Exercise & activity

What gets tracked

The Exercise tab brings together four key activity signals into one daily view: your step count, active calories burned, exercise minutes, and resting heart rate.

These are the metrics that research consistently links to long-term weight management and cardiovascular health — without any need to count calories or log every workout in detail.

Steps

Your daily step count is one of the simplest and most reliable indicators of how active you are. DayByDay shows your step count for today, a 7-day bar chart, and your average over the past week.

You can set a daily step goal in Settings → Exercise. The default is 8,000 steps, but any consistent daily movement is beneficial — even 5,000 steps is significantly better than being sedentary.

Active calories

Active calories are the calories you burn through movement — on top of what your body burns just to keep you alive (your BMR). DayByDay pulls this from Apple Health where it's recorded by your Apple Watch or other compatible device.

Watching your active calorie burn trend upward over weeks is a great sign that your fitness is improving, even when the scale isn't moving as fast as you'd like.

Exercise minutes

Exercise minutes count any workout that qualifies as moderate or vigorous activity — brisk walks, gym sessions, cycling, swimming, and so on. DayByDay pulls this from Apple Health workouts or lets you log it manually.

The general health guideline is 150 minutes of moderate activity per week. DayByDay shows your weekly total so you can see at a glance whether you're hitting that target.

Resting heart rate

Your resting heart rate (RHR) is the number of times your heart beats per minute while you're at rest. For most adults, a normal RHR is between 60 and 100 bpm — athletes often sit between 40 and 60.

As your cardiovascular fitness improves through regular exercise, your RHR typically drops over months. A downward trend in your RHR over time is one of the clearest signs that your fitness is genuinely improving.

Exercise minute streaks

Just like your check-in streak on the Dashboard, DayByDay tracks how many days in a row you've hit your exercise minutes goal. Building an exercise streak is one of the most effective ways to make movement a habit.

Your exercise goal is set in Settings → Exercise. The default is 30 minutes per day — but you can set it to whatever makes sense for where you are right now.

Logging exercise manually

No Apple Watch? No problem. Tap the + button on the Exercise tab to log a workout manually. Enter the date, the duration in minutes, and the type of activity. Your entry will count toward your streaks and weekly totals.

1. 1Tap the Exercise tab.
2. 2Tap the + button in the top right.
3. 3Enter the date of the workout.
4. 4Choose the activity type (walk, run, gym, other, etc.).
5. 5Enter the duration in minutes.
6. 6Optionally add your step count and active calories if you know them.
7. 7Tap Save.

BMR and daily calorie burn estimates

DayByDay shows an estimate of your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) — your BMR plus the calories from your tracked activity. This is an estimate only, based on standard equations, not a precise measurement.