wearing Fitbit on ankle?

FitBit tends to adjust to you over a couple of weeks. I don't see why it wouldn't qork, but if you change your mind and start wearing it on your wrist, I believe you'll have some inaccuracy until it adjusts.

It has settings for dominant vs. non-dominant hand. As for the step counting, I believe it does it by sensing the impact. It is possible to rack up steps by swinging your arm, but you have to do it with force for it to count them. Normal arm movements won't do it.

it does count steps when your arms arent swinging. it truly does. however, as to accuracy, mine alerted me that i reached my 10k steps the other night while i was sitting at my computer...so, you have to take it all with +/- of accuracy. its good but not perfect. (i have the surge and if i wore it on my ankle, i truly would feel like i was under house arrest. its enormous)

I had a Fitbit flex that was so inaccurate (it never "adjusted" as someone suggested), I eventually just trashed it. If you are looking for your heart rate - you need to wear it at a pulse point (wrist). If you are looking for accurate steps - you may want to try it on your ankle. I found that talking with my hands, scrubbing the stove, hammering a nail - all added steps to the Fitbit. My real suggestion - cancel the order and get another brand.

You're over thinking things. Use it how it's intended to be used (on your wrist, as an activity monitor) and understand that all this calorie counting stuff (both cals in and cals out) are just a series of estimates.

Any increase you see from talking with your hands is going to be insignificant. Any "lost" cals from moving with stationary arms will be insignificant. If you think about it... a hard workout lasting 1 hour will burn 600 cals, and probably not even that. That's going at a high intensity consistently for an hour. How much do you think you're burning walking around a grocery store? I'm not saying you aren't burning cals, I'm just saying that things like that are insignificant in the bigger picture.

For most, "accuracy" is far more dependent on your consistency than it is on a particular method.

It's designed to be worn on the wrist. If you have a good reason to not wear it on your wrist (not allowed at work, for instance) then you can perhaps wear it on your ankle, taking reassurance from the fact that some people have experimented with wearing it on their ankle and said it seems reasonably accurate. However, that is anecdotal - it hasn't actually been studied.

It does not count arm swings, so don't worry about holding onto books, dog leashes, purses, etc. Fitbit has to filter out arm swing movement to detect the acceleration generated by a step. Yes, it will miss some steps that it should count and count some arm movements it shouldn't, but it evens out. Especially since Fitbit takes into account the intensity of the step when computing calories. A missed step won't have been intense enough to count for much calorie burn and a "phantom" step from daily activities probably won't be very intense, either. It's best not to obsess over your exact step count and trust Fitbit to have figured it out for the most part.

Pushing shopping carts is the one activity where I worry about it missing steps. I try to push one-handed when I can. Another option is to turn off the HR function and put it in your pocket, but I almost lost mine once doing that. (You do need to turn OFF the HR function because it will get really wild, really inaccurate HR readings in your pocket.)

Yes, the screen scratches more easily than would be ideal. A cautious swipe with a little acetone or a rub of toothpaste with a Q-Tip will help if your screen is hard to read. For some reason, I had more trouble with this when it was new. Now that I've had mine for almost a year, I don't seem to get bad scratches much any more.

Stair climbing counts are unreliable - at best. On a windy day I can get 100 flights just walking around the house, without going near the stairs. Other times, it completely misses it when I do climb a flight of stairs. So, I set my daily stair goal to 1, and ignore it.

senecarr wrote: »

I was tempted to do this when grocery shopping because having my hand on the cart causes it not to register steps. Unfortunately, I can't fit mine around my ankle.

That. I realized some time ago that it does not track when I am in the store. Sometimes I will push the basket with one hand or I intentionally leave my basket and walk down the aisle to get what I need and go back to the basket. Otherwise, I just chalk it up to knowing that I have walked in a store for however many minutes.

I have the charge hr and wear it on my ankle when riding my bike. It might not count all the steps, but it is better then wearing on my wrist when biking. It also keeps my heart rate on my ankle. I wear it inside my socks.