet after work and I really want a slice of pizza and some wine....I'll sync and check and if it tells me that I have something like 1500 cals remaining after a hard day....then yeah, I'll go for it. If it's like 500, then I just pick something light instead.
  • Kathryn247
    Kathryn247 Posts: 570 Member
    My FitBit counts mowing the lawn as riding a bike - I can't imagine why it thinks I'd ride a bike back and forth like that! :D
    I've learned to push a shopping cart with one hand so the FitBit hand swings and I get the step credit!
  • ladyhusker39
    ladyhusker39 Posts: 1,406 Member
    Your Fitbit isn't smart enough to know that you're cleaning house. It just detects that you're being physically active according to it's parameters. I use a Garmin and it counts all of my physical activity and adjusts MFP calories as indicated by its data. Why would I use it if I don't trust it?
  • Go_Deskercise
    Go_Deskercise Posts: 1,630 Member
    swimmchick87 wrote: »
    I usually put my fitbit in my pocket at the grocery store, since it won't count steps on my wrist as I'm pushing the cart. One day I didn't have any pockets, so I snapped it onto the handle of my cross body purse. Fitbit logged the whole trip as "outdoor biking."

    Oh, that's a good idea! I didn't realize it for the longest time that it wasn't logging my steps while I pushed my cart all over the grocery store. It does log my pushing the cart into the store and pushing it out of the store on the rough blacktop, but not on the smooth tile floor in the store.....

    I'm definitely going to start putting in in my pocket and see how much it actually increases my steps.
  • icemom011
    icemom011 Posts: 999 Member
    Kathryn247 wrote: »
    My FitBit counts mowing the lawn as riding a bike - I can't imagine why it thinks I'd ride a bike back and forth like that! :D
    I've learned to push a shopping cart with one hand so the FitBit hand swings and I get the step credit!

    I walk dogs holding all leashes in one hand so it registers a walk, lol. Just out of principal? Otherwise it won't record it. First world problems, haha
  • Stellamom2018
    Stellamom2018 Posts: 120 Member
    Mine counted vacuuming as a workout this morning also. But considering it was about 40 minutes and 2500 steps to vacuum my house, I'll take it!

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