Do you use a Fitness Tracker.. would you recommend it?

NorthCascades

moonangel12 wrote: »

NorthCascades wrote: »

Chest strap isn't useful for weight loss.

This is what I am still figuring out

ETA: What are the advantages of a fitness tracker for weight loss vs. the chest strap. It might be blaringly obvious, but I had Benadryl last night so still working through that brain fog this morning I know mine has been a fun motivator, and thanks to my nerdy husband (said with love and affection) I do enjoy the numbers and graphs and things.

A chest strap counts and times heart beats, while you're wearing it. Which isn't all the time because they're not particularly comfortable.

A fitness tracker counts steps and estimates how much you walk, how much distance you cover accumulated over the course of the day. It's really easy to get a pretty good calorie estimate for walking, it's really just mass over distance. Every time you get up to use the bathroom, check the mail, walk the dog, etc, you're burning calories, but it's hard to know how much you've done and easy for these things to tell you.

Some of them are programmed to be able to estimate calories for running, and other forms of exercise. Generally running and walking are pay reliably accurate, everything else is a guess. But it's a consistent guess so you can learn how to use it well.

Also for some people, and it sounds like you could be one of them, fitness trackers can be motivating for the numbers they provide, and for the challenges.

NorthCascades

AnnPT77 wrote: »

NorthCascades wrote: »

Chest strap isn't useful for weight loss.

I dunno: Chest strap HRM (with related receiver, of course) provides exercise calorie estimates of limited accuracy for a limited range of common activities, and one can log those into MFP as one's exercise calorie estimate (possibly unaware of the potential accuracy limitations).

That might help some people lose weight.

On the other hand, a 24 x 7 fitness tracker provides all-day calorie estimates including exercise that are of limited accuracy and have most (not all) of the same limitations with respect to common exercise activities as the chest-belt HRM, and one can synch those to MFP to automagically adjust one's MFP calorie goal based on the estimates (possibly unaware of the potential accuracy limitations).

Don't get me wrong, folks: I used to have a chest belt HRM, and used it for many things, one of which was using its calorie estimates as an input to logging exercise on MFP. I now have a high-quality fitness tracker and use it in a similar way (wouldn't dream of synch-ing it to MFP because it estimates my overall calorie burn way too low, and trying to make sense of the synch data would be far more work than it's worth).

Either one can be useful, and they'll tend to be close enough to accurate for most people.

I use a chest strap during most kinds of exercise because it gives me a way to figure out how much strain I'm taking on and when to taper ahead of a big event. And, like you say, I even use it skiing to get a better calorie guess, because I don't really have anything that to go on when I ski. Snow conditions have such a huge effect that distance and pace really aren't very meaningful.

But this is very narrow and specific. If you're comparing a tracker to a chest strap, for almost everyone the tracker is the right answer. People who have a specific enough reason to use a strap usually aren't going to even consider a tracker instead (and might already have one).

GaryRuns

moonangel12 wrote: »

NorthCascades wrote: »

Chest strap isn't useful for weight loss.

This is what I am still figuring out

ETA: What are the advantages of a fitness tracker for weight loss vs. the chest strap. It might be blaringly obvious, but I had Benadryl last night so still working through that brain fog this morning I know mine has been a fun motivator, and thanks to my nerdy husband (said with love and affection) I do enjoy the numbers and graphs and things.

@moonangel12 the chest strap is primarily used by people that care about what heart rate zone they're working out in. Monitoring your HR can help you target your training for specific goals. As a reformed runner and cyclist I used it heavily. It does add a bit to the accuracy of calorie expenditure estimates that you get but it's still an estimate. In general using heart rate to estimate calorie burn is pretty good if you do some steady-state activity, like you generally do running or cycling, but it's accuracy drops off rapidly if you do something like HIIT where your heart rate varies a great deal during exercise. Also, as others have noted, they're not particularly comfortable and the battery life of the ones I've used wouldn't be amenable to wearing them for long periods of time.

moonangel12

Thanks for all the HR monitor info! Hopefully usefulnto the conversation and not a total side bar!

I am getting into running/biking and soon swimming more as I start looking ahead toward a sprint tri - but I also am total ADD and can’t remember squat which is why a tracker is nice... half the time I forget to get it started on a run!

I think I am hung up on being tied to it. I like it, I enjoy it, I don’t want to feel like I “need” it - ya know? Plus the green pulsing lights weird me out But it is fun to see improvements in time and heart rate among other things...

One interesting thing I noted with the step tracker - I can tell how crummy I feel based on distance per day... I was fighting something for a couple days, and you could see the distinct drop in steps even though as a homeschool mom I did the same things throughout the day... now I can look back and see if it was a good or bad day physically based on my step count (assuming it was an “average” day).

EliseTK1

I'm addicted to the data I get from my Apple watch. I've been using it for about a year and a half. It's highly motivating for me, and I'm a numbers person.