Fitbit Flex newbie-Help please

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Giddyduck
Giddyduck Posts: 212 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I have my fitbit for just under a week and I think I am starting to figure it. I understand that it will not recognize my strength training workouts and/or most of my exercise if I am not walking (finally). So my question is....Do I log that exercise manually in addition to the fitbit? I find that the fitbit is sensing that I am moving more but not enough.

Example-yesterday I completed bootcamp for 45 minutes. Workout with ropes, wallsits, squats, burpees, etc... In addition, I took my girls roller skating for 2 hours. According to fitbit, I barely made 10,000 steps and earned less than 400 exercise calories. I only earned a total of 12 minutes of very active minutes.

I am not a runner so I am struggling to figure out the very active minutes.

Thanks in advance.

Replies

  • Giddyduck
    Giddyduck Posts: 212 Member
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    P.S. Feel free to add me on here or on fitbit at www.fitbit.com/user/2FRH44
  • N3rdyBird_
    N3rdyBird_ Posts: 98 Member
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    Yes you'll want to manually log the exercise, personally I prefer MPF for logging both food and exercise though. Just make sure your accounts are synced and you should be good. :)
  • Kevalicious99
    Kevalicious99 Posts: 1,131 Member
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    Honestly .. you are better to forget the active minutes. I have had my Fitbit for about 4-5 months now and you can work your *** off and get no minutes while some other days you barely do anything and get an hour worth of minutes. It is just not worth paying any attention to. If you go to the Fitbit forums you will see many people have issues with the active minutes.

    You are best to just try to hit your step goals.

    I have a Flex and never use it anymore .. use my Force. It is much much better.
  • bluntlysally
    bluntlysally Posts: 150 Member
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    fitbit is for daily movement. use a hrm to record exercise. you need both if you want a full picture.

    i use a bluetooth hrm that works with my phone, using an app called endomondo. (there are all kinds of choices for apps, i like this one bc of ease of use and it has lots of sport/exercise options so i can always use it for anything.) it auto-posts to fitbit, making things super easy.

    please DO not make things complicated. so many people do and this can be really easy!!!

    feel free to message specific questions if you have them.
  • bluntlysally
    bluntlysally Posts: 150 Member
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    oh and i find the active minutes to be total crap. don't/can't use them bc of this.
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
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    MFP has a Fitbit Users group: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/forums/show/1307-fitbit-users

    Non-step based exercise can be logged either in Fitbit or in MFP. I find Fitbit's burns to be way more accurate than MFP's one-size-fits-all guesstimates. It will take trial & error to find what works for you.
  • shesliketx
    shesliketx Posts: 12
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    Do you have your fitbit synced to MFP? If you do, manually enter your exercises into MFP, and then fitbit will add extra calories burned if it thinks you burned more based on your overall daily activity. Not sure if that answered your question, haha. I got a fitbit about a month ago and it was definitely confusing at first!
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
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    Do you have your fitbit synced to MFP? If you do, manually enter your exercises into MFP, and then fitbit will add extra calories burned if it thinks you burned more based on your overall daily activity.
    Short version: when you link your accounts at http://www.myfitnesspal.com/apps/show/30 MFP uses your Fitbit burn rather than your activity level to calculate your calorie goal.

    Long version:

    When you set up your MFP account, you specified an activity level: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/change_goals_guided MFP used your answer, plus your age, sex, height & weight, to estimate how many calories you burn every day (minus exercise). Then you set your weight-loss goal, and MFP subtracted the appropriate deficit to calculate your daily calorie goal.

    Once you link an activity tracker to your MFP account (via the "Apps" tab at the top of every page), you start getting calorie adjustments. If your tracker says you burned more calories than MFP estimated, you get a positive adjustment (meaning more calories to eat). If you enable negative calorie adjustments http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings and you burn less than the MFP estimate, you will lose calories. (But negative calorie adjustments will never drop your daily calories below 1,200.)
  • Giddyduck
    Giddyduck Posts: 212 Member
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    Yes, I am synced so both accounts (MFP and Fitbit) are interfacing which is good. I only add things to MFP so that I don't mess things up worse.

    I think that MFP was/is giving too many calories back for exercise. An example, my bootcamp that I haven't logged this week because I wanted to see what the fitbit would do it with it-MFP gives well over 500 and fitbit gives anywhere from 200-400 for the day?

    I think this is where my questions are coming from-I haven't been eating those calories but occasionally I do go over and would like to know if I had excess from my workouts.

    Thanks.
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
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    I think that MFP was/is giving too many calories back for exercise. An example, my bootcamp that I haven't logged this week because I wanted to see what the fitbit would do it with it-MFP gives well over 500 and fitbit gives anywhere from 200-400 for the day?
    Fitbit's burns are way more accurate than MFP's one-size-fits-all guesstimates.

    Non-step exercise can be logged either in Fitbit or in MFP—never both. I log in Fitbit.

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