Fit Bit Users- Let's Chat...

I love my Fitbit One. I've had it a little more than two weeks and it's awesome. It interfaces with MFP so you do little recording. I will tell you that Fitbit's food base and recording is a pain. I and many others that have the Fitbit, do all of our food logging on MFP and let the Fitbit do all of the exercise recording, they talk to each other so it works beautifully. And, my husband, who hates dieting decided to give it a try, he loves Fitbit and MFP, he's hooked and lost 5lbs in just one week. Do it, you'll love it!

both my husband and I have a fitbit and they work great!!!

Jumping in to agree - Fitbit for the steps, MFP for the meals. I use a Zephyr HxM HRM and Endomondo for workouts - which syncs to MFP which then syncs to the Fitbit. I log weight in MFP, let it go to Fitbit then use the TrendWeight website (https://trendweight.com/dashboard/) to get a good idea of my overall pattern.

It gets confusing sometimes! :laugh:

Hey Holli! I'm glad you asked this, as I have been thinking about the fitbit again recently. (I was about to buy it a few months ago, instead of replacing my heart rate monitor), but then I read some not so great reviews and decided against it. Some people complained that it wasn't accurate, and that it counts steps while you are sitting (like in a car). Anyone notice this? Any ways to address it? If I'm going to spend $100 on something I'd like for it to be fairly accurate. And where do you wear it/clip it?

If you get one Holli let me know how you like it!

Beth

I am loving my fitbit one ...such a great motivator to get moving and keep moving ....I too log my food on MFP and my exercise on the fitbit site ....I hope you will love it as much as I do ..GOOD LUCK

P.S. You can buy it at bestbuy in case you are like me and impatient of waiting for it to arrive in the mail

Hi Holli,

I love mine. I like many others, record my food on MFP and let Fitbit calculate calories. It may calculate some steps for driving but for the most part I just try to go above and beyond my daily goal of 10,000 steps. My fitbit has taught me how truly sendentary I am during my working hours. I only average 1.3 miles from 9-5 pm. Wow! That number motivates me to get outside and take my dog for a longer walk and get to the gym and exercise. I love mine!

I have the FitBit One and had it linked to MFP but did not really like how it constantly did calorie adjustments so I unlinked it.
I prefer to log my workouts from my HRM here myself.
Mostly I use it only to see how sedentary I really am. It actually gives me a fairly decent idea of my TDEE

Does anyone else think that the FitBit One actually records more steps than you actually take?
Some days it is way over what I think I may have done

I just got my FitBit One about three weeks ago and love it! As others on here said, I still use MFP for all of my food logging, let FitBit track my steps/calories burned and it will sync up with MFP. I find the calorie burn numbers to be quite accurate. You can still manually log activities that the FitBit can't really count (swimming for example) I do notice that it will count a few steps from time to time while I am driving, but not enough that I feel it makes the overall count inaccurate.

I love that it tells me how active I am for the entire day, not just when I am working out. I find myself making up more reasons to get up from my desk at work during the day and take a short break and walk around to increase my activity during the day, or just more active around the house instead of sitting staring at TV..

Good luck, if you decide to purchase I think you will be happy with your decision!

I have a fitbit one and have had it for a few months. I Love it, it helps me stay on track, I log all my stuff in MFP and just let the fitbit log additional steps etc. It seems to work great that way, don't try logging in both or it will double everything (food etc). The only thing that I have had trouble with is it seems to not log flights of stairs very well, we have a split level house which means about 7 steps to the upstairs and 7 stairs to the garage and 7 more stairs to the basement. I have a almost 3yr who is recently potty trained and we do a lot of running up the stairs to go potty etc. Yet sometimes at the end of the day it's only logged 2 flights even if I go all the way to the basement and all the way up to the top level. Then on other days I only go up a few times and WHAM I have like 12 flights logged. So generally I don't pay much attention to the stairs log, it might be more accurate on an actual full flight of stairs which I believe is about 12ft high. But other then that I LOVE it!

If your deciding between a HRM and a fitbit there are a couple things to keep in mind.
Fitbit only tracks your steps taken so, you will not get an accurate burn for anything but walking and running.
So if the majority of your workouts come from other exercises such as weight lifting, elliptical, biking, zumba etc.. I would suggest a HRM instead.
It is nice that fitbit syncs with MFP and is also great to keep you motivated to move throughout the day. I log both food and exercise on MFP. When you log exercise on MFP you just have to be sure to enter your start time.
Also, I have the fitbit one and wish I would have gotten the smaller, less expensive fitbit. Like others have said, the sleep tracker and number of flights of steps you have taken are not that big of a bonus. I have only tracked my sleep 4 times!!
Hope this helps!

Great question! How accurate is the TDEE?

I have had my ONE for about 2 weeks now and I love it. Like most people have already said I don't use it for manually logging anything (food or activity). I still use MFP for all my logging. I let fitbit count my steps, stairs and sleep and all other data is managed through MFP, the MFP site actually suggests that you do it this way. If I exercise (treadmill, elliptical...etc) then i log that as cardio in MFP and just input a start time (this will show up on the MFP site once you link fitbit) so that Fitbit knows not to count that time in its calorie estimate (it still counts the steps, just doesn't use the steps taken during that time to do any calorie adjustments with). The sync is 2 ways - once you log food and exercise into MFP that will sync to fitbit site.

based off your activity level using the fitbit the fitbit site will sync to your MFP to show calorie adjustments positive and negative just depending on how active you are throughout the day. For me as long as I get close to 10k steps a day I will end up with a calorie adjustment of 220+ calories that I can eat back just from walking more.

what's great is realizing how non active I actually was before using my ONE so that I push myself everyday to take extra steps. I started taking the stairs at work and most days I use the treadmill at work during lunch to just take a nice walk.

I think my overall favorite feature is the vibrate alarm that wakes you up without a screaming alarm clock

I tried the FitBit and returned it. Then I tried BodyMedia and loved it. Look into BodyMedia. I feel like it's more accurate and works better.

BodyMedia requires a monthly service charge, right? That's my ONLY concern with getting the BodyMedia instead of the FitBit- I'm not sure that I want to be roped into an additional $70 dollars a year on top of what the device costs (I know I sound incredibly cheap there).

The first 3 months are free, and then there is a small monthly fee after that (I believe $6/month). The FitBit has the technology of a Wii controller, and if you've played the Wii, you know that isn't the greatest. The BodyMedia uses a more scientific way of calculating everything, and I feel like it is much more accurate.

Hey Holli! I'm glad you asked this, as I have been thinking about the fitbit again recently. (I was about to buy it a few months ago, instead of replacing my heart rate monitor), but then I read some not so great reviews and decided against it. Some people complained that it wasn't accurate, and that it counts steps while you are sitting (like in a car). Anyone notice this? Any ways to address it? If I'm going to spend $100 on something I'd like for it to be fairly accurate. And where do you wear it/clip it?

If you get one Holli let me know how you like it!

Beth

You should turn the timer on if your driving any longer than like 30 mins. All pedometers count steps in a car because they have some sort of accelerometer in them that can feel up and down movement and if it's a bumpy ride you'll get steps. I had a $5 one that did the same thing.