Anyone use a FitBit??

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paddlesup78
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Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby paddlesup78 » Sat May 26, 2012 6:05 pm

I recently bought a fitbit and love it!
Anyone else out there use one?? :D

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Re: Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby ultraslacker » Sat May 26, 2012 7:37 pm

I have no idea what it is. :)
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Jwolf
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Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby Jwolf » Sat May 26, 2012 7:41 pm

It's a little device that you use to track your movement and activity- acts like a little pedometer but does more than that.

Looks cool but many of us gadget-types measure our distances using GPS devices that are more accurate for actual running or cycling (some even for swimming).
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Re: Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby oobinsnaffa » Sat May 26, 2012 9:07 pm

They're all the rage amongst my internet mommy pals right now. I haven't bought one because I'm saving my pennies for a Garmin watch. It's a neat little device though!
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paddlesup78
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Re: Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby paddlesup78 » Sat May 26, 2012 9:51 pm

Its very neat. Its very accurate as well. Counts the steps, distance, cals burned, activity level, and flights of stairs climbed.
I bought mine on Ebay and LOVE it!

Check em out! www.fitbit.com

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Jwolf
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Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby Jwolf » Sat May 26, 2012 9:55 pm

Cool! Has it helped you achieve your goals for fitness and/or weight loss (not sure what you wanted to use it for)?
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paddlesup78
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Re: Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby paddlesup78 » Sat May 26, 2012 10:40 pm

yes for sure. It can all be customized to what you want. How many steps calories etc. ive had it about a month and lost about 5lbs

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Re: Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby Half-Mary » Sun May 27, 2012 1:40 am

I've never used a FitBit but I have a BodyMedia Fit. It helped me to get to a better weight for my height, and I still use it periodically to make sure that I'm still on track. Seeing the number of calories burnt in a day really helps me to figure out the number I should take in as well.

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Re: Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby jonovision_man » Thu Jul 09, 2015 9:08 am

Anyone still using their FitBit? ;)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/fitbi ... -1.3144534

I find they are most popular with people who want to count their normal activities as exercise in lieu of, you know, actual exercise.

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Re: Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby RA. » Thu Jul 09, 2015 9:25 am

jonovision_man wrote:Anyone still using their FitBit? ;)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/fitbi ... -1.3144534

I find they are most popular with people who want to count their normal activities as exercise in lieu of, you know, actual exercise.

jono

I still use mine. I get that taking the stairs up 6 flights to work and parking at the other end of the parking lot as a general habit isn't the same as putting on workout gear and going to the gym, but it is all ACTUAL exercise, isn't it?

I find my fitbit encourages me to be more active during times I wouldn't be - at work. I still go for walks and runs and go to the gym.
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Re: Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby eme » Thu Jul 09, 2015 9:54 am

I do, just not at work ;)

ETA: Long story short - I am in the military and my building doesn't allow anything with two way communication, so my FitBit Surge with Bluetooth is a no-no. I had a rant about it in the other tracker/wearables thread.
Last edited by eme on Thu Jul 09, 2015 10:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby Jwolf » Thu Jul 09, 2015 9:59 am

I have a Garmin Vivosmart which is one of Garmin's versions. I really like it for lots of reasons. And yes, I do actually exercise too.
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Re: Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby jonovision_man » Thu Jul 09, 2015 10:05 am

Jwolf wrote:I have a Garmin Vivosmart which is one of Garmin's versions. I really like it for lots of reasons. And yes, I do actually exercise too.


LOL well on this forum I know we're pretty much all avid exercisers, so it's not really a representative sample. :)

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Re: Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby Jwolf » Thu Jul 09, 2015 10:47 am

jonovision_man wrote:
Jwolf wrote:I have a Garmin Vivosmart which is one of Garmin's versions. I really like it for lots of reasons. And yes, I do actually exercise too.


LOL well on this forum I know we're pretty much all avid exercisers, so it's not really a representative sample. :)

jono


I know other people who aren't on this forum who do participate in regular exercise but also use one of these as well.

Like RA said, I like it because it encourages me to be more active during the day when I'm not actually doing a workout. It doesn't track any activity which isn't actually steps, but I have my Garmin to track swimming and cycling :) .

Garmin is also adding all-day activity tracking (i.e., step tracking) into many of it's higher-end watches, so it's likely a feature people want (or they just want to try to stay ahead of the smart-watch game). Eventually I will get one of these, but only when they get a bit smaller so that they look ok as an every day watch.
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Re: Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby deerdree » Thu Jul 09, 2015 11:03 am

i've had a fitbit since november 2013. i like it enough that when i lost the fitbit one in january, i replaced it with the fitbit charge hr (my gauge is whether i'd be willing to replace something if i lost it).

i have a very sedentary job and a pretty sedentary commute, so i wouldn't be able to hit 10,000+ steps unless i added in some intentional exercise. i can only walk to the washroom or water fountain so many times. on days when i have to go to toronto for a meeting, i find the steps add up much more quickly, and i think it could hit 10,000 without that much added effort if i had to walk to and from the train station, subway, etc. i think if there are people who are able to get in all those steps without actual "exercise", more power to them. for me, it inspires little switches like walking to the store instead of driving, and i like that, even if i don't have to put on a sports bra to do it (my criterion for "exercise" :lol:). i think there are more and more articles encouraging people not just to rely on their 30-min morning run for good health and then sit for the rest of the day, so the fitbit is handy if it increases NEAT.

i understand what the article means in a sense, though, because i had a similar issue with my bodymedia fit, where i was tracking calories rather than steps as my main outcome measure. after about two weeks, i knew how many calories i was burning on average, and didn't feel the need to wear it much anymore (similarly on the fitbit, the calories measure doesn't seem to fluctuate as much as the steps count). if you have a routine to your day that includes a lot of walking or regular exercise, i don't know if it's worth wearing the fitbit to figure out if today was 10,013 steps versus 11,006. for someone like me who often works from home and could not move for hours at a time, the day-to-day fluctuations can be dramatic.

i do like the sleep feature, though. and the silent alarm. i've had chronic insomnia, so it's helpful to have a log of my sleep to share with my doctor. i don't put much stock in the calorie output, so i tend to ignore that.

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Re: Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby RA. » Thu Jul 09, 2015 11:34 am

deerdree wrote:i've had a fitbit since november 2013. i like it enough that when i lost the fitbit one in january, i replaced it with the fitbit charge hr (my gauge is whether i'd be willing to replace something if i lost it).

i have a very sedentary job and a pretty sedentary commute, so i wouldn't be able to hit 10,000+ steps unless i added in some intentional exercise. i can only walk to the washroom or water fountain so many times. on days when i have to go to toronto for a meeting, i find the steps add up much more quickly, and i think it could hit 10,000 without that much added effort if i had to walk to and from the train station, subway, etc. i think if there are people who are able to get in all those steps without actual "exercise", more power to them. for me, it inspires little switches like walking to the store instead of driving, and i like that, even if i don't have to put on a sports bra to do it (my criterion for "exercise" :lol:). i think there are more and more articles encouraging people not just to rely on their 30-min morning run for good health and then sit for the rest of the day, so the fitbit is handy if it increases NEAT.

i understand what the article means in a sense, though, because i had a similar issue with my bodymedia fit, where i was tracking calories rather than steps as my main outcome measure. after about two weeks, i knew how many calories i was burning on average, and didn't feel the need to wear it much anymore (similarly on the fitbit, the calories measure doesn't seem to fluctuate as much as the steps count). if you have a routine to your day that includes a lot of walking or regular exercise, i don't know if it's worth wearing the fitbit to figure out if today was 10,013 steps versus 11,006. for someone like me who often works from home and could not move for hours at a time, the day-to-day fluctuations can be dramatic.

i do like the sleep feature, though. and the silent alarm. i've had chronic insomnia, so it's helpful to have a log of my sleep to share with my doctor. i don't put much stock in the calorie output, so i tend to ignore that.


I replaced my "one" with a "charge" so that I use it more like a watch. So i guess I liked it enough, too! In the course of an average weekday (walking, doing errands, maybe a run, etc.), I can usually reach 10,000 without much effort. But that made me increase my goal to 12,500, and that seems to make me need to put in more effort, hence parking farther away, taking the stairs, actually taking my 15 minute breaks to go for a walk downstairs or outside.
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La
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Re: Anyone use a FitBit??

Postby La » Thu Jul 09, 2015 11:50 am

I have the FitBit One, which I bought on sale through WeightWatchers (I would have bought the Flex, but they were sold out at my location). As RD, dee, and JWolf said, it's more about tracking my non-exercise activity than my workouts (I use my Garmin 310XT for that) because I don't want to fall into the trap of thinking that the workouts I do are "enough." My job is very sedentary, so it's a way of encouraging me to walk more and generally be more active and not just sit around for hours at a time.
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