Bodymedia Fit vs Fitbit accuracy

chrisdavey

rest day with a beach walk & some pullups and stuff and some cleaning around the house. Pretty close for this sort of stuff.

Starlage

Interesting that you're comparing the readings from the two devices.... but wouldn't you rather have something over estimate you burn vs underestimating? Think about the fitbit's lower burns you're getting- if you were taking a deficit off that like the average overweight person ( 750-1000 a day for someone really over weight) you'd be eating too little and damaging your metabolism. I guess my kinda poorly worded point is I'd much rather have a device over estimate my burn and be eating a little too much (easy fix, eat a little less) than be eating too little according to a device that's underestimating my burns, therefore having me eat too little and in the long run harming my metabolism. (harder, longer, weight-gaining fix)

I'm team BMF, of course. Love mine!

chrisdavey

Interesting that you're comparing the readings from the two devices.... but wouldn't you rather have something over estimate you burn vs underestimating? Think about the fitbit's lower burns you're getting- if you were taking a deficit off that like the average overweight person ( 750-1000 a day for someone really over weight) you'd be eating too little and damaging your metabolism. I guess my kinda poorly worded point is I'd much rather have a device over estimate my burn and be eating a little too much (easy fix, eat a little less) than be eating too little according to a device that's underestimating my burns, therefore having me eat too little and in the long run harming my metabolism. (harder, longer, weight-gaining fix)

I'm team BMF, of course. Love mine!

I've been using the BMF for about 9 months and have recorded data so I know it's pretty much spot on for me.

And there is no way I am risking damaging my metabolism any time soon! :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: But yeah, I get what you mean

And sorry team, no results tomorrow as I forgot to put the fitbit on this morning. Damn it! Oh well, will be doing some mma type stuff later anyway so I can't wear the BMF for that either.

TaraB82

I have a fitbit ultra and love it! I have had mine for about 5 months. I am interested to see how the 2 compare. I think fitbit tends to underestimate the calories burned for some activities. I think the steps are very accurate though.

alli_baba

Interesting that you're comparing the readings from the two devices.... but wouldn't you rather have something over estimate you burn vs underestimating? Think about the fitbit's lower burns you're getting- if you were taking a deficit off that like the average overweight person ( 750-1000 a day for someone really over weight) you'd be eating too little and damaging your metabolism. I guess my kinda poorly worded point is I'd much rather have a device over estimate my burn and be eating a little too much (easy fix, eat a little less) than be eating too little according to a device that's underestimating my burns, therefore having me eat too little and in the long run harming my metabolism. (harder, longer, weight-gaining fix)

I'm team BMF, of course. Love mine!

Interesting point. I wonder how much (if at all) my FitBit is underestimating calories. I've been using it for 5 days now and it seems pretty dead on to me (I've been eating at maintenance for a while so I have a general idea what my calorie burn probably is).

On my rest days (I'm pretty sedentary except for things like walking my dog), my calorie burn is clocking in at 1900. This may be a bit high -- I pretty much assumed that my rest days were around 1800.

On my workout days (strength + 20 min. of HIIT), my calorie burn is reading at a little over 2200. I think my exercise calories are a bit underestimated (because of the strength training), but not by much.

I'm 5'7" and 125 lbs., so the calorie burn seems pretty normal to me given my height, weight, sedentary work life, and workout schedule. I definitely don't think it's underestimating by a sizeable number -- maybe 100 calories, give or take (?)

That said, I have no idea what my results would be with BMF. So, thanks much, chrisdavey, for taking this on!! Really appreciate it!

Crazy4Healthy

Bump to keep track... I've had a BMF since Nov and was just commenting today that I may stop wearing since I pretty much know what it's going to show now and I think it's starting to distort my arm muscle permanently. LOL

Elleinnz

bump

CookieCatCatcher

Has anybody else heard of the new thing is body media though? I'm trying to find the article on it. Its supposed to take the best of all 3 body monitors and combine them.

https://www.mybasis.com/product/#/tech

FitSuga

I have a fitbit ultra that my husband bought me in February. I enjoy the little gadget but I do have a couple of beefs with it. I bike and unless I attach to my shoe ( as suggested) it barely notices I do anything. Even when it's on my shoe I believe it under-estimates my calories. The difference MFP and the fit bit log are anywhere from 100-200 calories difference. This weekend I went hiking up a Mountain and the only fitbit adjustment I got on mfp was 176 calories. Only 16 floors too... Well that mountain was a bit higher! It took more effort than my biking so i know it has to be higher. I live at a high elevation so sometimes I wonder if it effects it at all.
So in general sometimes I really feel ripped of my efforts. I've had no issues with other activities though like running and I think the steps are very accurate. I really like it though anyway. I eat back my exercise calories so I figure being under a little won't be a huge deal. It's handy how it links right to mfp. And ladies that need it hiding you can clip it on the middle part of your bra and it's just as accurate.

