New Fitbit Inspire question

Bluebirdday72

Hi! I just got my first fitness tracker, a Fitbit Inspire 2, and am learning the ropes.

I have a question about tracking activity. What is the difference between the watch using its automatic activity tracker vs logging a workout by selecting an exercise on the watch and starting a workout that way?

I ask because my main sources of exercise are walking, cross country skiing, downhill skiing and hiking, with 2 days a week doing inside sessions watching exercise videos/using free weights.

Those activities are not choices in the watch (except lifting weights/HIIT) so do I just let the watch track activity on its own and not “start a work out”?

Today was the first time I wore it and went on an hour walk without “starting a workout”. It did say “walk” in the app after I was done. Tomorrow I will be cross country skiing for about 2 hours which is more intense exercise than a walk. Will the watch adjust calories based on my heart rate?

I track my food in MFP and will also use MFP to manually log exercise. I am curious about the above questions just so I can get to know the Fitbit and compare it to MFP.

Thanks ahead of time!

emmamcgarity

I used to have the Inspire but upgraded to the Charge a year ago. So I’m going by memory a bit.

The exercise shortcuts displayed on your wrist can be changed. Open the app on your phone and swipe down to refresh your stats. While it tells you it’s syncing at the top, couch the very top of the screen To access the customization menu.

From there, Scroll down to see “exercise shortcuts”. Click there. The screen will then tell you the names of the shortcuts currently loaded. I think you are limited to 6 shortcuts on Inspire. If the plus button at the bottom is not active, you’re maxed out. You will need to remove a shortcut you don’t frequently use before adding a new one. You can remove it by swiping it from right to left.

Hike is an option. I would recommend Outdoor workout for skiing.

The inspire does not have built in gps. So I used to pair it with my phone while running outdoors do that it would track my pace and sync the gps run to Strava for me. I played around with it on some short walks in the neighborhood to get the hang of it.

If you don’t gps track the walk, the Fitbit will auto track it usually. However it won’t display pace and other stats. Gps walks and runs help the Fitbit app calculate your cardio fitness score.

I have my Fitbit synced with MyFitnessPal for exercise calories. It does a pretty good job, but I generally don’t eat all my exercise calories. I usually eat about half. Sometimes more. I’ve been losing weight at my anticipated rate.

emmamcgarity

I forgot to add that I do not manually add my exercise in MyFitnessPal. I just let the calories sync over.

heybales

Bluebirdday72 wrote: »

Hi! I just got my first fitness tracker, a Fitbit Inspire 2, and am learning the ropes.

I have a question about tracking activity. What is the difference between the watch using its automatic activity tracker vs logging a workout by selecting an exercise on the watch and starting a workout that way?

I ask because my main sources of exercise are walking, cross country skiing, downhill skiing and hiking, with 2 days a week doing inside sessions watching exercise videos/using free weights.

Those activities are not choices in the watch (except lifting weights/HIIT) so do I just let the watch track activity on its own and not “start a work out”?

Today was the first time I wore it and went on an hour walk without “starting a workout”. It did say “walk” in the app after I was done. Tomorrow I will be cross country skiing for about 2 hours which is more intense exercise than a walk. Will the watch adjust calories based on my heart rate?

I track my food in MFP and will also use MFP to manually log exercise. I am curious about the above questions just so I can get to know the Fitbit and compare it to MFP.

Thanks ahead of time!

The difference between auto and manual start - maybe 5 min of using HR-based calculation for calorie burn as opposed to step distance it sees - which for some workouts could be no distance.
Usually there has to be enough steps, elevated HR, for chunk of time, and then auto-workout is turned on (may it picked right, maybe not, for the text description - either way HR-based calc for calorie burn is used).

Dittos to advice to add your workout to the device list for easy selection to manually start it - makes it much nicer for review of your diary having info.

Do NOT manually log the exercise in MFP - that forces a sync of whatever MFP says the calories is back to Fitbit, then Fitbit replaces what it had for that chunk of time, and sends a new daily burn figure back to MFP.
With the MFP & Fitbit sync issues - forcing 2 extra syncs is not really a good idea.
Plus replacing Fitbit's calorie burn info with MFP's is potentially really bad idea.

If you want friends list to see your workouts, it's just a wall post - do that manually with more interesting info than what a workout would show.

You will still see a Fitbit Adjustment in your MFP exercise diary - that is NOT your calorie burn from exercise - it is the total daily difference between MFP setting of no expected exercise and your guessed activity level, and what Fitbit sent as daily burn.

