Fitbits question

Misslove36

Are they any good, which is the best one value for money

Do they really work or are they just an over paid pedometer that is the latest fad?

sweetNsassy2584

I have the force and I absolutely love it. I now know how many calories i'm burning and what my TDEE is.

Misslove36

I have over 10st to lose, don't exercise and like the odd drink or three
I want to have to change
Can fitbits work for me or is it for "fit" people?

dbra58

My fitbit has been very motivating to me. It was shocking when I saw how little I actually moved! I got in lots of steps at work, many times over my goal of 10,000, but at home it was only about 3,000. I had to make an extra effort to get the steps, and seeing them add up made me want to get more!

Good luck on your journey!

sympha01

A fitbit will not magically change you. It will not do the work for you. But if you are committed to working to change yourself, a fitbit or any activity tracker may be a helpful tool for you, depending on your personality. Are you motivated by numbers? Will setting a daily goal for calories burned or steps taken or minutes "very active" make you more aware of your activity level and more accountable to getting and staying active? If so, yes, get one.

But on the flip side, there are plenty of people who are stressed out by numbers and goals. Like, all the (editor's note: weirdos) who say that counting calories just makes them more aware of how much food they're NOT eating and may trigger them to eat more.

I got a fitbit last year as a Christmas gift after getting active and having already lost a little more than 55 lbs. Since then, I have lost another almost 90 lbs, and I'm a little addicted to my fitbit data. It definitely encouraged me to add more activity to what I was already doing.

One very big caveat I'll give: it's very good at quantifying walking, running, and in a big-picture sort of way how much fidgeting / non-exercise "chores" you do (like: it can sort of 'tell' on days I do a lot of laundry or run errands -- those days show up with higher activity levels and burn rates for me quite clearly). However, it's crap at tracking workouts that aren't running. Lots of times I'll do a sweaty sweaty cardio workout with a kettlebell where I know my heart rate got up really high for a long time, and it gives me about half the credit it gives me for walking. So. If you live somewhere that gets too cold for walking in the winter, and if you want to track more than how much you're doing chores around the house, I'd wait until spring to get one, because what you get out of it will be limited until you can get outside and walk.

0067808

Thanks sympha01 - that's really useful advice - I'm thinking of buying a Fitbit but live in Belfast and its getting to that really cold time of year when it'll soon be too icy to walk much - I don't belong to a gym so don't have access to a treadmill. I wondered if it would be able to tell what other exercise I was doing apart from walking, so your post has been v helpful. Ill probably still get one, but at least I won't be disappointed - I'll know its merits and limitations in advance. Cheers.

sympha01

To be clear, it does a pretty good job actually of telling whether you got up off the couch or not. For anyone who just needs a little motivation to sit less, even just indoors, it is pretty good actually. But yeah, don't count on any of the models currently available to track workouts accurately.

TeaBea

Here's a link to the FitBit group here in MFP.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/1290-fitbit-users

True, HRMs (heart rate monitors) are better calculators for steady state cardio than FitBit....but I don't think the technology exists to accurately capture strength training, Hiit, yoga, etc....yet.

Even an activity tracker with a chest strap component is going to be limited.