Thinking about getting a Fitbit...input appreciated

I have a fitbit One. A couple of years ago I had the original fitbit. I have found the fitbit and its website the single most useful device I have ever used to assist in tracking calories for weight loss. For me at least, it is uncannily accurate.

I have the Fitbit Charge HR and I find it very helpful and motivating. It seems to help me mentally with the restrictions of counting calories as when synced to MFP it will adjust accordingly, letting me add more healthy foods to my diet and I don't feel hungry all the time. I feel as it has helped myself and my wife as when we see low numbers we get moving more. I personally think it was a good investment towards my healthier lifestyle journey and haven't had any issues with mine yet.

I have the One, also. I've had it for 2.5 years and it's survived a lot although I haven't washed it... yet. The advantage of the One over the Fitbits you wear on your wrist is that it's more accurate. It will measure steps on a stairmaster, for one, although it won't measure it as floors climbed since you aren't actually moving upwards.

I recently looked at getting one of the newer Fitbits, like the Surge, but decided I didn't want to be tied down to having to wear it on my wrist every single day. I wear the One clipped to the middle of my bra and it works perfectly there.

I honestly don't pay much attention to the actual calorie burn I get from the Fitbit site. I have it synced to MFP so the only thing I'm interested in are the extra calories I earn during the day that the Fitbit transfers over to MFP.

My wife and I just upgraded to the Fitbit Charge HR because they became too big!
Good problem to have! We have both lost 30-40 lbs each since November last year and the tracker combined with MFP has been great to keep us moving towards our goals.

The Charge HR is much more accurate than the Charge without the heart rate monitor and adjusts well with MFP - just be sure to hold the button to start and end the timer during workouts and it will adjust on MFP when you document your workouts.

I tested the accuracy against the HR monitors at the gym and even tried "tricking" the step counter and it didn't go up during my attempts to throw it off with daily desk tasks.

I'm extremely skeptical but so far the Charge HR has been awesome. We'll see how it pans out on the scale and how the clothes fit with the more accurate readings. I think with the old one I wasn't consuming enough calories to keep my metabolism up.

I have the fitbit flex (wrist) and its accurate enough for me although I'm considering getting either a one or a charge hr because it doesn't accurately count my treadmill steps (I have tested it with my iPhone Health app and the steps are waaay off) For regular steps throughout the day, though, it works pretty well. I don't rely 100% on the sleep tracker but I can at least tell if I had a restful night or a restless night and adjust my pre-bedtime rituals accordingly.

I used to have a One, now I have a Charge HR. On a couple occasions since I got my first Fitbit, I've had to be without it for a few days and I've hated not having it. At first, I just used it to be more aware of how much I moved and to get a more accurate idea of how much I burned during exercise, but I wasn't tracking my food carefully enough to get the maximum benefit. However, I was still losing using a rather relaxed approach to diet.

More recently, I'd stopped losing, so I decided to get serious about tracking what I eat. Since then, I have compared my predicted weight loss, according to Fitbit's reports of calories burned and calories in (which it gets from MFP) against my actual weight loss and it has been very, very close. That really motivates me to track my food carefully and to find more ways to get moving.

So yes, it can be a very accurate and useful tool. It isn't good at non-step based exercise - swimming, weight lifting, cycling - so that still needs to be entered manually, but since almost all of my exercise is step based, I rarely need to do that. If you are doing an activity that keeps your steps from being felt at the wrist - pushing a shopping cart or stroller, holding on while using a stair climber, etc. - and you have a wrist worn tracker then it can help to take it off the wrist and put it in a pocket. I do this with my Charge HR when I'm shopping. I'd probably not do that when using a stair climber because my heart rate would be elevated and it would probably be able to detect enough steps to determine that it isn't just stress causing a higher heart rate.