FITBIT - Should i get 1?

bb4886
bb4886 Posts: 118 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hi,

So i use endomondo to track calories when walking but im really fancying a Fitbit as it automatically syncs with MFP.

Has anyonce got one and would you reccomend using it ?

Replies

  • spozzybear
    spozzybear Posts: 216 Member
    Personally I live my FitBit - it encourages me to be more active and I can set goals for myself. I got the scales as well. I think it's different for everyone though as I know a few people who it didn't help motivate. Individual choice.
    Sorry not helping much am I?

    I would say go for it! :wink:
  • bb4886
    bb4886 Posts: 118 Member
    Personally I live my FitBit - it encourages me to be more active and I can set goals for myself. I got the scales as well. I think it's different for everyone though as I know a few people who it didn't help motivate. Individual choice.
    Sorry not helping much am I?

    I would say go for it! :wink:

    I think that it would motivate me to use the stairs etc because i would see the results :) I just need to justify the £80 lol
  • JeninBelgium
    JeninBelgium Posts: 804 Member
    I have one but recently de-linked it with MFP- the fitbit gave me "credit" for all my calories burned - even those from just breathing- so it would say, for example, that I burned 3700 calories from exercise and adjust my mfp totals when I really only burned maybe 1000 from exercise and the rest is simply what I burn from living and breathing

    it is a great tool to keep track of your activities, to encourage you to move more and you can "compete" against friends plus there are other tools that link with it, for example on my browser I have an application linked with my fitbit that reminds me to do "office friendly" exercises about every 20 minutes in my working day (you can adjust how often you are reminded) and once I do the exercise provided, I clink "done" and it records it with the fitbit

    so in summary, i think it is a fun and handly gadget but not for coupling with mfp
    also if you don't have a heart rate monitor yet and had to choose between the fitbit and a heart rate monitor - choose the hrm (and yes I know they are totally different tools)
  • spozzybear
    spozzybear Posts: 216 Member
    Personally I live my FitBit - it encourages me to be more active and I can set goals for myself. I got the scales as well. I think it's different for everyone though as I know a few people who it didn't help motivate. Individual choice.
    Sorry not helping much am I?

    I would say go for it! :wink:

    I think that it would motivate me to use the stairs etc because i would see the results :) I just need to justify the £80 lol

    Whoah! That's so expensive! I live in Australia and I got mine for $100!!
  • RubyRubixcube
    RubyRubixcube Posts: 258 Member
    im interested to hear some feedback too cause I am considering the same purchase..
  • zen82
    zen82 Posts: 81 Member
    I was looking at them a while back and if you dig around you can get them for more like £65-70, but they do seem to be way more expensive in the UK :-(
  • tcastio
    tcastio Posts: 22
    Yes it tracks all your calories burned, but that is what you want. One pound of fat is basically 3500 calories. Therefore, if you are burning 2000 calories a day, just breathing, then eating 1500 calories a day will create a 3500 calorie per week deficit, that is a pound a week. If you up your burn to 2500 calories per day and continue to consume 1500 calories, easy math, 2 lbs, per week., 100 lbs, per year!

    The fitbit helped me be aware of how many calories I was burning, not just a BMR estimate based on an average from some study. Activity is the key, exercise is just a more intense form of activity.

    Don't think twice, buy it. I bought it and the Aria scale. The best investment I ever made!

    25838254.png
    Created by MyFitnessPal.com - Free Weight Loss Tools
  • bb4886
    bb4886 Posts: 118 Member
    Yes it tracks all your calories burned, but that is what you want. One pound of fat is basically 3500 calories. Therefore, if you are burning 2000 calories a day, just breathing, then eating 1500 calories a day will create a 3500 calorie per week deficit, that is a pound a week. If you up your burn to 2500 calories per day and continue to consume 1500 calories, easy math, 2 lbs, per week., 100 lbs, per year!

    The fitbit helped me be aware of how many calories I was burning, not just a BMR estimate based on an average from some study. Activity is the key, exercise is just a more intense form of activity.

    Don't think twice, buy it. I bought it and the Aria scale. The best investment I ever made!

    25838254.png
    Created by MyFitnessPal.com - Free Weight Loss Tools

    Hhave you got it linked to MFP?
  • tcastio
    tcastio Posts: 22
    Yes, MFP shows my exercise calories separated out.
  • JeninBelgium
    JeninBelgium Posts: 804 Member
    Yes, MFP shows my exercise calories separated out.

    hmm- it put all of my calories together!

    also, I think it still gave me way too much credit for calories burned-

    another tip, since you can't pause or turn it off, when you are driving put it in the stop watch mode while driving- not so important for steps taken (as it seems to count only a few steps while driving for me) but for flights of stairs- as it measures that as well while I am driving - on my one hour commute to work it will give me credit for 5-10 steps taken and 27 flights of stairs- one day I climbed the height of a helicpoter- but if you put it in stop watch mode, you can go onto the website and name that activity as driving and it will remove the falsely counted steps/ stair climbing
  • kylamb
    kylamb Posts: 67 Member
    Just four words...I LOVE my Fitbit!
  • tcastio
    tcastio Posts: 22
    I have never have seen falsely counted stairs, but if you were stepping around inside a moving elevator, then it might perceive that as climbing, so... don't do that! It doesn't count escalators, unless I am actively walking up, then it only counts my steps. In fact, it doesn't count flights of stairs from a workout on a stairmaster because there is no elevation associated with the step. The fitbit requires a stepping motion and elevation increase to count a stair step. I wear mine all the time, even on airplanes. I have seen jostling movements that count a step, but not a stair step.

    As they explain in their literature, placement on your body is important. Placement may be the root cause of your falsely counted stairs while driving. The combination of jostling and your car traveling up an incline may have caused the "false" stairs.

    The "5 - 10 steps" of error is really minor, their website only assures "95-97% accurate". Personally I am not that concerned about 5-10 steps out of the10,000+ steps I take each day. For me that is less than 2 calories per day, I have bigger issues than 2 calories.

    Last thing, the heavier a person is, the more calories they burn with the exact same activity. A 100 pound person burns about 156 calories walking 3 mph for one hour while a 300 pound person would burn 477 calories at that same 3 mph in that same hour. It is VERY important to set up your profile information properly on the fitbit site. Height, Weight, Age, Gender, etc. This information, properly recorded on fitbit.com, allows the separation of your BMR calories from your activity calories. I would suspect that your BMR is about 2200, or somewhere around 90 calories per hour, just breathing. Therefore in a given hour, walking three miles one should burn about 90 calories of BMR + 477 calories for the walk, or about 567 calories for this hour of activity.

    The best thing that I can say, is that I took mine out of the box, followed the instructions, and it works like a champ. It does all the calculating for me.

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