Fitbit Charge HR..... do I buy or do I not buy?

_rachel_k
_rachel_k Posts: 243 Member
edited November 19 in Fitness and Exercise
I am looking for positive and negative feedback on the Fitbit Charge HR.

I struggle to lose weight and stay constantly losing and I am wondering if tracking my daily activity (not just my long walks/runs) will provide me with a better idea of what my daily burn/calorie intake should be.

Replies

  • brianpperkins
    brianpperkins Posts: 6,124 Member
    It comes down to what activities you do, what data you want to track, and what degree of accuracy you're looking for.

    http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2015/02/fitbit-charge-review.html
  • _rachel_k
    _rachel_k Posts: 243 Member
    Slow pitch, landscaping the house (not just mowing the lawn). I just want to see what my daily caloric burn is (I know it's not 100% accurate but it may be better than some formula that may or may not be right for me) so I can adjust my caloric intake. According to formula's online I should have been on the fast track to weight loss but that is not the case.
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
    _rachel_k wrote: »
    I just want to see what my daily caloric burn is (I know it's not 100% accurate but it may be better than some formula that may or may not be right for me) so I can adjust my caloric intake. According to formula's online I should have been on the fast track to weight loss but that is not the case.

    Any Fitbit (not just the Charge HR) will calculate your TDEE, the number of calories necessary to maintain your current weight. When you connect your accounts, MFP will adjust your goal every day to TDEE minus deficit.

    You can learn more in the Fitbit Users group http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/1290-fitbit-users

    But you still have to learn to log everything you eat & drink accurately & honestly. Logging is simple, but it ain't easy. Logging works.
  • discretekim
    discretekim Posts: 314 Member
    edited June 2015
    I want one but I don't like the price.
  • _rachel_k
    _rachel_k Posts: 243 Member
    That's why I'm asking discretekim. I want to make sure that my money will be well spent. There are a lot of positive reviews online but no one really talks about how it has improved their weight loss journey.
  • brianpperkins
    brianpperkins Posts: 6,124 Member
    Wrist worn activity trackers monitor arm movement and interpret if it is a step or not based on movement pattern. They have a tendency of counting phantom steps for swinging arm movements and missing steps when arms don't swing naturally like when pushing a shopping cart. The wrist mounted HRs are not accurate during exercise. Landscaping doesn't lend itself to either step based or HR tracking.
  • _rachel_k
    _rachel_k Posts: 243 Member
    Looks like I'll have an anklet lol

    I really just want to lose my fat, brianpperkins, and so far I haven't had much luck. According to the calculators online I should have been on the fast track to weight loss (2lbs a week) but I was barely losing .5 a week and I was even weighing my Quest Bars!
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
    brianpperkins wrote: »
    Wrist worn activity trackers monitor arm movement and interpret if it is a step or not based on movement pattern. They have a tendency of counting phantom steps for swinging arm movements and missing steps when arms don't swing naturally like when pushing a shopping cart. The wrist mounted HRs are not accurate during exercise. Landscaping doesn't lend itself to either step based or HR tracking.

    I had a Fitbit Flex, and now I have a Charge HR. Yes, I get "steps" drying my hair. And I "lose" steps pushing a shopping cart. But step count is just a metric—all that matters is an accurate burn.

    I eat back 100% of my Fitbit adjustments, lost the weight, and have maintained for almost a year. TDEE is by definition the number of calories at which your weight will stabilize. So my Fitbit burn = TDEE. You can't get any more accurate than that.
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
    _rachel_k wrote: »
    According to the calculators online I should have been on the fast track to weight loss (2lbs a week) but I was barely losing .5 a week and I was even weighing my Quest Bars!

    According to your ticker, you have 28 lbs. to go. A healthy, sustainable loss is .5 lb. per week for every 25 lbs. you're overweight. The less you have to lose, the more slowly it comes off. That's just the way the human body works.

    Even if you eat at 1,000-calorie deficit, you will not lose 2 lbs. per week at your size.
  • _rachel_k
    _rachel_k Posts: 243 Member
    I was eating approx 1700 calories and running or walking every day (roughly an additional 200 calories burned for each walk and 400 for each run)

    I have a ticker? man, I set that up forever ago lol I didn't realize it was still on anything. I actually SHOULD lose 40 lbs to be healthy but I would kill for just 20.
  • PopeyeCT
    PopeyeCT Posts: 249 Member
    I got mine about a month ago. I love it and it has helped me break a plateau.

    Now that I have been using it for a while, I'm not upset with it but I think the HR part is over-rated. I thought I would use it to adjust my workout intensity to stay in the fat burning zone but it doesn't work for that. You can only look at your intensity after the workout is completed. And after a couple of times I realized...just don't get out of breathe and I'm in the right zone.

