Looking for suggestions on fitness trackers

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  • WhitneyDurham777
    WhitneyDurham777 Posts: 71 Member
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    The funny thing I find about this conversation. Your diet is 80% when it comes to weight, exercise 20% I love to go out in the mountains and so GPS is where it is at. Love to just see where I went and explore new places. I think the best bang for your buck right now is the Garmin Vivoactive HR. It does everything for around $250.00. I don't even bother logging my exercise in MFP. I know what I do and it is fairly consistent week in, week out. So I just track my weight and diet. If I am gaining I just cut back. Right now I am trying to lose some weight that I put on this past year, and I have been happy with the results so far.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    powr69 wrote: »
    That's difficult to assess. If it helps, I work in IT. I do sit a lot, but I constantly have to get up and walk to people's desks and such, and since we're in a 2 story building I go up and down the stairs (2 flights) a few times a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. Stride length will be useless here because I may walk quickly and with a long stride, or I may walk slowly in a smaller stride, etc. If/when I get out of here on time and go for an hour walk, that's a piece of cake, except the whole stopping/starting because Pokemon, but apparently that's mostly a non-issue as well. As before, I'm just trying to figure out if I can get a relatively accurate reading on burn during work, etc. and see if it's worth counting, etc. Currently I have it set in MFP that I am sedentary, this would also help me figure out if that's not really accurate.

    I doubt sedentary is accurate, most people with trackers find that is under 4K steps - and that is really bump on log all day long.

    What most the trackers do to estimate distance (except for Garmin mentioned above) is start with a set stride length distance and your weight - now it knows what the expected impact and hang time is for those steps, and compares it to your actual step impact as seen by device.
    From that an actual adjusted stride length is used for the steps being really done.

    That's why it's best if that set figure for stride length is the average for your daily type of movements - it can then adjust up and down pretty decently - obviously the more you get away from the average, the more inaccurate it gets.

    But if you were to start with stride length of serious exercise pace, then everything would be an adjustment down - and likely by big enough amount the inaccuracies at your normal daily pace would stack up.

    Your daily routine actually sounds like a perfect use of your average tracker - exactly what they have been designed to be best use with.
    Do a short test to confirm or change stride length, and you'll be good to go.
  • FreyasRebirth
    FreyasRebirth Posts: 514 Member
    edited February 2017
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    WhitneyDurham777 wrote: »
    The funny thing I find about this conversation. Your diet is 80% when it comes to weight, exercise 20% I love to go out in the mountains and so GPS is where it is at. Love to just see where I went and explore new places. I think the best bang for your buck right now is the Garmin Vivoactive HR. It does everything for around $250.00.

    I just got a refurbished one (not the HR+, which has GPS) for under $70. New, you can get them around $110-120.
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
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    Another vote for the VAHR. I junked the cheaper brother, the VIvosmart HR, as it is little better than a step tracker as far as accuracy of HR goes (compared to a chest strap on the treadmill). The VAHR is much better.

    Has GPS, HR and is waterproof. Other brands tend to be water resistant. It was important as I flyfish.

    On the treadmill, comparing the calories burned, the VAHR is very close to my chest strap (Polar). They don't talk to each other.

    After an outside walk, I can see what I walked. Nice when snow shoeing. Not needed at all, but I like to play with my toys.

    Garmin Connect integrates easily with MFP, so all the info (steps, exercises) comes across with no input from me. Plus it tells me to get up off my *kitten* every hour. I don't always do it, but it tells me to.
  • rollerjog
    rollerjog Posts: 154 Member
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    if it was me i would save my money and not by a fitness tracker, rather send my money on food , stay on point by tracking your calories staying active and working out results will come if you know what your doing
  • OldAssDude
    OldAssDude Posts: 1,436 Member
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    Here is what I use...

    Garmin fenix3 HR

    Pretty accurate GPS with GLONASS, altimeter, compass, route navigation, and other advanced fitness features. It also syncs with MFP.

    The fenix5 is coming out next month, and I will probably wind up getting one.

    They have other less expensive devices as well.
  • powr69
    powr69 Posts: 22 Member
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    heybales wrote: »
    Do a short test to confirm or change stride length, and you'll be good to go.

    Possibly dumb question time: how? I could google it, but I don't want to have to sift through a ton of possibly not right stuff because I searched the wrong terms or whatever.
  • PaigeMed
    PaigeMed Posts: 27 Member
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    MelanieCN77 wrote: »
    I love my Apple Watch.

    Same here. It's kept me motivated for a year straight.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    powr69 wrote: »
    heybales wrote: »
    Do a short test to confirm or change stride length, and you'll be good to go.

    Possibly dumb question time: how? I could google it, but I don't want to have to sift through a ton of possibly not right stuff because I searched the wrong terms or whatever.

    The default setting is probably not the actual value, the actual value used as default is calculation from your height and gender, standard formulas.

    To confirm what it should be for changing possibly, find a high school track of known distance (beware if markings are all for meters now, and the 1/4 mile is different markings you'd never guess were that)

    GPS shouldn't be used since it would be for daily life movement. Walk up to and past the start line noting the exact time on device, or just start an activity as you walk past is easiest.
    Walk at your average daily pace for 1/4 mile - might be hard to back off from serious exercise pace it'll be easy to do, you want what the majority of your day is.
    When done stop the activity record or note the exact time again.

    With activity record - you know how many steps for a known distance - 1320 ft, or 0.25 mile.
    Device will tell you what it thinks it got for distance.

    1320 ft / steps = decimal feet per stride. Like 2.4 ft.

    That's 2 ft.
    That's 0.4 x 12 inches = 4.8 inches decimal.

    I'll have to let someone else comment where the current settings are for stride length, as my device is gone, and I don't know if my Garmin 310XT has same settings.
    If so - it would still be under Settings - Devices on web account.

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