Wearing your FitBit with a HRM?

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andreamaym
andreamaym Posts: 179 Member
I recently purchased a HRM to and was wondering if I should still wear my FitBit One during my workouts for the step count?? What does everyone else do? Thank you!

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  • codycsweet
    codycsweet Posts: 1,019 Member
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    Yes wear it. This will allow you to get those steps

    Then you can manually add the activity if you want to override the calorie burn. I don't log an step based activity because I just let my Fitbit track it most of what I do is step based except lifting and hrm aren't made for non cardio activities anyway.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    Ditto's.

    I have a much more accurate personal calorie burn formula so the HRM gets the stats to use that, and I replace all the workouts with manual logging, even running.

    Sometimes that means my step count drops, which means I need to redo my stride length again.
  • Ryderod
    Ryderod Posts: 103 Member
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    Yes I still wear my FitBit with my HRM. My workouts consist of a cardio warm up and then weights, so I want the steps from the treadmill or elliptical trainer.
    Obviously the FitBit does not pick up on the strength training, so my HRM come into play there. What I've done is create a FitBit activity called "Gym Adjustment". I use the activity timer on my FitBit One, and after training I take the higher HRM calorie burn value, subtract the FitBit calorie value for the captured activity and add that sum in my "Gym Adjustment" workout.

    I'm not sure if my methods are 100% correct, but these devices are all estimations in any case, and I am meeting my targets so it does seem to work for me.

    I have the bluetooth Polar H7 transmitter, and was also using the digifit app linked to FitBit, but I found the overwritten calorie count was extremely high, so I have gone back to my initial gym adjustment log.
  • scrapjen
    scrapjen Posts: 387 Member
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    Always wear your Fitbit, there's no reason to take it off! But yes, add in the HRM too ... I love second opinions! I love to press the timer on my One, and so I can see it's exact estimate for a workout and then compare that to my HRM. For most of my workouts, the Fitbit comes in higher. It's made me just a tad cautious in accepting my Fitbit TDEE and thinking I can eat as many calories as those calculated.

    I did a blog post pondering all these exercise estimates!
    http://jenbsjourney.blogspot.com/2013/10/exercise-estimates-trying-to-be-truthful.html
  • andreamaym
    andreamaym Posts: 179 Member
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    So do you guys log your workouts through FitBit or through MFP??
  • _caseyb
    _caseyb Posts: 51 Member
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    I wear my fitbit and polar to the gym. I log my polar gym workouts into MFP and it talks seamlessly to Fitbit. That way I still get credit for the actual steps in an activity along with the correct calories.

    I've found that my fitbit and polar are pretty much neck and neck in calories for activities like zumba but shows a big difference in activities requiring a little more strength such as kickboxing or boot camp.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    So do you guys log your workouts through FitBit or through MFP??

    I've been doing Fitbit recently, just easier.
    And then I just post the workout to the wall directly with some stats as an update, since the sync to MFP wouldn't show up as exercise logged.
  • andreamaym
    andreamaym Posts: 179 Member
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    I wear my fitbit and polar to the gym. I log my polar gym workouts into MFP and it talks seamlessly to Fitbit. That way I still get credit for the actual steps in an activity along with the correct calories.

    I've found that my fitbit and polar are pretty much neck and neck in calories for activities like zumba but shows a big difference in activities requiring a little more strength such as kickboxing or boot camp.

    How do you log it into MFP? Just manually add it?
  • andreamaym
    andreamaym Posts: 179 Member
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    So do you guys log your workouts through FitBit or through MFP??

    I've been doing Fitbit recently, just easier.
    And then I just post the workout to the wall directly with some stats as an update, since the sync to MFP wouldn't show up as exercise logged.

    I do Jillian Michaels DVDs so the calorie burn is WAY off if I just rely on FitBit! Hence why I finally invested in a HRM.... Hence why I'm asking sooooo many questions haha. Thanks for being so willing to help, everyone!
  • _caseyb
    _caseyb Posts: 51 Member
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    I wear my fitbit and polar to the gym. I log my polar gym workouts into MFP and it talks seamlessly to Fitbit. That way I still get credit for the actual steps in an activity along with the correct calories.

    I've found that my fitbit and polar are pretty much neck and neck in calories for activities like zumba but shows a big difference in activities requiring a little more strength such as kickboxing or boot camp.

    How do you log it into MFP? Just manually add it?

    Yep! I use the app. Hit the add button and go to exercise -> cardio. It will ask you to name the activity, start time, duration and calories burned.

    So if you did something like strength training for half an hour, your HRM might say you burned 200 calories during that time period while fitbit says you burned 50 since you weren't actually walking around. Just enter the info into MFP and fitbit will replace their 50 calories for that time period with the 200 from MFP.
  • andreamaym
    andreamaym Posts: 179 Member
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    I wear my fitbit and polar to the gym. I log my polar gym workouts into MFP and it talks seamlessly to Fitbit. That way I still get credit for the actual steps in an activity along with the correct calories.

    I've found that my fitbit and polar are pretty much neck and neck in calories for activities like zumba but shows a big difference in activities requiring a little more strength such as kickboxing or boot camp.

    How do you log it into MFP? Just manually add it?

    Yep! I use the app. Hit the add button and go to exercise -> cardio. It will ask you to name the activity, start time, duration and calories burned.

    So if you did something like strength training for half an hour, your HRM might say you burned 200 calories during that time period while fitbit says you burned 50 since you weren't actually walking around. Just enter the info into MFP and fitbit will replace their 50 calories for that time period with the 200 from MFP.

    Thank you SO MUCH! This is exactly what I needed to know!! :D
  • pinkraynedropjacki
    pinkraynedropjacki Posts: 3,027 Member
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    They are totally different things.