To automatically eat half of it is a myth and usually misunderstanding of what that figure is.
It could be no exercise but you were totally a lot more active than Sedentary selected on MFP. Of course those calories count. If you had selected the correct activity level you'd never seen the extra shown that way.

Bluebirdday72

emmamcgarity, thank you! Your post was so helpful! I was able to change up my exercise short cuts, although I don’t have the option of Outdoor Workout. Would just “Workout” be that?

I have the Inspire 2 and it does seem to have a GPS in the tracker.

Heybales, thank you as well! I have not synced my Fitbit with MFP as of yet, and may never sync it. Already, after one day and two walks, I see that Fitbit’s calorie estimation is almost a third higher then when I enter it manually into MFP.

For the last month I have manually entered my exercise into MFP, then eaten back about half those calories. So far I seem to be losing at the rate I have selected in MFP doing it this way, so I will stick with it.

I got the Fitbit mostly to get the sleep data, as I have been struggling with sleep for the last 6 months (premenopausal issues), heart rate, and steps. The activity Zone data is pretty cool, seeing when I am in fat burning zone or peak zone (which I will probably test on my xc ski this afternoon). The calories on the Fitbit is more of a curiosity for me since I trust MFP’s. I already see that the steps are over calculated since I was getting steps by standing still and getting dressed this AM, but it is still interesting seeing how many steps my daily dog walks achieve.

heybales

Exercise calorie burn calculations include frequency and amount of exercise - so it needs about 2 weeks to get better at estimates.
RestingHR is in the calc too so that has to get known over time.
If you get some data during maxed out exertion you can also adjust the HRmax reading to improve those calc's, which also effects the zone readings. Currently it's set to 220-age - which majority of people fall out of the bell curve of that being a decent estimate within 10bpm.

Steps can indeed be seen for things that aren't steps. Of course there are folks complaining they get no steps from biking or elliptical either - so I'm curious on the XC skiing too.
Usually those bogus or minor steps have barely any distance to them, so the calculated calorie burn for pace and weight is about nothing.

Bluebirdday72

Heybales thank you for the additional information. Before my ski today I forgot to set it to hike which I had planned to do. So the auto activity tracker kicked in. It thought I was swimming off and on and definitely didn’t record the calorie burn right.

It was very cold today, only 13F when I was out. I am wondering if the cold effected the data. I checked my heart rate a few times when I felt near max effort but it only said 90-100. That really didn’t seem right to me. My HR during my easy dog walk yesterday was about that and I was working MUCH harder during the ski.

Next time I go on a XC ski (tomorrow maybe) I think I will wear the sensor on the inside of my wrist instead of top of wrist. I wonder if it will pick up my heart rate more accurately that way.

heybales

Sadly some people's arms just read better for HR, some worse, on these devices.
Then again some people can't take manual pulse at wrist, others easily can.
And when HR starts going way up that ability for some stops being accurate.

Same with these devices.
Suggestion is to move it further up towards elbow, which also makes it tighter, or loosen and move up anyway to give access to more veins. Underside of arm good idea too.

Some people never get an accurate reading when the HR goes up high, it either errors out and they discover no reading, or it tops out at lower than reality figure. A quick manual reading confirms that one rather easily.

Bluebirdday72

An update, incase this post helps anyone.

I went on a backcountry ski this weekend which is essentially cross country skiing but uphill, with a little bit of downhill skiing. This time I started an elliptical workout at the beginning which I figure has similar arm movements. It worked well and the device did seem to accurately record my heart rate, etc. That will be my go to exercise shortcut for cross country and backcountry skiing. It is really too bad that Fitbit doesn’t include xc skiing. I see in the Fitbit community boards, many people have requested this over the years, but Fitbit just won’t follow through.

I am enjoying my new toy, but if I have to replace it down the road, I will try to find a fitness tracker that includes more winter sports in their activity choices.

heybales

The selection of different workouts is merely to change the default text label shown.
It changes nothing else. calories is still based on exactly the same HR-based formula.
(only caveat is some devices on selecting Weight lifting would use a more correct database entry for rate of burn, instead of the known inflated HR method.)

You can go into your Activity Record for that workout afterwards and change the text name to what you want, include more interesting info too like what route - allows comparing down the road interesting and fast.

That's nice your HR reads well, I'm sure that method of XC it would be interesting to see getting more fit, HR not going as high, but speed going up.