Do you use a fitness tracker?

Fitbits and Jawbones are fancy pedometers. They won't tell you your heart rate which is a more accurate reading for calories burned. But they do have all sorts of other features. I am not a fan, but others are.

I just received a Polar FT7 for Christmas and absolutely love it. It is still an estimate of calories burned, but it tells me the duration of my workout, my average HR and max HR. I glance at it to see if I should be working harder (for a higher HR). It will be a game for me to burn more calories each workout, etc.

I still only eat back about 1/2 the calories it says I burn.

I just bought my second Fitbit One. @esjones12‌ is correct in that it is a pedometer, but it also tracks your calories burned and active minutes. Depending on the model, it will also tell you how many flights of stairs you climbed. It syncs flawlessly with MFP also.

I have worn my Fitbit continuously since purchase in 2011, before I joined MFP. There are challenges you can join on the Fitbit mobile app or you can just challenge yourself.

I love the Flex and the Charge but they are not friendly to me due to arthritis. I made a sales associate open the box so that I could try the band on. Which was a good thing because I could not get the clasp to work. I did try two to see if it was just the one item I had trouble with, but it wasn't. My husband also could not get the blessed things hooked on me correctly either. I can see by your picture that you are a young person so probably won't have this issue, but it is something that you should check before making the purchase.

I have the Microsoft Band with Heart rate monitor and all of the bells and whistles.... I absolutely love it. It does a great job tracking workouts, steps takes, sleep walks, hikes and all the notifications from your phone can be set up to silently and discretely give you a light buzz on the wrist.

I tried out a Microsoft Band in their store last weekend ... it has all of the bells and whistles, HRM, GPS - you can even check messages but it's so annoyingly clunky and it faces down which made me fear I'd destroy the screen. I could see myself getting aggravated with that thing on my wrist all day.

I have a Polar FT4 - got it when I did Insanity, it was hard to guess-timate my burn and it turned out that I was burning way less than I assumed I was. I also take classes so I love my HRM. I also have a Fitbit Zip ... I don't really need it but it's helpful. I'm sedentary at the office and sometimes seeing how low my step count is motivates me to get off my *kitten*. The challenges in the FitBit app like "Holiday Hero" "Goal Day" and "Workweek Hustle" are fun. If you have a competitive spirit having a FitBit and adding a bunch of buddies can be great motivation.

No, don't see the point. I'd rather spend the money on a pair of running shoes.

enterdanger wrote: »

I don't like that it isn't working with MFP or that my Iphone4 is too old to sync with it. I read that since the website had the big change back in December the garmin connect app isn't working. They are purportedly working on getting that working again.

@enterdanger I just got mine to work with MFP today. From Garmin connect, on your fitness & health tab (or whatever you renamed it), there is a tile that says "Calories in/out". Click the settings button, disconnect from myfitnesspal and then settings/connect to myfitnesspal.

I have a Garmin Forerunner 15. It combines the Vivofit pedometer with the Forerunner 10 GPS tracking for running which is perfect for me.

I use a FitBit for my daily activity. I have step goals that I like to meet every day, and I eat based on how much I move. I have a watch that I wear when I'm running, it shows my time, how far I've gone and an estimated calorie burn. I don't think any of this is necessary, though.