    Just having it and knowing that I'm tracking my activity, I find myself getting up and walking around more or taking the stairs instead of the elevator, that sort of thing.

    Overall, I love it. But you can get a Misfit Flash for $35 and get all that except HR, and it's waterproof and doesn't need to be recharged.
  • brianpperkins
    brianpperkins Posts: 6,124 Member
    editorgrrl wrote: »
    brianpperkins wrote: »
    Wrist worn activity trackers monitor arm movement and interpret if it is a step or not based on movement pattern. They have a tendency of counting phantom steps for swinging arm movements and missing steps when arms don't swing naturally like when pushing a shopping cart. The wrist mounted HRs are not accurate during exercise. Landscaping doesn't lend itself to either step based or HR tracking.

    I had a Fitbit Flex, and now I have a Charge HR. Yes, I get "steps" drying my hair. And I "lose" steps pushing a shopping cart. But step count is just a metric—all that matters is an accurate burn.

    I eat back 100% of my Fitbit adjustments, lost the weight, and have maintained for almost a year. TDEE is by definition the number of calories at which your weight will stabilize. So my Fitbit burn = TDEE. You can't get any more accurate than that.

    You keep posting your anecdotal results without ever accounting for the accuracy of your logging. Note your frequent use of the word "my" ... your complete overlooking of testing showing the HR models are inaccurate during exercise ... that you concede that the device has errors that you then ignore when claiming it "can't get any more accurate than that" which is a contradiction. Feel free to believe marketing hype ... I don't care ... just don't pretend that your one person sample size is in any way applicable to the rest of the planet.
  • PopeyeCT
    PopeyeCT Posts: 249 Member
    brianpperkins wrote: »
    just don't pretend that your one person sample size is in any way applicable to the rest of the planet.

    You're a little over critical there. She ate what it said to eat for an entire year and maintained weight. That's a year long study. It's not pretending, it's fact.
  • _rachel_k
    _rachel_k Posts: 243 Member
    PopeyeCT thanks! Can I ask, how did it help you break your plateau? Because it has made you do that little bit extra activity? There is frequently older styles of fitbit's on sale on the garage sale apps/websites that are out that are significantly cheaper than the HR but they are older models.
  • Nerdyguy
    Nerdyguy Posts: 14 Member
    i have one and I love it .. but then as the name imply s in nerdy and all the numbers are "fun" for me. My only complaint Ive found that the heart rate tracking is a bit off.. I have a chest strap HRM that I use when Im working out .. It feeds directly to my treadmill and Ive noticed that there can be as much as a 10-20 lower point difference in what the Fitbit is reporting than what the chest strap is reporting (which I feel is the more accurate measurement being almost directly over my heart) early in the workout .. they tend to sync up later in the workout and my theory behind that is as my blood pressure increases the accuracy increases as well.. Once again I have no science to back that up .. just my own theory.
  • MeanderingMammal
    MeanderingMammal Posts: 7,866 Member
    _rachel_k wrote: »
    I am looking for positive and negative feedback on the Fitbit Charge HR.

    Sounds like you need to think through what you're actually after, and whether a wrist mounted pedometer adds value to your information or not.

    A pedometer of some kind might help with long walks, but a decent HRM is going to be more useful if you run. If you are in a situation where it's going to be subjected to a lot of inadvertant vibration then you'll get a high level of false positives. If your lifestyle gives you a reasonably predictable level of background activity then it may not give you much useful data, if your background level of activity is less predictable then it might be useful to you.

    fwiw my cycle commute to work will give me a good 5000 steps, meaningless.

    If you think a pedometer of some kind might help you, then get one. They're not a panacea. It's merely data. It's up to you to turn that into useful information.

  • _rachel_k
    _rachel_k Posts: 243 Member
    Nerdyguy, how does your FitBit calorie burn compare to say TDEE calculators and all that other fun number stuff?
  • brianpperkins
    brianpperkins Posts: 6,124 Member
    PopeyeCT wrote: »
    brianpperkins wrote: »
    just don't pretend that your one person sample size is in any way applicable to the rest of the planet.

    You're a little over critical there. She ate what it said to eat for an entire year and maintained weight. That's a year long study. It's not pretending, it's fact.

    It's one year where she concedes the device has inaccuracies, does't account for any errors in her intake logging, then claims 100% accuracy ... that is an absolutely flawed "study". It's no different than the one person anecdotal accounts of "I only ate ... " or "I gave up ..." as the reason why they think they lost weight.


    She concedes it doesn't count 100% accurately ... yet somehow it magically is dead on for burn ... again, contradictory.
  • Nerdyguy
    Nerdyguy Posts: 14 Member
    _rachel_k wrote: »
    Nerdyguy, how does your FitBit calorie burn compare to say TDEE calculators and all that other fun number stuff?

