Should I get a fitness tracker?

wizzybeth wrote: »

srecupid wrote: »

NorthCascades wrote: »

terbusha wrote: »

I think people do better when they have a specific calorie goal that they can aim for that is the same every day. Consistency wins.

I disagree. I spend my weekends in the mountains doing long hikes and bike rides. Sadly I spent my weekdays sitting at a computer. To be more consistent I would have to stop exercising so much on weekends; clearly that wouldn't help my weight or fitness goals.

Or be more active on weekdays or compensate manually.

Or just continue doing what s/he's doing that obviously works for him/her!

QFT

You will hear rants about the inaccuracies of such devices, but I have found my Charge HR to be quite accurate with one caveat. It does give me false steps when driving, sometimes quite a lot. Solved that by using Drivebit, which posts my driving to Fitbit for me. Starting out morbidly obese, I don't think I could have made through the "2 lbs a week" stage without knowing how many exercise calories I could eat. Now that I have slowed my loss to 1 lb a week, I have still found it to be very accurate. I love mine and am even anxious any time I have to take it off to charge!

dhimaan wrote: »

terbusha wrote: »

I don't use fitness trackers or calculate calories from exercise or activity. I set and adjust my calorie level by how I'm progressing towards my weight loss/maintain/gain goal. For example, if I'm more active, then my weight will begin to decrease and I'll need to up my calories. Since I'm looking at the result I'm actually interested in (weight change), it's a good way of letting me know if I'm on the right track.

I will say that calorie trackers can be a good thing to help you stay at a certain activity level throughout the day, but I wouldn't use them to earn more calories. I think people do better when they have a specific calorie goal that they can aim for that is the same every day. Consistency wins.

Unfortunately we are in the minority. To me it's a glorified pedometer. It always will be.

I don't see why you see this as an unfortunate thing.

A food scale, a fitness tracker, Trendweight and/or other weight tracking apps, whatever one's diet of choice or workout routine is; all of these are optional tools that assist people in reaching their goals. Pedometers have been around for a long time; I can imagine how much of a nightmare the manual click ones were to use. Like all technology, improvements have been made over time that benefit the user greatly. I do use a Charge HR, but before that existed 13 years ago, I was able to get myself from 190 pounds to 119 pounds just by eating less and moving more. Unfortunately I didn't know about CICO back then, so for a few years I'd bounce between 115 and 140, but never any higher. Now I'm 111 pounds and the knowledge of CICO and the use of my food scale and my Charge HR have been paramount in my success. In fact, without my food scale and Fitbit, I would be afraid to eat as many calories as I do and I would be underweight at this point, trying to find some sort of middle ground. There are many ways to fiddle around to find your maintenance, deficit, or surplus calories but a fitness tracker can be an efficient way to do so. It's not perfect, as there is nothing that can pinpoint CICO with 100% accuracy, but I think anything that gets people active, glorified pedometer or not, is a positive thing overall.

ElizabethOakes2 wrote: »

I like my Garmin VivoFit. For things like swimming, I wear it with the heart monitor, and set it up as an 'activity' and have good results.
It's really helped me have a clearer picture of how much activity I do during the day. Who knew I could burn through my 10,000 steps just cleaning house? And I don't even have that big of a house!

I have a vivofit as well and find that it is so inaccurate when I'm cleaning the house! Often I'll be working my butt off cleaning and I'll have the little red flashing light tell me I've been inactive for over an hour. It always pisses me off! Or carrying around loads of laundry and stuff like that, it was underestimates my steps! On days that I spend a lot of time cleaning, I end up with super low numbers.

I have an UP24 by Jawbone, I like it well enough but I have found it grossly underestimates my caloric needs for the day. MFP set me at 1660 to lose a pound a week and jawbone would tell me I should only eat 1200 for the day. I now use it only for motivation when I have been sitting too long and to gauge how active I have been and how I can become more active.