Calories on typical day logging as bike ride (non GPS) vs. not logging activity.

[David Goldwasser]

I'm going on 7 day bike ride and I wanted to see how long the band lasted for non GPS bike ride. I charted the band at night and used sleep mode overnight. I then put it in airplane mode whenI woke up and started a bike ride with GPS. I was happy to see the band last 12 hours, but was surprised how many more calories it showed me using vs. a non activity day.

That day showed 2900 calories, vs. 1800-2200 that most typical non riding days have. I was surprised at how much my showing it as an activity influenced the calorie estimates. On my trip I'll be riding 6-8 hours a day, too far to use GPS even in lower power mode.

 

[Chintan Gohel]

I thought calories do go up when you're doing more activity? Or what exactly surprised you? I didn't get that part properly

 

[poit57]

If I understand correctly, you were testing the battery life by placing the Band in Bike mode with GPS, but you weren't actually riding? If you saw a 700+ calorie jump without doing any extra activity, that does seem strange.

If you are sporadically active throughout the day without activating one of the workout modes on the Band, your elevated heart rate during activity could get averaged out through Microsoft's algorithms. This is based on the heart rate it reads for 1 minute every 10 minutes. In one of the workout modes, the Band would continuously monitor your heart rate and more accurately estimate your calorie burn.

If you were idle most of the day of your test, you shouldn't have seen much of a difference in calorie burn between tracking a workout and leaving the Band in normal mode.

An example I've used before in these forums: My Band records around 85 calories per hour for normal, everyday activity. In my weekly bowling league, if I don't turn on Exercise mode, it records around 90 calories per hour as I have 10 relatively short periods of activity spread throughout the hour. If I enable Exercise mode, though, the Band will record about 125 calories for that same hour of bowling.

 

[David Goldwasser]

poit57, Your bowling analogy seems similar to what I'm describing.

 

[Chintan Gohel]

I understand now and Poit57, you obviously know more than me on this one so carry one :smile: