Fitbit??

Just did a podcast on this very subject. Everyone seems to love their Fitbits. Works best for walking/running, not so great on stair climbers/ellipticals. But their website allows you to enter that data manually. Plus it captures your activity all day, not just when you are working out. Only problem I heard of was getting sweat on it interfered with the readings, but putting it on a clip or band solved it. Wasn't an equipment problem at all. For the money, its a good bet.

My husband and I both love our fitbits! It's fun to see when you're most active and how you're sleeping at night. It has made us think about moving more.

I love my Fitbit, but it has limitations. Let me give you my take on it.

Why I bought it: I was losing weight too fast, and wasn't sure how many additional calories to eat to slow it down without stopping it altogether. At work, I walk a lot, which is easy enough to track with any decent pedometer. But, I was also climbing stairs all day long, and pedometers don't give extra credit for steps taken on stairs. And, I was excited that it could be linked with MFP to automatically add in the extra calories available.

What I loved that I didn't expect: The sleep tracker function seemed sort of useless to me when I bought it, and I didn't care because that wasn't why I bought it. But, I enjoy tracking my sleep, and it has shown me the need for some changes there as well. For example, I now wear ear plugs to bed. I didn't realize just how much my partners snoring was affecting my sleep. I also loved the daily badges awarded for total steps, lifetime steps, floors climbed, etc.

Has it helped: You bet it has. I now have a fairly accurate assessment of my TDEE, which allows me to eat the proper number of calories. I am still losing weight, but at a slower, steadier, healthier pace.

Limitations: I am now looking into getting a HRM. The Fitbit is great, and I will continue to wear it every single day from the time I wake up until the time I lay down. I think it has it's place for tracking TDEE. But, now that I am adding in actual, intentional exercise as well, I need the HRM to accurately show how many calories I am burning at each session. MFP and the Fitbit site both have the option to add in how many minutes you did a certain activity, but the calories burned are just an estimate. Only a HRM can tell you for sure how many calories YOU burned doing that activity.

This is all strictly based on my opinion and personal experience with it. I think if you aren't really climbing stairs, you may do just as well with a cheaper pedometer, even though the other features of the Fitbit make it more fun than a regular pedometer. If you are wanting it to track calories burned during a particular activity, you're probably better off with a HRM. Whatever you decide, I wish you the best.

I love my Fitbit, it's been a valuable asset in assisting with my lifestyle change and MFP success.

I set my MFP profile to "sedentary", MFP imports the data from the Fitbit site which pulls it from my Fitbit, and then any walking that I do that's more than MFP's calculation of sedentary gets logged as calories to eat back.

"Only a HRM can tell you for sure how many calories YOU burned doing that activity."

Even a HRM is just an estimate based on averages, though it should be a better estimate for non-step-based activities.