Oh and I think it's pretty accurate for strength training. I usually get about 300+ fitbit adjustment on mfp.

shorthand73

bump

poofycat

I bought a fitbit last summer and thought it was only a glorified pedomter. Then I synced MFP to it. The fitbit has WII technology and even if you aren't taking very many steps, it can tell when you are more physically active, say folding clothes, doing the dishes, washing the car. When I look at my food diary, I have a message at the bottom that says you have burned XXX calories through exercise. There can be a large difference on some days, like today I was cleaning the kitchen and doing laundry-things I don't do everyday and I have burned an extra 214 calories. Of course, I am very overweight, so I am burning more than someone smaller, and I have yet to start exercising. My steps are only a little over 4000, so not very high. Some days I only get an extra 35 calories and the most extra I have gotten was something like 344.

chrisdavey

I bought a fitbit last summer and thought it was only a glorified pedomter. Then I synced MFP to it. The fitbit has WII technology and even if you aren't taking very many steps, it can tell when you are more physically active, say folding clothes, doing the dishes, washing the car. When I look at my food diary, I have a message at the bottom that says you have burned XXX calories through exercise. There can be a large difference on some days, like today I was cleaning the kitchen and doing laundry-things I don't do everyday and I have burned an extra 214 calories. Of course, I am very overweight, so I am burning more than someone smaller, and I have yet to start exercising. My steps are only a little over 4000, so not very high. Some days I only get an extra 35 calories and the most extra I have gotten was something like 344.

agreed. My cooking & cleaning last night actually added about 300cals to my normal "rest" day.

That Basis looks pretty interesting. I don't think it would be cheap though.

jillybean0123

I was actually trying to decide how I wanted to go about figuring out how many calories I burn on a daily basis. There is no "typical" day for me. The amount of physical work I do varies according to how many other people get sick or injured. I like the idea of the fitbit but I don't think it would be that accurate since I drive an ambulance and those things are ROUGH. But I would like to know a little more about how much activity takes place on a call. If only there was a way to keep it from tracking the movement of the vehicle.

heybales

Has anybody else heard of the new thing is body media though? I'm trying to find the article on it. Its supposed to take the best of all 3 body monitors and combine them.

https://www.mybasis.com/product/#/tech

Well, now that is pretty cool. I know the accuracy of wrist strap HRM's isn't as accurate as chest strap, but something would be better than nothing in this case.

Be interesting to see the first reviews and subscription price.

This should lower the BodyMedia price. I know they already lowered their sub price on the website when FitBit was out about 3 months.

shewanna

I have a fitbit ultra and it really motivates me..I also have a mio heart rate monitor watch..I loved ut to death when I first got it but I don't know how accurate it was..but I love fitness gadgets

AshinAms

All I found out is that they are both unreliable when used while riding a motorbike. Apparently I climbed over 100 sets of stairs while riding :P

I had this! We took the Vespa on the weekend through Amsterdam's bumpy streets and next thing I had climbed 33 sets of stairs

UrbanRunner81

bump

bltrexler

Thanks for posting I have the body media band and was curious as to the comparision to fitbit since my-coworker is using the fitbit. Please follow up I'd love to hear what you think in a couple of weeks

kenlad64

I gotta read all of this at some point soon, thanks for the experiment!

rileysowner

Has anybody else heard of the new thing is body media though? I'm trying to find the article on it. Its supposed to take the best of all 3 body monitors and combine them.

https://www.mybasis.com/product/#/tech

Well, now that is pretty cool. I know the accuracy of wrist strap HRM's isn't as accurate as chest strap, but something would be better than nothing in this case.

Be interesting to see the first reviews and subscription price.

This should lower the BodyMedia price. I know they already lowered their sub price on the website when FitBit was out about 3 months.

Are there any other wrist only HRMs that do a continuous HR monitoring. From what I have seen the reason the chest strap is more accurate is because it provides a continuous monitoring of HR where wrist ones are accurate for the actual reading, but since it is not continuous it is not very useful for calorie calculations. If they have come up with a way to to continuous HR monitoring from a wrist monitor, then they would be getting around that problem. Frankly I found the site rather sparse on information, and I am guessing a high price. At this point getting a Fitbit and using my HRM for my exercise burns and inputing that at the Fitbit site looks like a way to get a fairly accurate reading.