    I cant say that Im totally familiar with TDEE yet .. only been on this whole fitness thing for a couple months.. honestly before i came on here a week ago I didn't know what TDEE was .. let me educate myself some more and ill get back with you on that :)

  • RebeccaD22
    RebeccaD22 Posts: 202 Member
    I literally just bought a Fitbit Charge HR 2 days ago. So far, I REALLY like it.

    I agree that having a tracker on your wrist is going to count movements when you might be swinging your arm and not your leg, BUT, I tested this out for instance while sitting at my desk at work and reaching for the phone, typing, writing, etc., and it never counted my small movements as steps.

    I actually think the steps are quite accurate if i compare them to other things I have done and other pedometers.

    I also tells me my heart rate, has a clock, an alarm, monitors my sleep, and stairs climbed.

    I easily reach my 10,000 steps and much more in a day because I can actually see the number. It is great! It tells me how many calories I've burned just by walking. I can also time an exercise and it will sync up to MFP. For instance, I go on a morning walk for about 30 mins at work and I time it and then I can see just the information for that small work out. I also do this for my evening exercise.

    I love that I can take it off and fully charge it while i am in the shower, then put it right back on for bed. And i never see accidental steps when i wake up.

    It is water proof (splashes of water. You shouldn't get in the shower or going swimming with it) and comfortable.

    For me, it is a nice reminder everyday of what I am trying to do and what goals I truly want. :)
  • _rachel_k
    _rachel_k Posts: 243 Member
    RebeccaD22 thank you!
  • sodakat
    sodakat Posts: 1,126 Member
    I have a Fitbit Flex which I believe is very accurate, but you can determine your own TDEE without buying anything or relying on an online calculator. However, you must log everything you eat and you must log accurately.

    [Total calories consumed+(Total lbs lost x 3500)]/# of days =TDEE

    55835802.png
  • rosebette
    rosebette Posts: 1,660 Member
    I have a fitbit Charge HR, and I believe it is quite accurate. My hope was that it would "give" me more calories than MFP because it was calculating my heartrate during all activities, such as yoga or strength training, but no such luck. Today I did kickboxing, yoga, and a 15 minutes walk -- my burn so far is around 1400 calories. I'm over 50 and short, so I have a pretty low metabolism, sometimes under 1100 when not active all day.
  • _rachel_k
    _rachel_k Posts: 243 Member
    rosebette, that's what I'm talking about! Online calculators don't take everything into consideration. I had a 30 minute walk at lunch today and Map My Walk said I burned 222 calories...... did I really though? How much did it over/under estimate? I don't know. Do I eat back 100 or 50? I went under a bridge twice so is the distance accurate to the calories burned?
  • rosebette
    rosebette Posts: 1,660 Member
    _rachel_k wrote: »
    rosebette, that's what I'm talking about! Online calculators don't take everything into consideration. I had a 30 minute walk at lunch today and Map My Walk said I burned 222 calories...... did I really though? How much did it over/under estimate? I don't know. Do I eat back 100 or 50? I went under a bridge twice so is the distance accurate to the calories burned?

    I found the estimate for a basic walk for someone of my size very close to the MFP estimate. The big differences I found were in what I considered "high impact" exercises, like kickboxing and zumba, and lower impact activities like strength training and yoga. My burn for "high impact" activities was much lower than I thought -- MFP was off by almost double what the rate actually was. Also, my heart rate drops so much during some parts of yoga that it really negates any calorie burning aspect of that activity as exercise. However, I work on a big campus and did find that stair climbing boosted my burn a bit more than if those steps were just for a walk.
  • MeanderingMammal
    MeanderingMammal Posts: 7,866 Member
    edited June 2015
    rosebette wrote: »
    ... because it was calculating my heartrate during all activities, such as yoga or strength training, but no such luck.

    And this is part of the fallacy that the marketing around devices like these perpetuates. HR is not a meaningful indicator of calorie expenditure for many activities. For yoga your HR is too low to demonstrate anything over BMR, for something like kickboxing the fluctuations in heart rate will lead to an overestimation, for strength training the cause of the changes in HR is not the demand for oxygen, but merely the requirement to increase blood pressure to sustain the movement.


  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
    edited June 2015
    rosebette wrote: »
    The big differences I found were in what I considered "high impact" exercises, like kickboxing and zumba, and lower impact activities like strength training and yoga. My burn for "high impact" activities was much lower than I thought -- MFP was off by almost double.

    ^This. It's human nature to overestimate your exertion level. So any device will probably give you a more accurate burn than logging your exercise in MFP.
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