How much do you listen to your fitness tracker?

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Replies

  • peleroja
    peleroja Posts: 3,979 Member
    My Charge 2 is quite accurate for me (5'4", about 118 lbs, early 30s woman, average resting heart rate in the high 50s.)

    My maintenance calories with it on a typical workday (sedentary office job, but with a short bike commute) hover around 1800/day, and up to about 2300/day on longer run days. My weight has remained steady for the past couple of years while I've trusted it.
  • swimmchick87
    swimmchick87 Posts: 458 Member
    I don't know about mine. I have a fitbit alta. I'm a teacher and I'm pretty sedentary in the summer- on many days I have to spend some time pacing around my living room just to get my 10,000 steps for the day, so many days I end up with right around 10,000. Fitbit generally says my TDEE for those days is around 2200 calories.

    The thing is, if I get even a little bit more steps than that, my calories from fitbit go WAY up. For example, one day last week I got 11,200 steps, and fitbit is suddenly saying my TDEE for that day is 2420 calories. The "extra" steps I got represent just over 10 minutes of extra walking, and obviously 10 minutes of walking doesn't burn 200+ calories.

    That part doesn't make sense to me and makes me feel like I can't really trust it. I do like that my fitbit keeps me accountable for moving more, especially in the summer or lazy weekend days where if I didn't try I could easily end up with only 3-4K steps for the day. I've also done a couple of Step Bets and have found them highly motivating; they really keep me on track. I just don't really feel like I can trust it for calories.

    I'm also curious about the HR models- I remember a few years ago when Polar HR monitors were all the rage here and everyone was saying how they're really only accurate for steady state cardio. Every so often someone would come up with the idea to wear one all day to figure out TDEE and everyone would say they're not accurate for that. There was also a lot of talk about how the wrist things weren't accurate without a chest strap. Has something changed to make the fitbit HR models more accurate? Wasn't there a lawsuit about this as well?


  • DreaDarling87
    DreaDarling87 Posts: 46 Member
    I have a Fitbit Charge 2 and I find it to be pretty accurate for the most part.
  • Loveracing21
    Loveracing21 Posts: 30 Member
    ruqayyahsmum wrote: »
    Charge 2 here and I think it overestimates for me too

    It insists I burn around 2500 on a sedentary day, if I hike it tells me my daily burns around 4000

    I'm a 5ft 2 woman I really don't think I burn quite that much (yes I have everything set up correctly)

    Hi I just got the charge 2. How do set up the calories? I thought you can Connect it with this app? I would love to add you as a friend on here and as well as Fitbit. So far I love the this Fitbit.
  • CSARdiver
    CSARdiver Posts: 6,252 Member
    edited July 2018
    I have a Fitbit Flex 2 - essentially a pedometer. I use it as it was intended to - provide an estimate for activity. I eat back exercise calories, but only go by steps and don't incorporate intensity. I recognize the degree of error in the base algorithm and don't overcompensate. I switch to a Polar H7 for biking/swimming/running, but this is more to track HR and performance - not to estimate calories.

    Informally if I'm prepping for a race I'll load up on carbs and ensure I have sufficient protein.
  • ruqayyahsmum
    ruqayyahsmum Posts: 1,513 Member
    edited July 2018
    Loveracing21 wrote: »
    ruqayyahsmum wrote: »
    Charge 2 here and I think it overestimates for me too

    It insists I burn around 2500 on a sedentary day, if I hike it tells me my daily burns around 4000

    I'm a 5ft 2 woman I really don't think I burn quite that much (yes I have everything set up correctly)

    Hi I just got the charge 2. How do set up the calories? I thought you can Connect it with this app? I would love to add you as a friend on here and as well as Fitbit. So far I love the this Fitbit.

    On the Fitbit app set your height, weight and weekly deficit ensuring it's the same as on here

    Then on my fitness Pal go to apps and devices and select Fitbit to pair them

    Be sure to enable negative calorie adjustment for it to remove calories if your not active some days
  • WholeFoods4Lyfe
    WholeFoods4Lyfe Posts: 1,518 Member
    I wear a FitBit Ionic and find it to be extremely accurate. I track my daily calorie deficit and compare that to weight lost and it is nearly dead on (assuming the whole 3500 calories equal a pound thing).
  • Loveracing21
    Loveracing21 Posts: 30 Member
    ruqayyahsmum wrote: »
    Loveracing21 wrote: »
    ruqayyahsmum wrote: »
    Charge 2 here and I think it overestimates for me too

    It insists I burn around 2500 on a sedentary day, if I hike it tells me my daily burns around 4000

    I'm a 5ft 2 woman I really don't think I burn quite that much (yes I have everything set up correctly)

    Hi I just got the charge 2. How do set up the calories? I thought you can Connect it with this app? I would love to add you as a friend on here and as well as Fitbit. So far I love the this Fitbit.

    On the Fitbit app set your height, weight and weekly deficit ensuring it's the same as on here

    Then on my fitness Pal go to apps and devices and select Fitbit to pair them

    Be sure to enable negative calorie adjustment for it to remove calories if your not active some days

    I hope I did it right. I selected to do my own calories.
  • New_Heavens_Earth
    New_Heavens_Earth Posts: 610 Member
    Charge HR 2. Seems accurate. Over 15000 steps per day plus 2 hrs of exercise almost daily gives me an average of 2000 to 2500 calories per day reliably for months. No outrageous calorie burns per exercise session, usually 250 to 400 calories per hour depending on intensity. However it does stop recording sometimes so that could be a negligible bit of an underestimate.
  • Danp
    Danp Posts: 1,561 Member
    I recently bought a Skagen Connected hybrid smart watch (highly recommended as a side note) and decided to test the pedometer. So during a walk I manually counted my steps and and compared it with the count from the watch

    50 count = 50 recorded
    100 count = 98 recorded
    500 count = 495 recorded

    So I was pretty happy with that accuracy. only missing 1% - 2% of steps.

    I also took notes about false steps recorded
    40min train ride in the morning = 5 false steps recorded
    2 hours working at my desk = 12 false steps recorded
    Watching a movie in a cinema = 8 false step recorded
    Sleeping 7 hours = 10 false steps recorded

    So again, pretty happy with that accuracy and I figured that couple of steps that were being missed were probably evened out by the couple of false steps!

    What disappointed me was that even though I was being as active (or more so) as I had always been my step count for the day reduced from about 8k-10k to about 6k-8k so my previous tracker seemed to be badly over.
  • AwesomeOpossum74
    AwesomeOpossum74 Posts: 106 Member
    edited July 2018
    Google Fit on my Android phone, connected to MFP. I only use it to log my steps (daily goals: 1 hour, 10k steps), and it seems very accurate, especially when I compare it across multiple days on the same paths. I am losing weight at the rate I configured in MFP when I keep up with my CICO.

    It's free. I only have to worry about keeping my phone on me, and not worrying about maintaining multiple devices, and tan lines. But I'm not monitoring other biometrics.
  • VUA21
    VUA21 Posts: 2,072 Member
    Losingthedamnweight wrote: »
    Do you find it to be accurate? I have an Apple Watch I use to figure out how many calories I eat and judging from my weight loss patterns it seems pretty accurate

    I love my Garmin. It reminds to get up and move. I find it fairly accurate based on CICO and my personal weight loss

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