Overview
The Activity Facts displays summary information for all of your entered activities for the current day. It is displayed in the upper right panel of the Activity Log. The primary purpose of the Activity Facts section is to let you know how many calories you burned.
Activity Facts
Here is the definition of each of the values displayed on the Activity Facts summary:
Exercise Minutes: This is the number of minutes in the day you actually spent exercising. In Figwee, an activity is considered "exercise" when it has a MET value greater than 2.5. Activities such as sleeping, watching television, eating, light office work, driving, cooking, standing, and walking casually are not considered exercise as reported by Figwee. However, activities such as walking a dog, dancing, bowling, cleaning house, and gardening are considered exercise, along with all of the activities usually labeled as exercise such as jogging, weight training, aerobics, walking for fitness, and sports such as basketball, soccer, volleyball, etc.
Exercise Calories: This is the estimated number of calories you expended performing the activities categorized as "exercise" (those with a METs value greater than 2.5).
Sedentary Minutes: This is the number of minutes in a 24 hour day that you did not spend engaged in exercise. Sedentary minutes will include all of the minutes accounted for in your activity log where the MET value of the activity was less than or equal to 2.5. It will also include all unaccounted for minutes in the day.
For example: There are 1440 minutes in 24 hours. If you add an activity entry for 40 minutes on the elliptical trainer, Figwee would report 40 exercise minutes, and 1400 sedentary minutes. If you then add an activity entry for light office work, the exercise and sedentary minutes would not change, because office work is not considered exercise due to its MET value being only 1.5. If you add another activity, say walking a dog (3 METs) for 30 minutes, then Figwee would report 70 minutes of exercise and 1370 sedentary minutes.
Sedentary Calories: This is the estimated number of calories expended for the sedentary minutes. This value is the number of calories you actually recorded in the activity log for those activities deemed "sedentary", plus the remaining default sedentary (non-exercise) minutes calculated at 1 MET. Put another way, anything you account for in the activity log diary either goes to exercise minutes and calories or sedentary minutes and calories, and any left over minutes in the day are added to sedentary minutes and the calories are calculated at the assumed resting intensity of 1 MET. Basically, Figwee assumes you are doing nothing unless you tell it otherwise.
Total Calories Burned: This is the sum of the sedentary calories and exercise calories. This is an estimate of the total number of calories your body used for the day.
Calories Burned Calculation. There are a couple of formulas for calculating calories burned. Figwee uses "METs x Weight in Kilograms x Duration in Minutes / 60". This does not take into account differences due to age or body composition, but for nearly everyone it provides a very usable estimate of calories expended.
Average MET: This is the average MET value for all of the minutes in your day. The higher the number, the more calories you burned that day. The lower the number, the fewer calories you burned. It is a measure of how active your lifestyle is.
If your average MET value is 1.0, you probably did not get out of bed or off the sofa. If your average MET was 2.5, you probably ran a marathon that day. A day where you got up, got showered and dressed, drove to and from work, spent 8 hours on light office work, went home, cooked and ate, did the dishes, and watched TV until bedtime: about 1.25 METs. If you took that same day and added 60 minutes of moderate effort on an elliptical machine: 1.5 METs.
MET is a unit of metabolic equivalent, and is the ratio of a person's working metabolic rate relative to their resting metabolic rate. This unit is commonly used when describing aerobic exercise to indicate the intensity of the workout. An activity of 5 METs burns 5 times more energy than what you would use at rest. Many modern exercise machines can indicate METs. To learn more, see the University of South Carolina Compendium of Physical Activities.
Average Watts: This is the average watts value for all of the minutes in your day. The higher the number, the more calories you burned that day. The lower the number, the fewer calories you burned. It is an alternate measure of how active your lifestyle is.
Calories Per Hour: This value is the average number of calories per hour you burned that day. This is another way of looking at how active you were.
Note that calories per hour is dependent on your current weight. At the same activity level, you burn more calories the more you weigh. Think of this is having to move more or less mass over the same distance; it requires more or less energy depending on the mass. This is one reason why it becomes a little more difficult to lose as you get closer to your target weight; you end up burning fewer calories for the same amount of exercise and activity.
The Big Green Number: This is simply a larger display of the total calories burned in the day. You earned it, might as well shout it out with a large font.
When are the Activity Facts Updated?
Activity Facts are updated automatically in real-time when you add or remove an activity log diary entry.
