Help me decide: Fitbit or HRM?
LilRiver
Posts: 81 Member
tl;dr - I can afford/justify one or the other, but not both. Not right now. I'd planned on an HRM. But! I love tracking & my pedometer died... so maybe I should upgrade the pedometer to a fitbit and get an HRM later? Or just get a new battery for the pedometer and get the HRM now.
I had planned on my next fitness purchase being an HRM. But that was months ago and I fell off the wagon. I hit my panic weight this morning and, with it, got a huge spike of motivation. Time to lose these last 45 lbs & finish what I started. Half my weight, here I come! I grabbed my pedometer, excited to start the day, and... the battery was dead. OHNOES!
Now. I could just replace the battery and get myself a HRM. But in falling off the wagon, I fell out of my cardio habits. I'll pick them back up in time, but they don't have the importance to me that they did a few months ago. Plus, I'd like to put more effort into strength & flexibility. I enjoy cardio and won't give it up completely, but strength and flexibility are important - especially as I'm not as young as I used to be.
Tracking activity, though, that is huge for me. 18 months ago, I weighed somewhere north of 270 lbs. I decided it was time to get healthy. Weight loss wasn't the main goal, though I knew it would happen as I started moving more. Conveniently, my mother gave me a bunch of "um, Brooke, it's time you lose the weight" Christmas gifts. One of the gifts was a pedometer. I put it on and never looked back. It was the best $20 anyone has ever spent on me. It was the exact motivation I needed - daily numbers that I could record & play with & use to challenge myself. It took 6 weeks (I'm anemic & a smoker and was horribly out of shape), but I got up to 10k steps. Then I joined MFP. Then I stepped on a scale. A year later, I'd lost 100 pounds. It was awesome. I tracked almost every single step I took in that year (there were a few months in the middle where I didn't record the numbers, but for the most part, give me a day and I can tell you how many steps I took and how many of those were aerobic).
Obviously, I have no issues tracking things on my own, but the community aspects of the Fitbit are intriguing. As are the possibilities of linking it up to MFP and such. Yet, for months, I laughed at the idea of spending that much money on a bloated/overfeatured pedometer. Especially when I could get an HRM and have even more fun numbers to play with.
I want a new toy to celebrate my rediscovered motivation... and to make it all that more important (and fun - whee new toy) that I stick with it. So! Should that toy be the silly bloated pedometer or should I stick with the plan & get the HRM which I might not get full use of for a while?
I had planned on my next fitness purchase being an HRM. But that was months ago and I fell off the wagon. I hit my panic weight this morning and, with it, got a huge spike of motivation. Time to lose these last 45 lbs & finish what I started. Half my weight, here I come! I grabbed my pedometer, excited to start the day, and... the battery was dead. OHNOES!
Now. I could just replace the battery and get myself a HRM. But in falling off the wagon, I fell out of my cardio habits. I'll pick them back up in time, but they don't have the importance to me that they did a few months ago. Plus, I'd like to put more effort into strength & flexibility. I enjoy cardio and won't give it up completely, but strength and flexibility are important - especially as I'm not as young as I used to be.
Tracking activity, though, that is huge for me. 18 months ago, I weighed somewhere north of 270 lbs. I decided it was time to get healthy. Weight loss wasn't the main goal, though I knew it would happen as I started moving more. Conveniently, my mother gave me a bunch of "um, Brooke, it's time you lose the weight" Christmas gifts. One of the gifts was a pedometer. I put it on and never looked back. It was the best $20 anyone has ever spent on me. It was the exact motivation I needed - daily numbers that I could record & play with & use to challenge myself. It took 6 weeks (I'm anemic & a smoker and was horribly out of shape), but I got up to 10k steps. Then I joined MFP. Then I stepped on a scale. A year later, I'd lost 100 pounds. It was awesome. I tracked almost every single step I took in that year (there were a few months in the middle where I didn't record the numbers, but for the most part, give me a day and I can tell you how many steps I took and how many of those were aerobic).
Obviously, I have no issues tracking things on my own, but the community aspects of the Fitbit are intriguing. As are the possibilities of linking it up to MFP and such. Yet, for months, I laughed at the idea of spending that much money on a bloated/overfeatured pedometer. Especially when I could get an HRM and have even more fun numbers to play with.
I want a new toy to celebrate my rediscovered motivation... and to make it all that more important (and fun - whee new toy) that I stick with it. So! Should that toy be the silly bloated pedometer or should I stick with the plan & get the HRM which I might not get full use of for a while?
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Replies
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I have both, LOVE the fitbit! It gives me much more information than the hrm. My calories burned stopped working correctly on my hrm about 2 wks after I bought it, which is another reason I prefer the fitbit. I will continue to use both, as I like seeing the progress I'm making towards a healthier heart rate, but if I had to choose one it would be the fitbit.
The fitbit will be a great motivator, especially if you can sync to a smartphone. I can see how many steps I have towards a goal, or how close I am to beating yesterday's total, so I'm going to push myself more. It's the little things, like parking further away from the mall to get those extra steps in. It's like a game I play to get in better shape!0 -
It seems like you had a solution in your post, replace the battery in your pedometer and get an HRM. I use both a Fitbit and an HRM during my workouts. Though I use the calories from the HRM instead of the Fitbit since I don't feel they're as accurate. The community here is way more active than the Fitbit community, in my own opinion.
I also believe there are products on the market that would cover both options in one product if that's what your end goal is.0
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