Fitbit does it really work?

i have had my fit bit one since the middle of june. what it has shown me is that i am more active during the week than i thought i was and that i need to eat more during the week and i am lot less active at the weekend and that i need to reduce my calories there, since i got it i have started loosing weight again as before i got it i was at the same weight for a couple of months, i haven't lost anything the last two weeks because i have been on holiday and i have relaxed my diet, but i am confident that i will soon shift it again with the help of my fitbit.

It's a fancy pedometer...it works more or less as intended. It will give you a reasonably good estimate of how much energy you burn/need in a given day. It's still an estimate, it's not an exact number.

People who have a really difficult time grasping the fact that they actually burn calories with their day to day hum drum can greatly benefit from these...for many, it's a real eye opener...to many people thinking they have to just go over-train their bodies at the gym and try to burn a gazillion calories...completely unaware that they burn most of their calories per day just being alive.

If you're rather sedentary it can also provide some motivation to get up and move more. Keep in mind that the more exercises you do, the further off that calorie count is going to be...it's pretty good if you're just walking around a lot and some jogging or something...but if you're really training, it's going to become less accurate.

Any thoughts about the sleep patterns it can track?

I have a Zip...I love it! The battery finally died just this morning....and I feel Naked without it! Off to buy a battery...and a spare!

I bought my Zip in April, wear it every day & I love it. It's a great motivator for me. I try to do more than 10K steps every day. I think it's accurate for what it measures. As for the One, I don't really care about measuring my sleep or stair climbing.
Fitbit syncs with mfp so I don't have to figure out the calories or the pace or amount of time I walked. I'm glad I bought it. It's worth the $50 I spent on it.

I have the One. I only used it at night once because it's a bit annoying to wear, and it told me how long I slept, how many times I woke up, when I was agitated etc... pretty cool. The stairs tool is nice I guess but not very accurate from what I've seen, I go up and down the stairs a lot and it seems to only register half a floor every time.

Otherwise though, I use it every day. I like it. It's a good motivator, and it gives you a good idea of your activity level, with how many calories you burned (approximation obviously) every day. The only thing of course is that it doesn't take into account when I work out (Les Mills Pump, which burns about 300 calories), because I don't really move while I do it, so I have to factor that in, but it's great to figure out what your average TDEE is otherwise.

I haven't bothered syncing it with MFP though, it seems a bit of a pain, plus I use a custom goal anyway.

I got my fitbit one back in April, and absolutely love it. Since I have a pretty sedentary day-time life style MFP was over estimating how much I was burning, and I feel that this gives me a better estimate. It's a great motivator, and the sleep tracking aspect works really well to tell me how soundly I've slept. No complaints at all. Even washed it once by mistake and it survived. I have it syncing to MFP so my calories over here are adjusted, and since all I do is walk and no real heavy training it seems pretty spot on.

My husband and I consider our fitbit to be one of our best purchases ever. We are highly competitive so we have a ball trying out step the other. It is also great for me on days that I have not moved much to see that I need to get off my behind and get to stepping.

We are going on 2 years with ours, so its not like its fun for a while then fades, if anything, the addiction gets worse.

I love mine. So much. Lost my Fitbit One on Thursday and bit the bullet to buy a new one Friday morning. It's useful, it's motivating, it's addictive. The feedback really pushes you. Well, it pushes me anyway, because I like all green on my goals and I like nice round numbers. "Oooh, made my 8,000-step goal, but it's just .39 miles more to hit my 4-mile goal... oooh, 27 flights of stairs, where can I find three more to climb? ... oooh, if I went out and jogged around the block, I'll bet I could clear 12,000 steps!" And so it goes.

Without a Fitbit, there is NO WAY I would have climbed over 30 flights of stairs yesterday (let alone almost 1400 in the past four months) and gone jogging after my cardio-machines workout in the gym. Using a pedometer probably accounts for most of the 40 pounds I dropped.

It's also convenient: You wear it, you move around, it syncs, MFP reflects the calorie burn and tells you how much you can eat for dinner. No manual entry required. I like that a lot. It doesn't track all my activity well; e.g., indoor stair climber and rowing machine. For those things, I have my HRM and Digifit, which syncs up with Fitbit and presto, still no manual entry. Happiness.

As a sleep tracker, I think it's meh, just ok -- the Jawbone UP band/application was better for this (UP band was pretty decent too, but died on me after a couple months). But it does give some feedback. I don't use the armband, I just wear something to bed and clip it to that.

I'm at goal weight and working hard at figuring out how to stay there. Using a pedometer is definitely part of the plan. I plan to continue using Fitbit for life, or at least until somebody makes a pedometer that's way better somehow.

I'm going to answer yes. I have had a FitBit for the past three weeks. During that time I have consumed 63,789 calories (2,773 cal / day) and according to the FitBit, I have burned 64,829 calories (2,819 cal / day). I had about a 1,000 cal delta over that time and my weight has not changed measurably. I think I'm in maintenance.

But the FitBit just estimates calories just like the online calculators, so it could be wrong. By a lot.

Tom