I mowed the lawn, not outdoor biking!

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sibeluver03
sibeluver03 Posts: 58 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Fitbit automatically detected a workout and called it biking. I mowed the lawn. I definitely was sweating. Should I just go with the flow as far as the amount of calories it says I burned?

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  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
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    You can also log mowing the lawn and see how it compares. That’s what I do and it typically drops it 40ish calories.
  • hesn92
    hesn92 Posts: 5,967 Member
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    can't you change the workout to mowing the lawn? I don't trust my fitbit for telling me what I did when mowing the lawn. It always gives me a crazy ridiculous number of steps and calories burned.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    Are you on riding mower where it sees the bouncing as steps?

    Because mine gives underestimated calorie burn, because while the distance may be correct, that slow pace was because of spending extra energy pushing mower - so not getting credit for that at all.
    I burn more.

    But at 1 hr weekly, inaccuracy there really doesn't matter in the scheme of the week.

    Now - if I did lawn mowing as work all day x 6 days weekly - now that matters.

    to OP - if it created a workout automatically, that means it likely used HR-based calorie burn anyway.
    The text that happens to be used in the Description field is meaningless to calorie burn.

    You can edit the description on Activity Records to what it really was. And that's all it changes.

    If you think the database entry for mowing would be more accurate (possible if high temps caused inflated HR merely for cooling effect and not because of harder effort) - then use the start & duration time on existing Activity Record, and manually create a Workout Record using the same in Fitbit.
    You can then keep or delete the original record, it's info has already been replaced in the daily stats, so it would merely be for viewing.

    Fitbit is a replace only system, not addition. Same time and duration used, old info is replaced for that chunk of time in the daily stats.
  • hesn92
    hesn92 Posts: 5,967 Member
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    I have never figured out how fitbit calculates calorie burn. I looked through a thread on the fitbit website in their forums where a few people were trying to get answers (is it based on HR? Is it based on steps?) and the fitbit customer service person danced around the question and wouldn't answer it, because of giving away trade secrets?
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    edited September 2018
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    Not trade secrets, they all do the same methods.

    Daily activity level calorie burn is incorrect usage for HR-based calculated calorie burn, which is only best estimate for steady-state aerobic exercise, same HR for 2-4 min. (even there it can easily be inflated HR and therefore calorie burn)

    Anything below exercise, anything anaerobic or HR bouncing all over - is inflated.

    So all the trackers use resting HR to improve the exercise calculations, and to help figure out along with daily stats, where the exercise level starts.

    That's a 1-2 week learning process using things like exercise duration & frequency (that's a public study with formula they may tweak with their own research), along with resting HR.

    But it can't account for genetic or medicine related elevated HR that could occur during daily activity.

    The daily stuff therefore is more accurate based on steps and distance calculated - if that can be good estimate.
  • hesn92
    hesn92 Posts: 5,967 Member
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    So the calorie burn that fitbit gives me, and then feeds into MFP, is totally inaccurate then? When I run it's a steady state cardio, but when I lift weights my heart rate will go up and down throughout the workout. This is disappointing. Why even give a calorie burn?
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    One of the newer models where it auto-selects, or you manually select, and can include on the device other workouts - actually uses the database rate of burn for Weights when you include it to use.

    Which is much better estimate than HR.

    And none of them are "accurate" - they are all estimates. They are all "inaccurate" to some degree.

    Some are fine and close enough (5%) for average user - that's the hope.
    Others can improve things with knowledge about what they are good and bad at estimating well, and tweaking settings.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    hesn92 wrote: »
    So the calorie burn that fitbit gives me, and then feeds into MFP, is totally inaccurate then? When I run it's a steady state cardio, but when I lift weights my heart rate will go up and down throughout the workout. This is disappointing. Why even give a calorie burn?

    When I lift, I select "weights" on my FitBit for exercise...it gives me a relatively accurate number. I've found my FitBit overall to jive closely with my own data...certainly I would say it's good enough.

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