Fitness WATCH and what they do

With an Apple Watch, you actually start and end an exercise. You choose the type (yoga, running, walking, Pilates, etc) and it tracks your heartbeat, elevation changes while waking or running, etc and calculates the calories.

I’m a bit OCD and often count my steps and compare them to the watch, finding it to be pretty accurate. I’m guessing there’s some kind of algorithm where it “learns” you and becomes more accurate with time.

I don’t think it would record your standing mower as steps. It does, however, record certain arm or wrist movement as steps. I once worked on some crochet on an international flight and arrived home with 40,000 steps logged.

Within MFP, you set your activity level. I have mine set at highly active. I don’t record things like walks to the yoga studio or gym because their part of my activity. I have my watch set not to record calories to MFP for that reason.

I do start/stop intentional walks and runs that are outside my usual activity so I get calories credited for those.

I do not do this for weight training sessions, because they are so stop and start, and generallythe watch only records 20-30 calories for those- same as if I was just walking around the hiuse. So, no, if you don’t specifically start an exercise, it won’t record it as one.

However..... sometimes when I’ve walked to the store or up to the Square, it will ask me “do you want me to start a walking exercise?” I just dismiss it because that’s part of my usual activity.

By the same token, if I forgot to stop n exercise and it senses I’m no longer exerting, it will ask me if I want to stop the session.

But to keep it short, the best method is to touch the watch to start an exercise and likewise to end it when your done.

No watch would know that you're carrying a heavy blower when walking. How would that be possible? Your heartrate might be a bit higher working than just walking casually because of it. Thus maybe you get somewhat higher calorie burns. You can start activities on all watches, like Zumba classes, and some detect those kind of things automatically. How well depends on the watch itself, but also on you. My Garmin watch has the annoying habit of double tracking a run sometimes. I start a run with GPS and all, end it, save it. Then realize I need to go to the supermarket, sweaty and all. Thus quick dip into my flat for money and shopping bag, and then a walk to the supermarket. My heartrate still high. This is the moment my watch realizes I might still be running, and thus ads an auto-detected run with the same start time as the one I already tracked, but with the end time when I'm back at my flat. I just delete this double dipped annoyance.

If you want to have a watch then you need to know what you're looking for. Would you be annoyed if you needed to charge it every day? Do you want specific features? Link with MFP (I don't do that as I get crazy workout calories due to that)? Maybe have a look at the DCrainmaker website. He has some fab reviews and tests.