Fitness Trackers: Share you experience :-)

lalapurpledog

I am wanting to purchase a Fitness tracker in the near future. I do not have any experience with these whatsoever. How accurate are they and what brand do you use? I am wanting accuracy, of course, and comfort. Please share your experience with them.

ScubaAmyMN

I have a Fitbit Flex and I love it. However, I use it mostly for tracking steps/miles and sleep, and not so much to track calories. I think you need to decide what your needs are; if you're looking for something more like a HRM to use while working out, I don't think the fitbit is great for that.

I have noticed that I try to walk a LOT more at work (and even jogging in place at home at night) since I've gotten it.

ShannonMpls

I have a Fitbit Flex and I love it. However, I use it mostly for tracking steps/miles and sleep, and not so much to track calories. I think you need to decide what your needs are; if you're looking for something more like a HRM to use while working out, I don't think the fitbit is great for that.

I have noticed that I try to walk a LOT more at work (and even jogging in place at home at night) since I've gotten it.

I agree with this.

I chose the Fitbit One because I like to hide it if I want, but I know a lot of people prefer the wristband because it's harder to lose.

I love the damn thing and wear it every day. I find it very motivating - my dog has gotten a lot of "extra" walks due to me wanting to hit 10k steps.

Jen0414

I am looking at buying a fitness tracker too. Something to wear all the time, that will help me move more but also track calories in/calories out.

Anyone else have any recommendations?

Anilynlm

I love my Fitbit One.

aswearingen22

I got the Garmin VivoFit last week and love it! I now wear it as my watch and since it's waterproof, I never take it off. And the batteries last for a year, yet another reason I never even take it off. And I can use my Garmin chest strap with it when I work out to track my heart rate and workouts. I love that it has a display on it so I can cycle through and not have to sync to my phone first to see the information, but it also easily syncs via my phone. It really has worked to get me moving (red bars light up after an hour of inactivity and them more little bars for each additional 15 mins up to an hour, so I get up from my office and walk around). The bands are changeable but comes with the large and small size, so I just traded the one I didn't need for another color on the Garmin forums, awesome! I'm using it to track daily calories so I can eat at roughly 80% of TDEE. The calorie count isn't perfect in any of these devices, but they're close enough for me. The Garmin has been getting great reviews. Check out dcrainmaker's reviews on the various devices.

Nedra19455

I love my Fitbit One a lot. My initial goal was just to increase my activity with the hopes that I would magically lose weight, but it was actually getting the Fitbit that made me joint MFP. I bought the Fitbit to increase my activity and then I was like, "Hey, look I can sync it with MFP and try to tackle weight loss from both ends."

It syncs so seamlessly. I find that it feels really accurate too. I never really end a day hungry anymore -- the Fitbit tells MFP when I need more calories and so I am always getting the perfect amount as long as I stay somewhere around my net goal. On the days when I am not as active, I find that the net calorie goal is the right amount of food too -- not too much or too little for what I'm doing in my day. I absolutely love it. Not only does it give me great feedback, but it really encourages me to work more so that I can have more flexibility with my diet. I also don't think it overestimates calorie burn as much as MFP (or at least as much as I hear MFP does...never actually logged cardio with MFP before because I've never needed to). If anything, I think it might underestimate -- I have been losing about 1.5-2 lbs a week eating all/most of my calories including the ones from the Fitbit and I am only "supposed" to lose 1 lb a week.

The only downside for me is that it doesn't know when you are on a stairmaster or a treadmill with an incline. So if you are on real hills and scaling real flights of stairs, it measures your altitude change along with the steps you're taking and "knows" that you are doing the extra work of stairs or incline. But on a treadmill, can't measure your change in altitude and so it just counts steps. As a result, my usual workout (brisk walking at full incline) had to change in order to feel like I was getting an accurate "credit" for what I was doing. I climb real stairs and hills instead, or I walk on a flat treadmill, but at a faster pace.

It's not waterproof, but that doesn't bother me because I don't know how accurate it would be with swimming anyway. It is splash proof and if you wear it under your clothes anyway (I wear it on my bra or in my coin pocket of my jeans), it stays pretty dry.